For newcomers, I have a mainpage with info about my novel, as well as my second book coming out in March, reviews, etc. I say this because people putting my name into Google usually end up here first.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Several years ago, I was sitting in the newsroom at the paper I work for when a colleague who was reading the New York Times said, "An editor at the New Republic has been fired for making up stories!" I thought to myself, "Imagine if it was Steve Glass" since he was a year behind me in college and I had heard that he got a dreamjob at the New Republic not long after graduation. It turned out it was him.

At my college reunion, I assumed that my former Daily Pennsylvanian journalism colleagues would be keeping mum on it, out of respect for Steve, who'd been the top editor. Instead, I saw another former editor and the first thing he said to me was, "Did you hear about Steve Glass!?!?" So it was apparently something to be talked about.

I didn't know him too well, and I don't have much to offer to the discussion about him, but I did just read an interesting interview about how he sees the new movie about him. The interviewer keeps trying to find out if he's somewhat gay at one point, but doesn't come out and ask. She might as well have. You have to watch a Salon ad to read the full piece.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

A college friend writes: "Being a husband and a father now, I can see where there are a LOT of pitfalls that many marriages won't withstand - even those with 2 committed loving partners. Even among those who wait. Money, childbearing and child rearing attitudes...and all that baggage that each partner brings to the relationship, that have nothing to do with the person's partner. I'm surprised that the divorce rate isn't higher than it is. "

He also asked how I'm enjoying The Mailman by J. Robert Lennon. It's a great book. I'm finding that even though it's "literary," I'm reading every word, and often I tend to skim in other books. It usually takes a lot to hold my attention. So if you want a good read, pick it up.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

I just went to work to catch up on all the mail that collected in the week I was away. The most exciting thing was a press release entitled, "Does your dog have Alzheimer's?"

I am hearing very discouraging things about the practice of marriage lately. I was in a writing workshop today and read ten memoirs, and many of them involved people who seemed to have zero affection for their husbands or wives. And on Saturday, a guy told me the usual about how yeah, he and his wife had sex a lot the first year of marriage, but now they just fight a lot. I guess I just don't know enough about it, but it seems to me that it takes long enough to date, get engaged, and plan a wedding that you should know enough about the person you're marrying to be able to figure out if you respect them and care about them, besides being attracted to them. And then that should last at least a little while.

I know that dealing with the same person for years can be hard, but I guess I'm confused by the people who seem utterly uninterested and who don't respect their spouses at all. I'm from a generation who fears divorce because of our parents, and often holds out for someone we think is really, really great, and we're criticized for it. But you need that level of affection to get through the hard times. When I see an old couple sitting at dinner and one of them puts his/her hand on the other's shoulder, that shows me he/she cares enough about the other person to still want to touch them affectionately as a matter of course. I can't think of a worse fate than committing to someone you only sorta like.

Don't forget to set your clock back. You get an extra hour. It will take me an hour to set all the clocks.

Since Valerie was kind enough to post minutes of Tuesday Night Trivia, I should link to that entry. And she's right - the talented Tony is hosting next week, so come one, come all.

Woke up, put clothes on, didn't go to work.

It's amazing how I can spend so much time on a certain scene in my novel, and then, after writing a lot more of the story and knowing the big picture, I realize the best thing for the book would be to completely lop it out. Even if the scene itself is well-written, it doesn't move the story along and it slows things down. Hack, hack hack. Gotta know when to let go.

I was shopping Tuesday and they were playing music that sounded pretty good. So before I left the store, I asked the cashier whose CD it was.

"That's Clay Aiken's CD," she said.

Agghhhh!!!

Woke up, got dressed, didn't go to work.

I had a good writing morning. Did one of my last screenplay revisions. I got pretty drawn into the story, so I think it works.

Are a lot of celebrities dying young lately? Or is it just that my generation is getting older and noticing more? Until this year, the only celebs who I'd grown up with who died were Heather O'Rourke and River Phoenix. Oh, and Kimberly from Diff'rent Strokes, and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. But as time marches on, we'll see more of them, I guess. Well, rest in peace, Rerun (Fred Berry). I hate these signs of aging. Like those creases in one's forehead that appear one day at 31 and just stay there...

The Italian cover of my book is certainly interesting.

I finally registered on the Do Not Call list even though at first I decided not to. I declined originally because most of the people who work for telemarketing firms really need the money. But these days, most of the calls I get are just irritating computer messages anyway. It takes three months for Do Not Call to be activated after you register, so if you're interested, might as well do it now by clicking here.

Woke up, put clothes on, didn't go to work. It's a writing week.

Woke up, put clothes on, didn't go to work. I'm off writing today.

For anyone new who finds their way here, I have a homepage.

Woke up, put on clothes, didn't go to work.

There should be a national day for writing thank-you letters. I thought of that because there's a longtime screenwriter whose work I admire that I figured I should write a fan letter to. It doesn't matter if he gets a lot of them; it still doesn't hurt to send one more.

I do try to write thank-you letters when someone gives me really good service. I wrote one about a Sears employee who took a lot of time to change my watch battery a few years ago. I figured, for the $6 an hour she makes, it wouldn't hurt for her bosses to see something nice.

Writing that kind of letter is something I think a lot of us consider doing at some point, but it takes time. Yet, it's precisely because they're rare that it's nice to write one.

Today's reader update: "You Said: But someone also said this blog is starting to read like a romance novel, so enough about dating. If we do any more on male/female relations here, we'll never recover.
Are you suggesting Female/female relations? Wow Caren, now I am really starting to dig this blog! -- Mickey"

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

I got all kinds of interesting updates yesterday and today, including a lurker coming out of the darkness to suggest that I get together with Mr. Anonymous. Also, a friend complained that Anonymous probably only goes for younger women, avoiding women in their 30s because they don't want to just "fool around." I'd have to point out that Anonymous did say he tried to date a divorcee. But someone also said this blog is starting to read like a romance novel, so enough about dating. If we do any more on male/female relations here, we'll never recover.

Lots to do today, so have a great weekend.

Something I just heard a loudmouth girl outside my window yell:

"I can't believe we fucking lost! AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It is fucking heartwrenching!"

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

The anonymous blogger finally responded. Isn't this fun? I will have to respond (hopefully concisely) to his response later on. But I appreciate the plug for the next book. And I'm glad he found things in the first one to like even though he's more into sci-fi and the like. So thanks, guy.

Update: I didn't realize that Anonymous had posted about me before recently, because I didn't check the archives. I'm glad he likes my author photo. Thanks. But I also read about how he thinks women have it easier in the dating scene, because it's up to men to "drive" the relationship. Trust me, that makes it harder. Yes, women do have some say in it -- they get to say "No." But do they ever get to make things happen if they meet someone they like? I have several friends who have nursed serious crushes for a while and finally tried to make something happen - and have been rejected. And it feels disgusting and devastating. So don't think women have it easier. Women get rejected all the time. And it feels worse than for a guy, but I won't go into why now because you'll beg to differ anyway. Maybe what we can agree on is that it's not easy for anyone, and leave it at that.

I'm dying to know who the Anonymous Blogger is now. Maybe he'll 'fess up at trivia one day. Or maybe he'll e-mail me.

This guy links to my blog. I'm sure he'd disagree with me, but many women have as much trouble dating as men. Moreso, because as you can see from his latest entry, the ball was in his court and he didn't take the chance. What both sides sometimes forget is that you can't help who, in the end, you have feelings for or don't have feelings for. But you SHOULD try to get to know other people, and they should be open to it. It's just that it might not always result in a relationship -- and it's not anyone's fault. It doesn't mean you did something wrong or you're ugly or you're a bad person. (I will say, though, that sometimes guys don't tell women enough about themselves -- this guy writes in his blog a lot but doesn't say much about what he actually has in common with these women, besides being attracted to them. I don't blame him for not wanting to get personal and write about it -- I imagine there's more to it than what's in the blog. I hope so, cuz women can be insecure too, and the more they know about someone, the more they have to talk about.) In any case, there are lots of intangibles in dating, and no guarantees. Hopefully it ultimately leads to what makes you happy for a long time.

That's about enough for today.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Mickey writes: "The Corvair was a great car! And the Gremlin can be turned into a great stock car!"

Tonight's trivia highlight: Co-host Rich Appel did a visual round with photos of junky cars from the '70s and '80s. The Corvair, Gremlin, Yugo, Fiesta and LeCar were all well represented. For one of them, someone guessed, "Hearse." Rich said, "Well, actually, that was all of them."

I just wrote a passage of self-analysis, but I deleted it because I keep most of that out of this blog. I know, I know, it'd be fun to read, but plumbing the core of my personality would let everyone know which parts of my books come from me and which don't, and that would ruin all the fun, wouldn't it?

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Woke up, put on clothes, didn't go to work.

I've been wanting to write this for a while, and since today's a quiet day, I might as well do it now.

There's a new subset of people who are angry at Bush right now, for semi-selfish reasons.

When the economy was good, some of these folks didn't understand at all how anyone could be poor or need to depend on big government. Now that THEY are poor because they lost their jobs and couldn't get another one, and unemployment ran out, all of a sudden they want more benefits and government regulation. I'm hearing it more and more.

Recently, my newspaper got a letter from a woman who was earning $40,000 a few years ago (a very good salary well above the poverty line, although some would scoff at it), and after losing her job and being unable to find another one, she says she'll soon be on the street. She said she tried to get benefits, but was unable to because she's not a "crack mother with 12 kids." Ironically, the point of her article was that you shouldn't judge why someone is on the street.

Now, first off, the crack mother with 12 kids is a myth -- unless she lives in the same neighborhood as the woman with two Cadillacs on Welfare and the "lazy" people who are homeless because it's just so much easier to sleep on the sidewalk and ask for money than go into an air conditioned office and sit in front of a computer every day. Even if there has been some case like that in the course of history, it's certainly not the norm, and to act like it is is very lazy in itself.

Now, then. This woman all of a sudden decides she wants government benefits -- and she can't get them. And another guy, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, wrote a USA TODAY story three weeks ago about how he can't get benefits because he makes $960 a month freelance writing (he lives in campgrounds). An acquaintance of mine recently told me he is no longer a Libertarian because he sees how corporations can squeeze the little guy, and there needs to be more control. He recently lost his job.

My question is, why do people have to lose their jobs to suddenly realize that you can become poor or need to depend on the govt. without it being your fault? Can't people ever look beyond their own experience? When folks were doing fine, couldn't they have imagined that there were OTHER people who involuntarily lost jobs, became mentally ill, or had some other problem that made them depend on benefits?

So the nouveau poor are mad at the gov't. But you know, I'd have more sympathy for someone who's homeless and mentally ill than someone who was making a decent salary at a dot-com and didn't have the foresight to put money in a savings account. Yet, what I just said isn't fair, either -- it makes an assumption that people who are unemployed or poor right now were lazy or stupid about their money. And probably, most of them weren't.

Here's my point. Don't decide your political views based on your own narrow experience. Don't make assumptions about the world unless you really look at it. Don't do what's easiest.

Conservatives got angry recently when they saw that the University of North Carolina was requiring incoming freshmen to read and discuss Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed," about trying to get by on minimum wage. The book is non-fiction. It probably does have a liberal bent, but it's about the way the world really works. It's not fantasy stories about crack mothers with twelve kids. What were they afraid of - people finding out that poverty sucks?

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

An argument for my NOT having a blog is that my spur-of-the-moment writing can be pretty bad sometimes. And here it is, for the whole world.

More to read at my homepage: www.carenlissner.com.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Did same thing yesterday.

A final comment from M.S.: Wives are always on a sex strike. That is why God invented girlfriends.

Vidiot writes: Why do you THINK he's groping people? (You know, aside from being married
to Skeletor.)

Oh.

You Republicans are so stupid. You just put Ted Kennedy's niece into the governor's mansion in California. If her family wants her to put liberal policies put into practice, she can withhold sex until she gets what she wants. He has been charitable in the past, but if he gets too right-wing, all we have to do is urge his wife to go on a sex strike. Thanks!!!

Reader mail: "I was in search of Blackfords print as well and came across your site.
Wanted to say hi. I'm an actor currently running in Labyrinth's
production of DUTH HEART OF MAN. Last seen in OUR LADY OF 121st STREET.
Check out our site at labtheater.org or an old site ourlady121.com.
Hope you got your print.
Scott

Tonight's winning trivia team name: "Roy Horn tries 'pu**y' for first time - doesn't go too well."

I keep forgetting to mention that at trivia, one of my questions a few weeks ago was, "What is Monica Lewinsky's middle initial?" Someone wrote, "O. Like the face."

Hi.

I heard the clip of this (below) on the radio, and it was hysterical. Not that I condone shooting anyone. What will happen over the next day is that people will be outraged at the remark, and then there will be reverse-backlash by parents saying, "Well, even though I don't agree with shooting, I can see where she's coming from...":

News report: Britney Spears had better watch her back. Maryland First Lady Kendel Ehrlich joked to a crowd at a domestic violence seminar at Hood College in Frederick on Friday that she has it in for the pop star.
"Really, if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would," said Ehrlich, laughing.
She says Spears gives young girls the false message that finding and having sex with a man is more important that anything else.
Kendel Ehrlich is the wife of Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Finally finished my fourth and last round of edits on book 2 and sent it back to my editor. This is the downside of publishing - spending entire weekends making sure that something you wrote two years ago is perfect. Only then can you move on to new stuff. Well, except that I will get galleys around December...and have to check THOSE....

Who's setting up these Monday Night Football games so a team that's way behind always catches up and makes for a nail-biter?

It is unfortunate when you run for prez and someone else has already taken your domain name: www.wesleyclark.com

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Got MILF? Someone else found my blog by putting in Blackford's name, and also today, someone found it by putting in "Pics of busty moms."

A friend tells me that Leno said:

"Have you been following the leak of the CIA agent?
Bush was furious and told his staff for once he wanted the truth and
wanted it NOW.
So they said - -
You lost the election and you aren't really the president."

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

A friend writes: "I cast my vote with Vidiot, his inaccurate details notwithstanding."

Well, a pox on all of you. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.

Last night I got to hear J. Robert Lennon read from The Mailman. I bought a copy, which I will read quite soon. He's an amazing writer who I luckily got to share a writing seminar or two with in college.

A majority of polled Americans think it's a good idea that someone independent investigate the CIA leak. This has the makings of a long-term story...

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Got this e-mail:
>>Caren,
I find the "Redbird in Air" poster quite disturbing each time I see it.
Every single time, I think something along the lines of "Gosh, that subway car weighs so much more than that basket full of children...and any moment
now, it'll drop like a rock and pull the basket plummeting along after it."
Just thought you should know.
--Vidiot

It's only one child, fool. He's clutching a stuffed rabbit.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

The New York Transit Museum Store says it's sold out of "Redbird in Air," a popular John Blackford poster on the NYC subway system featuring a train. The reason I keep mentioning it here is that there's very little on the Internet about it and I people keep Googling it and getting to my site. Anyway, they are going to print up more, so if you got here looking for info, check their site and get on the wait list. The poster is the perfect depiction of childhood dreams.

Team trivia was great tonight. Every chair was taken, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. There was apparently a blurb about it in Time Out New York this week, and it brought some newcomers to mix with the old-timers and their "in" jokes. Thanks to all who came by.

I did a top 10 list of states with the most tornado deaths. I also asked the following question: Who appeared in the movie "Something About Mary," which was shown on network TV this past Sunday, and then appeared the next day in Monday Night Football?

If I had free Dave Matthews tickets, I'd pay someone to take them.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

You asked for it, you got it -- cold weather.

(as opposed to Toyota.)

The great literary gossip website MobyLives has a column (look at the left side of the page) by Steve Almond ("My Life in Heavy Metal") responding to Harold Bloom. He doesn't quite have the same flair as Lori G.,, but he says: "[King] is, at worst, an uneven writer, one who dips down into pulp, but also has produced—particularly of late—some genuinely moving prose...The point, as I see it, is how most effectively to wake up our culture from its current stupor."

Things seem to be rapidly improving in the lives of several people I know. It's the fall -- that's it. I knew this summer was evil. In the last few days, at least two people have told me they're tired of this warm weather and want fall to come. So I'm not crazy.

I got an e-mail from a blog reader and its subject head was: "Evil, Painful, Convoluted First Chapter."

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

The CIA believes a White House operative may have revealed one of their covert agents' names as revenge for her husband's undermining one of Bush's State of the Union claims about Iraq. I know this isn't a political blog, but this seems important so click if interested.

Woke up, put on clothes, didn't go to work.

At least one person a day finds this blog by putting my name into Google. Just in case you come here and aren't aware, I have a regular page at www.carenlissner.com.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Update: "Excellent rejoinders by Lori and James.

And good to know your readers are not all as simple-minded as the knucklehead who made the inane remark about why and where you might have long-handed parts of Carrie."

James from college writes:

You know, literature (all writing of any type, in fact) has been gradually going to hell in a handbasket since the days of Tacitus. Just ask any critic. I'm not sure if I would want to denigrate JK Rowling or discourage children from reading her books, though. I grew up reading Readers' Digest (my mother-in-law still cringes at that). It is the first material I can
ever remember reading, and I did it because I liked the stories. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I realized the stories are abridged from other sources.

I don't think it has affected my taste in Literature for the worse. My favorite book, after all, is The Sound and the Fury, closely followed by All The King's Men, not The Green Mile or Hollywood Wives.

My friend Lori couldn't help herself and wrote a response to Harold Bloom:

Harold Bloom, I don't know who you are, but you are a stuffy, pompous ass. *Nothing* is going to lead today's kids to pick up Kipling. Got that? Nothing. Is he living in the same era as I am? Does he actually know people with children, and I'm not talking about children of academics and politicians who live in Westfield, NJ. Kids do not want to read Kipling -- they want to watch their DVD of Disney's "Jungle Book." Ditto for "Alice" and any other book that has had a cartoon rendering. And to think otherwise is only an example of how completely out of touch you are.

"Literature" as a 73-year old knows it went the way of women making sure their husband's slippers were waiting at the front door and his dinner was ready for him when he got from a hard day at the office. No one wants to read anything anymore. Everyone wants to watch reality shows, blow up stuff in video games, and then look for porn on the Internet -- even kids! (And people who don't believe that THEIR kids are looking for nudie pics -- or worse -- on the Web, I pose the question: why then is there such a market for parental controls? I have very rarely stumbled upon porn I wasn't intently seeking out in the first place.)

My feeing is that if kids want to read a book where all the characters "stretch their legs" too often, yet it stretches their imaginations and gets them interested and excited about something (even if it's the occult) isn't that still better than playing Grand Theft Auto, where you get extra points for beating up and robbing the hooker you just hired and climbed with into the backseat of a car?

My teacher friends were all so thrilled when the Harry Potter phenom started. Kids were reading something, anything, *and* now, maybe they could slowly nudge them into reading something else. How can you suggest that it's not a good thing?

You have to work within the confines of the reality you've been given -- it's a more productive use of your energy than whining about "the old days" and being horrified by the popularity of Stephen King -- that's *so* 1985.

Kids are not going to pick up "Moby Dick" and start reading it unless it's assigned to them in a class -- and even then some of them won't read it. (It was boring! I couldn't get through it myself. Apparently I was too busy reading "The Stand.")

Pop culture is King in the 21st century. Get used to it.

Lori G.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Harold Bloom writes in the Boston Globe about why the writing in Harry Potter is dreadful and why Stephen King shouldn't have won a major writing award.

Someone took the liberty of playing with the Name Stats link and sending me his results:

Queen Bitch is a very rare female name.
Very few females in the US are named Queen Bitch.
Be proud of your unique name!

Scum Bag of the Week is a very rare male name.
Very few men in the US are named Scum Bag of the Week.
Be proud of your unique name!

Busty Babe with Great Ass is a very rare female name.
Very few females in the US are named Busty Babe with Great Ass.
Be proud of your unique name!

Carie Pilby is a very rare female name.
Very few females in the US are named Carie Pilby.
Be proud of your unique name!

About 8,925 women in the U.S. are named Caren, according to this site. Put your name in and see what happens.

Someone actually DID Google "John Blackford" and "MTA" and got to my blog. It's such a nice poster, and there are so few mentions of it on the web. If anyone else ends up here, the work is called "Redbird in the Air" and it's on several of the subway cars. You can order it at the NY Transit Store.

Reader comment: "It is honestly great to see something that turned out so wonderful in such a raw form but why on a note pad? .....was it done in pre-computer days? .....or when you were in a house of worship supposedly listening to a sermon?"

Most of it was written on a computer, but still, there were some parts that were scrawled extensively in a notebook first, particularly if I was on the road or at a temp job at the time. I don't have a laptop.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

I was thinking this novel is the only one I struggled with, but I guess it's always this way, especially in the beginning. (The scribbling you see if you click the link is part of Carrie Pilby.) Which is a good reason to record my thoughts on it here -- so I'll remember next time.

A trivia player by the name of Adam has already posted on his Livejournal a description of tonight's game, and of the deliciously odiferous Chinese dinner he and his NYU colleagues enjoyed, making the rest of us jealous. His blog has hurricane links just like mine, so you see, I'm not the only person who is geeky about storms. He actually wore a shirt saying "Satan is a Nerd" tonight. Any nerdwear is encouraged for trivia night. Finally, he seems down because Weezer's "Buddy Holly" was considered a one-hit wonder. Hey, Pinkerton was just too good for the charts.

Someone found this blog by puttnig into a search engine: "Lyrics to I Love A Rainy Night, by the Chipmunks"

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

One of the questions the Japanese translator had was about "Ix-nay." I guess it's hard to translate Pig Latin into Japanese.

I was just looking at my pathetic old journals. An entry from my senior year of college, Nov. 15, 1992, says:

6:30 a.m. When I am reading this in 1995, where will I be? NY? NJ? PA? DC? Calif -- no, never mind. Ugh! The sour taste of indecision.

By writing in this journal, do I really help get myself a job and published? No. I just write incredibly boring passages.

Okay, by Wednesday I will have something interesting to put in here. If not, I'll just have to hang myself.

7:11 p.m. -- Bill's got some real young-uns working for him. Geo Stephanopolous & Dee Dee Myers are only 31!

[Note: for you sensitive types, I meant the hanging thing as a joke. Thank you.]

I just had a lot of fun doing a reading at the Ciao Bella Gelato Cafe in Tenafly, New Jersey. It was organized by the Penn (my alma mater) Club of North Jersey and held in conjunction with the Cafe and Womrath's Bookstore in Tenafly. I met the delightful owners of both places.

Besides talking about writing and publishing with folks, I was happy just to get to the suburbs in general, particularly a main street of one of New Jersey's many old colonial towns. I just don't frolic in suburbia enough. In fall, it's nice to see the windows of colonial homes shining through the darkness, the brown leaves skipping across streaming grass and people leaving their porch lights on.

Anyway, to put in a plug, I had a delicious seafood sandwich at the Cafe - very fresh and filling. Womrath's Bookstore, I found out, was moved from another town where it had been for more than fifty years. I can't wait to stop in. Thanks to all who came and participated.

I was trying to figure out today the relationship between something that's hard to write and its resulting quality. If I'm actually enjoying writing a book, will it come out better than one I really had to struggle on? Or worse?

I'm not sure there's a correlation. But it's an interesting question.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Those 15 pages were tough this weekend. There was a point at which I was so tired I got into bed, but I knew the pages weren't good enough so I got up and worked on them some more. They're definitely in better shape now, although far from perfect. Introducing characters in third person is hard. Now I know why writers take seven or ten years on a novel. Sometimes there's a little elusive detail that would make the story much more interesting and suspenseful, but we're not destined to come up with it until we've thought about it for months.

This story has been in my head for so long, though, that it doesn't necessarily need ten more years. I'm not rushing it, but it's not going to wait until 2010 either.

Bored at work? Read this or this.

I wish you'd come down from that ledge my friend: I was just in Times Square, and there was a guy way up on top of the Milford Plaza sign. A crowd was craning their necks, saying he was a jumper. I heard these comments:

GIRL ON CELL PHONE: We've got a real jumper up there. Look on the news.

GIRL: Oh, get down from there. Or jump. One or the other.

GIRL: Just jump already.

GUY: He's not gonna juuuuump.

Apparently no one was taking it too seriously. If he had jumped, you would have bet there would have been blood-curdling screams. I decided to leave in a hurry. Hearing one massive group-scream (two years ago) is enough to last a lifetime.

I think I'm done talking about hurricanes for this year. I'll start again next August. Someone told me that the National Weather Service actually says we could still get more this month. I doubt it, but in any case, people are going through weather-hype withdrawal and I think I'll stay quiet about it for a little while.

However, I didn't say I wouldn't talk about nor'easters...

It's amazing how much time I've spent simply rewriting the first 15 pages of book 3. I have a skeleton written of the whole book, and yet, those first 15 pages have to be perfect before I can do more. Not only are they the determining factor in whether editors -- and ultimately readers -- will keep reading, but I have to understand the characters' motivations, histories and surroundings in order to do a good job in coloring in the rest of the events and interactions. One author said that you have to get rid of 60 to 70 percent of your first chapter over the course of revisions, and I've done that a few times over. I've put in background information that, in the end, I've decided only will slow a reader down, but at least *I* know it now. Still, there is much for me to understand and learn.

The only problem is that with each revision, I lose perspective on whether what's left is fun to read or not. It's hard to get pleasure out of writing I've changed 40 times. I don't think I've ever read the published, final version of Carrie Pilby all the way through, because I read the advanced reader's copy and the revised copies so many times. The passages that are still enjoyable to me are the ones that I added later in the process -- probably just because they seem fresher.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Got some work done on novel 3 last night. It will still take so long to finish it. That's what happens when you're doing research and learning about and shaping characters who are very different from you. I feel so frustrated when a writing project isn't at the juncture at which it's flowing smoothly, but there are always painful periods in writing. They just have to be worked through, and in the end, when the final project is done, no one should be able to detect where the ripples of torment were.

For newcomers to this site: I'm a writer. Click here to read about my goofy first novel, Carrie Pilby, which was published in June, and other wacky aspects of my so-called life.

Trees are bending southward like rubber, the leaves swirling to expose their brownish-yellow and then green sides. The Hudson River looks choppy. A guy passing my window in a white hockey jersey with the blue number 24 feels it trail behind him. The American Flag above the 14th Street post office is being wound into a cone. Still, no rain.

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again: I'm curious about which phrases I can put into this blog to lure Google searchers here. I'm going to try some and let you know the results:
-"Publish my book"
-"Getting an agent"
-"Getting a book published"
-"Get an agent"
-"Get my book published"
-"Free beer"
-"Free sex"
-"Bennifer"
Let's see what happens.

Woke up, got dressed, went to work.

It's still only windy here; no rain. The rain isn't expected until 9 p.m., and then the hardest rain will hit around 1 a.m., they say. I'll try to stay up for it.

I was outside waiting for the bus to NY, and it was quieter than usual. Then I got to NY and it was extremely quiet there, too -- no music, no horns, not as many people out as usual. The only thing going on is the impending hurricane, but why would that keep people off the streets 12 hours in advance? Are they all at the store buying kidney beans? They couldn't be evacuating. They have two more days of work, and we're not on the shore, anyway. Ah well. Maybe someone will clear it up for me.

3 p.m. hurricane update.

Thanks to all who sent bad jokes about the Japanese translation.

Woke up, got dressed, went to work.

My book is being translated into Japanese!

Hurricane is expected tomorrow night into Friday. We should at least get some rain.

Winning team name at trivia tonight: "Come and knock on my grave." (It's a John Ritter reference.) There was also, "Donate your brain to the Bush campaign."

This is the first hurricane I remember, and it probably stuck in my mind because it hit closer to us than they usually do. There was talk of evacuating, but we didn't.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Got my MTA poster in the mail yesterday. John Blackford, if you Google yourself and end up here, I want to thank you for your creation.

Is this football game going to go on until 3 a.m., or what?!

Got a nice Amazon review from a young woman in Indonesia.

Jennifer Weiner writes in her blog, "Is this just me being grouchy, or is it okay to be a little peeved by people who email me with letters beginning 'I haven't read your books,' and then go on to ask for advice/help/my agent's phone number?" Anyway, she also has some interesting thoughts on publishing, so it's worth a click.

Woke up, got dressed, went to work.

Second novel has officially appeared on Amazon.

For those who've asked me if it's a sequel to Carrie Pilby --- nope. Quick synopsis (sorry for the self-indulgence): It centers on a 29-year-old woman whose husband died in a car crash 1.5 years ago, and her friends try to drag her out to start dating again. She was with her hubby since college, so she's never really had to date. As her bitter friends get her out in NYC, she's appalled by the scene, but since she's always been easy to get along with, she meets a good guy pretty quickly. She, of course, isn't really over her husband, so she doesn't know how to date this new guy. And her friends' past resentment of her comes out again. So it's about issues of love, loss, jealousy, friendship, etc...it doesn't get depressing despite the subject matter.

Well, enough about me. Have a good Monday. And batten down those hatches.

I saw a really beautiful poster on the NYC subway two weeks ago that I decided I wanted. It's by John Blackford and depicts a child imagining himself riding through the night air along with a subway train. Since I'm a dreamer, as well as a lover of trains (in my own childlike way), it struck a chord. I saw it again a few days later on another train. I searched for the artist on the internet and could only find some sci-fi novel covers he did. I e-mailed the MTA to find out if I could buy a copy. They sent back a response saying it was property of some advertising company, but that I could buy items "like" it at the MTA Transit Store. I clicked on the site and saw an actual picture of the coveted poster. But when I clicked on that, it said it wasn't available. I called the store and they said I could get it, indeed. So it's on its way.

We're back, live. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

There were a few things I wanted to put on the blog this weekend, but as usual, I've forgotten them. I did just hear this conversation on the PATH train:

GUY: Where do you live?
GIRL: Queens.
GUY: I was just in Queens on Tuesday. I was at the [Such-and-such] Church.
GIRL is shaking her head.
GUY: You don't go to church?
GIRL: No.
GUY: Never?
GIRL shakes her head.
GUY: Do you know the story of Jesus?
GIRL: I've seen the movies.

On another note, Hurricane Isabel is quite powerful and could slam into anywhere on the East Coast -- too early to tell. Here's the five-day forecast graphic. I will put descriptions here or on the Blog of My Barometer if it hits.

Last Monday, Hitler's filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, died. Tuesday night, at trivia, two very clever teams had the following names: "Triumph of the Won't," and "Triumph of My Willy." There was also a team called "Racism is Gay." My co-host for the night, Valerie, is normally on the team that used the "Racism" name and said she kept telling them not to use that name, so the instant she became co-host rather than player, they defied her and used it.

What else? Read a really good book called "Riding with the Queen" by Jennie Shortridge, which she sent me after hearing about my book - it comes out next month and I'll change that to a link to it on Amazon later. J. Robert Lennon's "The Mailman" got an "A" in the new Entertainment Weekly.

Woke up, put on clothes, went to work.

Yesterday evening, I walked past a church in New York and there was a huge, beautiful wooden table with a "free" sign outside of it. It was too big to fit into a regular car. There was a guy next to it frantically talking to someone on his cell phone, and other people were looking at it intently, trying to figure out how they could get it home in a city with no cars. It's a good practical joke: Put something great but too big in New York for free and see if anyone can get it home.

I will be taking a rest from blogging for a few days in observance of Sept. 11...there are so many people who have important things to say around this time, so I don't want to take away from that. Nothing I could say would be as important as some of what others will say, particularly those who lost someone. There are a million stories of the people close to it. Hope everyone has a good rest of the week.