[Partial] Answers

My editor, Laura, was as worried by the tone of "Headlights" as you are.  You may have noticed I haven't posted anything there in a hundred years.  That's because I a) haven't posted anywhere, and b) need to stand back and think about the book I will be turning in.  I should take "Headlights" down.  What material I'll use from it will be fleeting and watered down.

I'm working on Chapter One now.  It is rueful and funny.  At this point the cruel things I have to say are, I think, universal.  One cannot write about a thing like looking for love without looking back, and that's what I'm working on now.  So here is a sample that, I hope, will help to allay some of your worry:

Here is another truism: You can only find neutral ground with someone you were in love with when you have the upper hand.

Tim and I have emailed over the last couple of months but each of us reacts like bumper cars when we hit a sensitive spot.  I need a boyfriend named Jean-Claude who teaches philosophy at the Sorbonne, to fit into my flippiest trousers from Lillith, to have a Pulitzer gathering dust to actually show myself to him.  

Jean-Claudeless, there are no ex-loves I am anxious to meet again.

Trust me, I could wax really snarky there if I wanted to.

Professionally, I must turn Sex and the Pity in on time.  And by the way -- Berkeley isn't fond of that title but I think it's brilliant.

Also by the way?  Thank you for worrying because in copying that sample, I made it better.

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I'm not quite dithery enough to go out and post ads for babysitting, tutoring, dog-walking, editing and grout-cleaning all at once.

But thanks for worrying about overkill.

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I wouldn't mind getting rid of tchotchkes if you paid the postage.  It could be kind of fun to put them all in a bag and blindly grab one.  It could the hoarder's version of seeking an answer by randomly opening the Bible and sticking one's finger on a verse.

Although I've never quite gotten that because who would "randomly" open the Bible at Genesis or Revelation?  It seems that as an advice mechanism, you're pretty much gonna be hearing from Samuel  through Luke.*

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I'm thinking about serializing short stories in the f chronicles: doing so would force me to write some.  But that's not what the chronicles are mostly about, so don't worry.  I'm also thinking about a subtitle for the newsletter: a life without ideas.

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Note to self:  The hardest part of the unemployed day is evening.

Note to self: When I'm depressed I read chick lit.  When I frightened I read Tudor history.  In the last four days I've whizzed through Elizabeth's Women Friends and The Lady Elizabeth.  Neither have quite the grit I crave.  Must switch to Derek Wilson. 

* So then, of course, I had to try the Bible Answer trick.  I don't know whether to laugh or bawl:

"And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity; and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies."  Jeremiah 20:6