on looking past the work we've made and, also, the opposite (in Decatur)

The Devon Horse Show grounds are empty, but the gates are open. No, not empty, we discover; there is a single contractor working within. With his permission we walk, in and out of the stables, the new buildings, the old ones. I find a ladder and Bill climbs it into a secret place. I think an abandoned sink is lovely. Also a discarded, woven hat. Also emptiness as countered by the milk of contained light.

In the sun it is hot. In the shade it is perfect.

What are we searching for on this Labor Day?

I have been reading Olivia Laing. I have been reading (I seem to endlessly circle her) about Virginia Woolf. Her ecstasy. Her mourning. Her river and her pocketful of stones. I have been reading, too, about artists, jealousies, rivalries. Bacon and Freud. Manet and Degas. I have been thinking of the panel I was on, just yesterday afternoon, at the exquisite AJC Decatur Book Festival, and all the things I didn't say, and the friends who came to see me, and the ease of our stupendously fine moderator, Terra Elan McVoy, who brilliantly coined perfumes for us and wove a silk thread between stories for us and wondered about our books as films and decided This Is the Story of You isn't really a film, not yet a film, though perhaps it is an Indie. Yes. Always. I am, will be, the Indie. Slightly out of step and over to the side and stewing inside the next act of making something, my preference, always, for the thing that is not yet made, as opposed to the thing that is.

Do we read our books after they are published (beyond when authorial responsibility calls us to), we were asked. No, I said. No, emphatic. For there is no fixing the book then, no new chance, and I always wish that my books were better than they were, and I am always trying, until they are printed (ask any editor of mine) to make them better than they are, than they will be, but yesterday, when I was feeling, I'm not entirely sure why, sad, there was a girl in the line after the panel who asked me to sign her books. "You are my favorite author," she said, and I was stunned by it, set back, this gesture of hers, this kindness extended. Words that pinned me to the present time, for that present time, in that moment. With me on one side of the table and this beautiful girl on the other, for just that moment or two, I was me, with the books I have made, in the present, in the moment. I was not looking past them.

Not in that split of time, anyway.

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(Soon) Headed to the AJC Decatur Book Festival

Three years ago, I was there, at the AJC Decatur Book Festival, one of the happiest book events there ever could be. I arrived alone. I stepped into the hotel lobby and I wasn't anymore. Suddenly I was in the company of Jessica Shoffel (my Jessica Shoffel, I like to say) and Doni Kay, who walked me to the Little Shop of Stories (the epicenter of this event), sat with me over tea, invited me to meet Tomie dePaolo (images of all that here), to have dinner with him later. The next day I took an early morning walk and discovered the tour de force that is Diane Capriola out and about, so we talked. I needed some shoes, so I bought a pair that remain my favorite to this day. A few hours later, I sat beside the very brilliant Stacey D'Erasmo (a writing heroine, truly) and, before a packed house, we talked about memoir and intimacy as if no one else was in sight. I found Nancy Krulik on a stage after that. A long conversation with the smart DJ MacHale was had in the ride back to the airport.

Two days I'll never forget.

Next weekend I return to Decatur, this time to sit on a Terra Elan McVoy moderated panel with writers Ami Allen-Vath and Alexandra Sirowy. The topic will be Aftermath stories in the realm of young-adult books. I'll be talking, specifically, about This Is the Story of You.

Word is that my dear former neighbor, Shirley, will be there in the audience mix. That, perhaps, one of my favorite rediscovered friends of high school, will be there with his literary daughter. I'm looking forward to you, Decatur, and I thank Chronicle Books and Lara Starr for making it possible for me to be there.

My event is here, should you happen to be in town.

Sunday September 4
2:00 PM
Teen Stage
Aftermath
Ami Allen-Vath, Alexandra Sirowy, Terra Elan McVoy
AJC Decatur Book Festival

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Decatur Festival Bound, and a conversation with the agent, Andy Ross

Whenever I mention the AJC Decatur Book Festival to those who have visited in the past, I get a single reaction: love; people love this festival. There will be more than 300 authors in attendance, including a few of my friends. The conversations, I'm told, verge on the electrifying. And oh the street fair.

And so, in less than 12 hours, I'll face a classroom of 30 aspiring memoir writers, spin a few songs on a CD, and get us going. Tomorrow I'll sit on a stage with Stacey D'Erasmo, a writer and critic whose work is remarkable, and discuss intimacy and memoir. Read A Seahorse Year and The Art of Intimacy and every single one of her NYTBR reviews if you haven't encountered D'Erasmo yet.

But right now, I leave you with this—a conversation I had with the agent Andy Ross, who generously read Handling the Truth and had a number of questions. I had a blast with this, and it's always interesting to hear an agent's perspective on a form I love. Thank you so much, Andy Ross, and congratulations on the memoir you just sold.

Signing out for now.....

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Here, in this final week of August (looking ahead to Atlanta, GA, and San Francisco, CA)

I welcome the quiet of working hours and the chance to revise a book I believe in. It's taken me a while to wrestle this Florence novel into something continuous, riveting, but also calm. It's funny what adding several scenes can do, while shuffling others to the side. It's funny, too, how I learn again (and again) that plot is dictated by tone, and how every time you write a novel, it's like the first time you write a novel; you have to give yourself a lot of long and hard talking to's. And yet, it's wonderful to be with these characters again, to be back in Florence, and to know, at last, that I can do this.

I welcome the chance to look ahead to Decatur, GA, where, in a few days, I'll be teaching a memoir workshop, and (the next day) joining Stacey D'Erasmo in conversation on a stage. She'll be talking about intimacy on the page. I'll be talking about truth. In between the workshop and the conversation, I'll be seeing old friends, learning from others, giving the dear Jessica Shoffel a hug.

The following week, I'll take off for San Francisco to conduct three Handling the Truth workshops (each of them different) and to meet with my friends at Chronicle. I'll hold the galleys of Going Over, my Berlin novel with that gorgeous cover, for the first time. I will thank, in person, the team that so believes in that story, and see the talented Tamra Tuller again. (Also, Lara Starr, I will not eat dog biscuits.) San Francisco is a city I love and frequently turn to. A place where I'm happy to walk the hills.

If I am less a presence here than usual, forgive me. If you are in Georgia or Northern California, I'll look for you.

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Joining Stacey D'Erasmo at AJC Decatur Book Festival

Readers of this blog know how much I admire Stacey D'Erasmo—her fine mind, her original insights. I'm delighted, therefore, to be joining Stacey on the Old Courthouse Stage on Saturday, August 31, at the AJC Decatur Book Festival, for a conversation titled "Personal Truths: On Writing Intimacy and Memoir."

Details can be found here. 

My thoughts about Stacey's new book, The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between, can be found here.

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