I'm hoping that Jay Kirk, whose emails I rely on for the shock of light and truth, doesn't mind me quoting just ever so slightly from one of his emails yesterday, and if he does, Jay, I'm sorry. I had mentioned my own mental testiness of late—I believe I referred to my writerly state of mind as something resembling a "thick stew of self-castigation." I believe I was doubting myself. And because Jay is a phenomenal talent on the page, writing one of the best nonfiction books this world is ever going to get to read, when he's finished with it, and soon he'll finish with it, and because his teacherly talents are gigantic, too, he understood. "That's the awful-funny thing about writing isn't it?" he wrote. "How we're motivated by some version of self-hatred, or if that's too strong, at least the unrelenting desire to perfect and correct." But then he said, because he's a rescuer, too, "Ultimately, if you're totally monomaniacal, you can get it right."
Like catching a bird in one's hands, I thought—the wing weight, the heart throb.
