Your Only Directive

The first sentence spoken today on NPR, after my alarm went off: "Your only directive is to tell the story to the best of your abilities." I lay there wondering how many writers were avoiding their work by napping and waking up to NPR, only to discover that it too was telling you that you're need to get back on track.

At a BBQ in Bushwick this afternoon--technically a "grill party," as there was food cooked for short amounts of time over direct heat as opposed to actual BBQ, which is food cooked for long amounts of time with indirect heat--I found myself in the middle of telling a bunch of strangers what my novel was "about." It's a fair question--it's the first thing non-writers will ask you. I am always surprised at what comes out of my mouth. It's never quite the same "about" and it's always slightly skewed depending on the audience. In this case, the audience was a bunch of people I'd just met, all of them straight (as far as I could tell.)

Some advice: If you find yourself at a party with a writer who's finished a novel, instead of asking "What's it about?" say something like "What can you tell me about it."

Kip and I saw Spider Man 3 today--and so did the whole world, apparently. It took in somewhere in the ballpark of $148 million. But if you ask me: Spider Man 3 = Boring as hell.