But Call Me Betsy

Went to Zumba today and am getting better at it, though I still mess up. The teacher is named Pam, and I guess it's a Zumba thing that they have to wear gear with the word "Zumba" somewhere on it, because all of them do. She never puts her hair in a ponytail. She is good about leading and offering options. She is always late, so the class is more like 50 minutes long. We do dance-y moves and also arm exercises. Lots of jumping up and down and going in opposite directions. I imagine I am auditioning for a Broadway show. I also imagine that the teacher will one day take me aside and ask me if I have had dance lessons (I have not). She will say, "Look, have you ever thought about becoming a Zumba teacher? You're a natural." As I'm day-dreaming about this happening, I often realize I am moving in the opposite direction of everyone in the class. I am always proud of myself when I get both the hand motions and the steps coordinated, which happens about 75% o...

When I was in Montauk for a month of writing, I did it every day, mostly in the mornings. I did it because I felt obligated to get words on a page. I'd asked my work and my family to give me this time, and it would be irresponsible not to keep my part of the bargain and meet my word count every day.  But only sometimes did I enjoy it. Rarely. Often, I would have to pause and get up from the chair, go pull a book off a shelf and hope something from that novel would give me another paragraph or a new direction. For the first two weeks, I also read books at night about the craft of writing, John Gardner's The Art of Fiction , E.M. Forester's Aspects of  Novel (dry, difficult), Stephen King's On Writing , and books about organ donation (because that was the subject of my novel). Or short stories. And also Josh Ferris' book about the dentist. His book was the most inspiring in some ways because he does weird things like spend two pages describing the character trying t...

Today in multimedia, we will talk about workshops. Most of the students have never been in a workshop environment, so I'm guessing the class can go in a couple of different directions: 1. They will be too polite to offer criticism to help the writers, opting instead to either stay silent or comment on easily changeable things like the title. 2. They could go the other way and say things like, I don't understand this at all . It's boring. I suspect that won't be the case, because these students are cautious and polite. 3. They could not talk much at all, and I will end up talking for most of the time. I guess that's okay if I go through the bulk of the critique, as long as I am able to skim their manuscripts ahead of time and have some general comments to offer. The other thing I need to communicate is that the writers don't speak, and don't defend.  That's the model I'm comfortable with, though I could take Molly G.'s approach and as...

First continuing ed class at Princeton High  School last night. They offer a bunch over the course of the fall and spring--eight weeks focused on topics ranging from learning a new language to cooking with onions to samba dancing and mystery writing. I started another class like this last year, but only went twice--not because the class wasn't interesting, but because it met on Thursday nights which was one of the few times a week that both Luke and Dan were out of the house. The class costs $125, so it is highly affordable.  And classes are held in the high school, so as I was looking for the classroom, I kept passing posters for the Homecoming dance and a project for National Hispanic Heritage month, and thinking, Luke sees these same things every day. It's a beautiful school, and my class was held in the French room. I surmised this by the map of France next to the blackboard and the language exercises on the wall. As I imagined, the class was mostly adults in their ear...

Erin lent me David Sedaris' book of found diaries from a couple of decades of his life, and it reminds me that, if you're going to be a writer, you really have to keep track of what's going. Basically, the book is excerpts of the diary he kept while in Chicago and then for his first few years in New York. He goes from being a house painter and handyman to being a well-known writer and darling of NPR, but it doesn't happen because he gets lucky--it happens because he keeps writing, and observing, and putting himself out into reading spaces. He's basically always on the cusp of financial failure, but still manages to keep trying. And of course, Amy Sedaris is his sister, and she's one of my favorite, funniest people, so he's also funny. She's one of the characters in Homecoming, which we're listening to in class currently. Anyway, I feel like to succeed as a writer, you have to always be paying attention and I certainly don't do that, not on the tr...

I haven't been writing here because I'm teaching a night class at Rutgers and we have a class blog that I write in a couple of times a week. It's called Diaries of Jane Err , which I thought was clever, but now it seems like the students must secretly be calling it the "Diarrhea of Jane Err," which is certainly what I would do if I were in their shoes. The class meets once a week from 4:30 to 7:30--really a good time for me because I don't have to miss work to teach, it's only once a week, and the class doesn't go late. My colleague teaches too, but her course meets from 6 to 9 p.m. Most of the blog content includes suggestions for assignments, or embedded content I want to use in class, so it saves me the time of having to Google something in the middle of teaching. There's nothing really personal, and so I have been trying to write in my 750 words journal, but that's sporadic too. My new idea is to post here, so that the blog doesn't ...

I unfortunately (fortunately?) missed a month's worth of Bachelorette episodes because I was away with my writing friends, trying to drain my brain of pop culture nonsense like this, but am back for the season finale, and ready to be more stupid. Or more stupider? I no longer know, three seconds in. But you guys, this episode is three hours LONG so I may not get through it all. The dog was itchy last night and we barely slept.  How much money are they making on this? She comes out to waste time talking to Chris live and wearing glittery gray eye shadow. Dan goes, "Oh, she got fat" (she did not).  Who is this Pete and is he from Game of Thrones ? They have to decide if they're going to do the fantasy suite, as if anyone ever says no.  They skip the whole bedtime and just show the two of them the next morning in robes with no glitter make up on and him shirtless with a bad tattoo with Chinese characters that spell out "The Mooch." He doesn't even know it! ...

Words written: Only this blog post. Total words written (but this also includes words from November): 109,726 or 179 pages, single spaced On Friday, I wrote my words in long hand and then typed it up. It's almost not worth it to do this, because it takes forever in long hand, and then two hours more in the evening to retype what I've written only to find I'm 600 words short. I read something that Martin Amis said in an interview with the Paris Review where he suggested that a good amount of writing time per day is two hours, more if you are revising and on a roll. Two hours is reasonable. Four hours and I start to feel like I never want to write another word again. What have I learned? I am sad to be leaving--it feels like it went too fast, though there were days this week where I couldn't believe it was only, like, Tuesday, for instance, and then there was the time on the second weekend when I realized I had two more full weeks to go and couldn't believe it....

Words written: 4,029, by the skin of my teeth Swimming pools visited: 1 I wrote in my journal for a few hours today, painstakingly slow, and then typed the words in this evening, and it took forever and then, when I got the ends of the pages, I still have 600 more to write. It appears that there is now a section where this guy is writing letters to his girlfriend from Iraq. Again, what do I know about this experience? He's a guy who earlier in the story has killed his girlfriend, and the narrator is now living in the dead girl's house. It's either going to work or it's not, but I needed 600 more words, and so they became letters from him while he's stationed overseas. Went with Ilse/Sunset to the pool today and didn't swim, but sat in a chair writing a bit and eavesdropping on a conversation between two golfers who were also there. They said absolutely nothing of note, except the one guy had his worst golf game in his life, which I guess means he didn't...

Words written: 4,039 Books taken off the library shelf and not re-shelved: 5 I am done with you, story. I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy the finishing of the writing. I enjoy re-reading though I seldom do it because it reminds me that I have so much more work to do. I enjoy the top of the page of 750words.com, which is filled with X's because I've written at least the 750 words my whole time here. I am scared to leave. I was scared to come here. It's all scary, all the time. Four more days, and this one is whittled down to nothing now, almost 5 p.m. I can't see how I will get back to this novel at any time soon unless I make a commitment to go to novel writing workshop next summer. (note: I can't imagine how a library could be louder. This one now has the sound of someone pulling off tape over and over again). I have nothing planned for dinner. The unfamiliar has become familiar, and I am better than I was the first day, when I was jumping at every sound, w...

Words written: 4,884 Level of disgust at Trump: Code Red I was going to take today off because it felt like I needed to rest or think or read or something, but I wrote a few pages by hand, and then around 3 p.m., I decided, okay, fine, just do the word count; you'll feel better. I did the word count and then typed up the other words from the day and got to almost 5,000. We are all doubting ourselves, wondering if our work will amount to anything. The best part of my day was taking a shower in the outdoor shower stall. It's a large square built out in the back yard, and has a place for shampoo, and you can move around, meaning you're not confined to a stand up shower where you keep grazing the edge of the shower curtain and having it stick to you. Plus, the rug in the bathroom has developed black spots of mold, like its dying. Outside, it was sunny and breezy and I only had a slight moment of paranoia, worried that someone was filming me. Mookie and Chap. Chap is al...

Words written: 4,118 Number of Google searches using "organ donation": 50 It can always be the last something. Today is the last Tuesday. Yesterday was the last Monday. Tomorrow... Here is how the day goes: I wake up at about 9 a.m. (or later, be honest). I brush my teeth and put in my contacts. I make coffee. I walk the dog. He poops. I feed .the dog, adding ham or some other meat as incentive. He either eats it or doesn't. I get my notebook and I sit outside with coffee and breakfast (banana, yogurt). I journal and that leads to some scenes. Carson shows up around 11 a.m. and she and Chap make fast circles around the yard. I drink more coffee. I write lists of scenes to work on at the library. I eat a cupcake (I am the only one eating cupcakes). Around lunchtime, Raluca comes down and we get on our bikes and ride into town. She wears a helmet. I do not. In town, we coast over to Left Hand Coffee Shop and order a $6 dirty chai or something like it. We sit for a whil...

Words written: 4,022 by the skin of my teeth Hours slept last night: 4 Chap has an itching problem. Last night, I'm going to say we slept for maybe a few hours. I remember the sky getting lighter through the blinds, so that was probably around 5 a.m. He wouldn't stop licking his legs and back. I turned on the lamp finally to examine him, in case he was crawling with fleas and ticks. He presses right up against me in bed, so I kept imagining them jumping from his body to my hair. I saw nothing on him. I contemplated my options: go sleep on the coach to escape him (he would follow), kick him out the room (he would cry and wake the others), or hold on to him and hope he would stop (that's the solution I chose, and he would stop, only to start again if I moved). To compensate, I drank too much coffee today. I knew it when I felt a tweak in my back--this sense of anxiousness in my body that wouldn't still. The rain made it difficult to leave the house except for a trip ...

Words written: 5,400 (yesterday and today) Art exhibits attended this month: 6 Minutes spend in Pollock's studio and house: 19 Saturday was not a good writing day, but I did put my words together and then I wrote 5,000 more today and worked on meshing the two manuscripts together. I also read some Jennifer Egan, but was not inspired, perhaps because much of her work is layered with characters and I have, like, one character. What I've learned so far with one week left to go: 1. I like riding a bike. It's faster than walking and you're getting exercise, plus it feels good to wish down a hill with the sun in your face. I only every once in a while picture myself flying off the ike and splitting my head open on the curb. 2. Chap will adapt and he doesn't have a natural wake up time of 6 a.m. as previously believed. He slept until 9 today, and only jumped out of bed because I did. He will follow me if I walk away. He attacks other big dogs to assert himself, k...