i-Diary 02: Do you Have Writer’s Block??
I ask my new favorite writers all about their habits.
Dear Diary,
This past weekend I officiated my beloved cousin’s wedding. The responsibilities included not losing the rings, not losing the vows, thoughtful biblical interpretation, sourcing various love poems, writing moving anecdotes but not so moving that I start sobbing, teaching my father (and co-officient) how to use Google Docs, and not staring too much at my great Uncle Mordy’s toupee. Thankfully it all went off beautifully, though I did get stung…by a bee… on my ring finger…and it looked sort of like a diamond…during the ceremony…what does it mean for me and my love life??? (Once you turn 27, you live in a zombie movie and you have to watch your friends one by one succumb to matrimony.) For this honor I wore my fabulous mother’s fabulous black strapless beaded vintage 24-inch waist wedding dress—a dress I knew I would never wear for my own imagined wedding, though I do think I’ll continue the tradition and wear black.
On the subject of signs and symbols, my first job out of college was working as a writer’s assistant for a brilliant screenwriter and he always used to say when stuck on a scene, “Humans are meaning makers.” His implication was that a person’s emotional default is to create something out of nothing. This is one of those ideas that is permanently stuck to my ribs. The largest export of humanity is meaning: taking fact and creating artifice. Even the banalest of things are treated to a varnish of narcissism. People have pet rocks! I attempt to divine my future from my coffee crema! Hours are spent reading the subtext of Phi Beta Chad’s “You Up?” text! Being a writer is to have hypochondria of the human condition.
For this newsletter I’m introducing Writer’s Block, a questionnaire that asks the difficult questions to my favorite new writers, namely do you write in your pajamas and are you a snacker.
Love,
P.S. Remember to write home!
✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧ (author of the rousing debut novel Happiness and Love)
How do you write? Have you ever had to change your habits?
With my shoulders as close to my ears as possible, my jaw clenched, often in bed, in the least ergonomically sound posture you can imagine. I try to get one thousand words done every day when I’m working on something in earnest. Often it’ll be more than that, but I like to set a modest achievable goal so I’m not disappointed in myself every day. When my hands started tingling due to the above, I began writing standing up with my laptop propped up on top of books in the living room. Oh, and I started wearing reading glasses when I was 24 and got an eye twitch…
Where do you write? Physically and technically?
Usually at home, but I’m most productive when I go to the library. Unfortunately I am terrible with routines and do this rarely, especially when I have “phone calls” and “meetings” to deal with. But in London I belonged to The London Library, which was great because I’d feel very official going into work in Mayfair every day, and then in New York I belong to The Society Library on the Upper East Side for the same reason. I end up going to the Performing Arts Library in Lincoln Center a lot too, and sometimes end up watching a movie midday as a treat.
What do you consume while writing? Are you a snacker?
Shit tons of tea from this place in London called Postcard Teas. Lapsang, Earl Grey, Sencha, Nokcha, Oolong, whatever they tell me is new and special. Lately, I’ve been getting into “drinking water” as it’s quite good for you, I’ve heard.
Yes, I am addicted to plain crackers. I think Saltines might be my favorite food. Even better are the fancy thin crackers you’re meant to eat with cheese but I just eat on their own. “Firehook” is the brand. Nonsensical name. Oh, and the German tea biscuits Leibniz. I like plain and the milk chocolate covered ones dipped in tea to melt the chocolate.
What do you wear while writing?
If at home, I like to wear my dark grey Lauren Manoogian cashmere sweatpants I got at a sample sale 4 years ago which have an enormous hole in the crotch made bigger by my attempts to patch it. If at the library I like to dress as I usually do, a sort of collegiate-preppy crunchy granola New England meets Old England, Ralph Lauren-Lipschitz Jewish WASP Candice Bergen in The Group type of thing. You know, loafers.
Favorite notebook? Favorite pen?
Notes app on my phone, whatever little one I got for free somewhere, spiral bound college-rule notebook from Janoff’s Stationers near my house, Rhodia when using a fountain pen. I have a Lamy Safari fountain pen and it feels like buttah. However, it is finicky and I did something weird to it and it keeps drying out. I need to take it to this place called the Fountain Pen Hospital by City Hall. Pilot Precise V5 are very good too.
Something you read this week you want to share
My best friend David Adler’s op-ed in the Guardian about why, as a Jewish American, he’s on the Sumud Flotilla headed for Gaza.
*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ(author of the Lonely Crowds, an obsessive and beautiful book)
How do you write? Have you ever had to change your habits?
When I have an idea I try to set whatever I am doing aside to write it down. Today I was walking in Chelsea and had an idea for a short story about a straight couple who grow happier the more boring and domesticated and suburban their lives become, a sort of hetero-optimist story. So I sat down on the railing outside a building and wrote a page of it on my phone. I’m not sure what my habits are. I structure my days around my writing rather than structuring my writing around my days. I need to change my habits now, I think. Writing a second book seems to require different habits from writing the first.
Where do you write? Physically and technically?
I write in bed, at my kitchen table or on my couch. I struggle to write in public. I wrote a story called My First Husband that appeared in Granta on a direct flight from London to New York. I love writing on planes and trains. Like a narrative arc you enter these means of transport in one place and end up in another.
What do you consume while writing? Are you a snacker?
Water, coffee or wine. Lots of gum.
What do you wear while writing?
I wear dresses most days and they’re comfortable enough to sit in for many hours. Sometimes I like to write in my nightgown before bed, like I’m doing now.
Favorite Notebook? Favorite pen?
I haven’t really thought about this kind of thing. Paper is paper to me. I write in these free notebooks I got while working briefly at Cooper Union. I have about a dozen of them, they’re plain, lined, soft cover notebooks and they fit in my purse. I accidentally walk off with pens from restaurants or buy a pack from Muji when I run out. The wonderful thing about writing is that it requires cheap, simple materials.
Something you wish you’d written?
My Heart by Frank O’Hara. In the line where he writes And if / some aficionado of my mess says “That’s / not like Frank!, “all to the good!” I would just replace Frank with Stephanie.
•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•(author of It Girl, a fantastic biography of Jane Birkin which I devoured in two days while on a beach in Greece)
When did you start writing?
I was always really into books and magazines, both as a habit and studying them, but I have never taken a writing class or journalism class in my life. I started writing just after college when I had friends who ran various zines and independent magazines and started to submit pieces. Those grew into larger and larger magazines and I’ve done it full-time since I was maybe 25?
How do you write? Have you ever had to change your habits?
I am very Type A and scheduled in my life so I usually plan out writing in terms of scheduling, like blocking off a whole day to write an article or part of a chapter. I try to mix up days of research and interviews with writing so I’m not writing writing writing daily but I have done that for book drafts and edits where I write in giant blocks seven days a week for six weeks and always kind of lose my grip on sanity. I am a morning person and a later afternoon-evening person for work, so I usually work from maybe 8 am until noon and then maybe 2 or 3 until 7ish. The break is to eat, nap, shower, walk my dog, read a novel, whatever I can do to clear my head a bit. My habits have always been the same! I am good at just getting in the zone and doing it anywhere I have to. I guess that’s a talent, just being able to lock in and write on command. Ideally I’m at home. I take notes wherever and whenever I’m reporting or just have a thought, usually on my notes app or in an email draft to myself.
What do you consume while writing? Are you a snacker?
No, I eat or drink as a reward or as a break. Even something like coffee or a Diet Coke is regimented and planned usually before I start writing.
What do you wear while writing?
Oversized button up shirts and lacrosse pants. I wish I was fully dressed or at least looked kind of cute à la Carrie Bradshaw but sadly no.
Favorite Notebook? Favorite pen?
After interviewing Gwyneth Paltrow and Emily Weiss in the same six month period and seeing the both carried little Smythson notebooks, I bought a Smythson notebook on sale and have yet to use it. That was 5 years ago. I find notebooks aspirational but never use them. Same with pens. I steal pens for signing checks at restaurants. Not because they’re special but just so I have a bunch around that work..
Something you read this week you want to share.
Carrie Battan’s profile of Mary Boone. I also finished re-reading Lolita and loved the Jeremy Irons narrated audiobook.
✧˖*°࿐ (author of the novel Nymph)
When did you start writing?
I think I’ve been writing before I could talk- telling stories with my hands and stuffed animals. As a child, I moved around a lot or I was told my father was away in some strange country. I started to make up characters as a way to have control. I’m not so obsessed with having a “home” somewhere, because I learned to move between places and people. I started to read crazily young too, which makes sense. My childhood wasn’t very standard, but it was filled with books.
What do you consume while writing? Are you a snacker?
I eat bags of these Danish gummies—I always think they are shaped like mushrooms--but they might be hats.
What do you wear while writing?
I like to wear men’s basketball shorts and sometimes sit cross-legged in my desk chair.
Favorite Notebook? Favorite pen?
Clairefontaine notebooks bought at Essex Street Card Shop. I steal pens from restaurants.
Something you wish you’d written?
It’s not something I wish I’d written, but I am trying to find a way to reimagine the lyrics of Phos Hilaron (this old hymn)
*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.* (author of Little Pink Book and assistant web editor of The Paris Review).
When did you start writing?
In sixth grade I wrote a story set in 16th century Venice about a girl who’s being sent to a convent (parents don’t have enough money for dowry). The big twist is the convent is amazing! Turns out she doesn’t care about men, now she has time to read and write for the rest of her life!! LOL.
How do you write? Have you ever had to change your habits?
I try not to be precious about writing routines. The fetishization of the “writing lifestyle” is the worst thing about literature. Or maybe that’s cope because I can’t afford to be precious... I’ve had to start writing when I’m really really hungover.
Where do you write? Physically and technically?
If I’m writing alone I get distracted by myself being there; it’s suffocating; I can’t be anonymous and you have to be anonymous in front of the page. So I go to parks where I live in Chinatown, where there’s lots of people around alive in other worlds—because they are children, or crazy, or only speak Chinese—so the atmosphere feels very free and fictional and “full of possibilities.” I write ideas in my notebook and actual sentences on my iPhone or laptop. But the best writing I just do in my head: I start waking up at night because I have a sentence, or sit on a bench staring into space mouthing words, and thankfully that’s normal in the park.
What do you consume while writing?
For Little Pink Book, which is about a barista at a latte-art concept cafe called Soft Filter Calligraphic Coffee, I went like “method”—a lot of really sugary caffeinated drinks. Unfortunately the caffeine and sugar get weighed down by the milk stuff. Better is 1 shot of chilled espresso and 1 date. Writing on a very clean sugar high feels like driving over the speed limit—creative, self-destructive, and fun—which is what writing is like, ideally.
What do you wear while writing?
I associate working hard with Victoria’s Secret PINK, maybe because I did ballet as a child. Being a ballerina is hanging out doing nothing very casually and sexily punctuated by periods of extreme pain and concentration, also similar to writing. I don’t mean I dress balletcore which seems like for a preppy fairy—ribbons and Repetto flats or something? I mean more like: Adidas track pants, long scarves, tight tank tops, very thin slim-fit hoodies, plus provisional-seeming footwear like flip flops or rainboots. I also have these fingerless denim shearling-lined gloves from Dolls Kill, lol, for sitting outside in the winter.
Favorite Notebook? Favorite pen?
I like spiral-bound notebooks with dots, not lines or grids. (The dots create structure, but only sort of.) I like the notebook to have a translucent cover so I can put different things inside it like a picture frame. I like pens where a lot of ink comes out.
Something you read this week you want to share.
Dominique—it’s this psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto’s case history of a troubled teen boy, originally published in the eighties and reissued by Divided Publishing this month. I’m interested in psychoanalytic theory and its more abstract applications to literature, but Dominique is more interesting to me as fiction: it’s just an amazing work of characterization. It treats character like a mystery, a subject to be written around endlessly and suspiciously. I don’t like it when the nature of character is taken for granted.
why doesn't stephanie la cava have any pillows
Fun stuff!