I’m too skeptical and stubborn to join, but still I can’t look away
One subject I’ve returned to time and time again is cults. The first one I wrote about was EST for the Boston Phoenix; then I wrote about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for the Village Voice. There was hardly a cult I didn’t want to learn about and try to decipher. I am glued to documentaries about NXIVM and the mini-series about the Branch Davidians and podcasts about Synanon and Scientology. I am fascinated by cults, and by extension, fascinated by my fascination with them. What draws people to surrender their identity to a controlling, self-serving entity? …
When the end is near, it can sometimes be too much to handle
A while back, I ran the New York City Marathon. I knew I’d be tired and sore, but I experienced something else I hadn’t anticipated. For the first few miles, I was hopped up on excitement and nerves; I was so busy trying to settle into the pace that I didn’t even think about the finish line. Midway through the race, at about Mile 8 or 9, I felt myself steadying, and I pounded out each mile methodically, focusing just on getting through that mile, and then the next mile. Again, I didn’t think about the finish line at all. I couldn’t afford to, really, because I still had a long way to go and I knew I had to keep my mind on just putting one foot in front of the other, right then and there. …
The inevitable cycle of love/hate/love/hate/surrender
- I am going to write something that is going to be a HUGE breakthrough piece for me. It’s going to sound different from anything I’ve ever written. It is going to be epic. I will not fall back on all my tired habits and threadbare vocabulary choices and familiar tone: I am going to be reinvented. The future is MINE.
- This piece is a tad harder than I expected it to be. To begin with, is this even a story idea? Do I have any cool details to include? I was kind of expecting a little… more. …
We need to rein in the chaos of time to save our sanity
There is nothing as optimistic as a calendar — it takes the endlessly unfolding nature of time and gives it structure and circularity, offering us a sense of fresh starts and soft endings. Calendars (and clocks and all devices that mark time) help us manage the very unmanageable notion of time itself. We’d be literally lost without them.
Take 2020 (please). What an awful year this has been, right? Seeing it as “an awful year” holds out the notion that 2020 is a fixed period of time that will come to an end. No one thinks the pandemic or the economy or national divisiveness will disappear, poof!, at midnight on December 31, but still, it feels like… maybe it will be the beginning of a better year. I have never cared much about celebrating New Year’s Day, but this year I can’t wait. …
I’d like to thank the following for getting me through this horrible year
- Listening to The Daily. I know we’ve all maxed out on listening and reading the news, but The Daily manages to calm me rather than increase my panic. Highly recommend.
- Weeding my garden.
- Listening to podcasts about murder, including Case Closed, Tom Brown’s Body, and Murder Book. I love a good murder, and I refuse to analyze whether this is unhealthy or not.
- Getting a puppy. Truly an all-consuming enterprise, puppy management can take your mind of absolutely everything, including your profession, the pandemic, life, your children. As I am writing this, I am trying to keep the puppy from chewing my wastebasket. Soon he will need to be walked five miles, fed, emptied, fed again, walked more. …
Physical books made me a writer, but ebooks made me a daring reader
When I mingle with an audience after I do a reading, I inevitably encounter at least one person who tells me, sheepishly, that they read my book on Kindle. They say it heavily, by way of a confession or an apology. This mystifies me. I am thrilled that anyone reads what I’ve published, and I’m absolutely agnostic about the format they choose. In fact, I do most of my reading on a Kindle.
Before I go further, I should say that I love physical books, and I absolutely love physical bookstores. Love them dearly. I owe my career to the support I’ve received from independent bookstores, which advocate for authors and lead readers to new and sometimes less-than-obvious choices of books. …
Do people expect that if you’re a writer you have a dictionary embedded in your brain?
Some years ago, in a context I no longer remember, I mentioned looking something up in a thesaurus.
“YOU DID WHAT???” “YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL WRITER AND YOU USE A THESAURUS???!!” “OF ALL PEOPLE, YOU??” These were some of the reasonable, equitable, gently-put responses to my confession, drawing what seemed to be a direct equivalency between using a thesaurus and committing murder. I was, to put it mildly, surprised. I am someone who strings words together for a living, and sometimes I feel that the word I’ve conjured is inadequate to its task. …
Anyone want to discuss ‘The Leftovers’ with me?
I would really like to discuss the final episode of The Undoing. But what I really want to discuss is how much I like watching television as part of a herd. The advantages of being able to watch anything, anytime, anywhere, are myriad, obviously. Being tethered to a broadcast schedule is frustrating, impractical, anachronistic, I know, I know, I know. …
Taking stock of what you really miss
My teeny-tiny turkey is brining as I write this. I have a Zoom in a few minutes with my in-laws, and have texted everyone I know to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. I’m still in my pajamas at noon, which feels very holiday-like; I’m not even pretending that it’s a normal day. We’re going to overeat outside, at a six-foot distance, with a scattering of friends. That’s it. That’ll be Thanksgiving 2020, and it’s just fine.
This has been a year of doing without. For some people, it’s meant doing without jobs and security; for some, it’s been doing without good health. For everyone, it’s been doing without the benchmarks of normalcy, including seeing friends and family, and traveling, and feeling safe when you’re perusing the frozen food aisle at the grocery store. Normal has never seemed so alluring, has it? Every time I’ve been able to do something that was temporarily unavailable — getting a haircut, for instance — I’ve savored it like I’ve never savored it before. I’m grateful for being reminded that just living normally is an excellent thing. When this is all behind us, I hope I’ll remember how marvelous it is to have an ordinary, fear-free, friend-filled day. …
It surprised even me
A lot about writing is hard. Starting a piece is hard. Ending a piece is hard. Doing research can be tough. Figuring out a structure for a story is nearly impossible. The one thing I’ve always found easy is finding the confidence that the story was worthwhile and that it was important to write it.
That confidence is fundamental. In fact, I couldn’t do what I do without it. I write a lot of stories that, at first glance, seem non-essential: Profiles of orchid poachers, dog actors, decades-old library fires, chicken farming, ten-year-old suburban kids, girls who like to surf. These stories are not burning up the newswire; great matters of state will not be affected by them. To me, though, they’re meaningful stories. They document the human experience, and peer into other lives, and reveal truths about who we are, and illustrate the richness of humanity, and are sometimes just fun to read, and are sometimes going to make you cry, and always, I hope, deepen the readers’ knowledge of lives outside their own. …
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