There are as many forms of procrastination as writers who procrastinate.  Cleaning, organizing, exercising, making lists, checking email, online shopping, calling your mother/mother-in-law/best friend, in fact, answering the phone at all.  Procrastination has many other names: one of my favorites is, research.  We tell ourselves that there are certain things we need to know before we begin.   We can't possibly start a short story set in, say, Mysore, India, without spending many hours reading up on Mysore.  Blogs, maps, essays, books, photos... there's so much to read, we might even lose sight of the fragile glimmer of an idea that set us on this road in the first place.  Instead of just sitting down. Putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.  Seeing what we come up with.  Just seeing what's there.  E.L. Doctorow once told me that he never researches his novels before he writes them.  He writes first, and does research--mostly as fact-checking--later, to see whether his imagination got it right.  Often, our imaginations get it right, if we just get out of our own way.  If we spend too much time researching, we suddenly feel the need to justify our time by including the wonderful details we've come across--which may, in fact, be wonderful details but don't belong in our story.

This, I've known for years, but lately I've discovered whole new forms of procrastination--sort of like discovering a new species of beetle.  Who knew?  I decided about a month ago that I wanted to write something in a new form.  I remembered a piece that had been written a couple of decades ago in that same form, and decided that I had to read this thing before embarking on my own project.  So I went to my local bookstore.  They couldn't get it for me.  I called a friend who I thought might have it.  He didn't.  I went on Amazon, where it was out-of-stock.  I have been waiting for a month to read a quite-possibly-irrelevant piece of work that I convinced myself I could not go on without reading.  And here's another distant relative of that version of procrastination: since I was going to be writing in a new form, I decided that I needed the proper software.  After all, there's no point writing if it isn't formatted properly--right? So I spent time online researching software.  I became completely overwhelmed by the possibilities, and ended up not doing anything at all.

After a month of this, I ended up exactly nowhere.  No reading material.  No software.  And--most of all--no writing.  All because I threw up roadblocks, one after the next, keeping me from that single, most essential process.  The only process that matters, really.  I kept myself from sitting down in my chair, with a notebook in my lap, pushing past my own fears and self-censorship and resistance, and following the line of words wherever it takes me.

I know this, I've known this forever, but still I fall prey to it: sometimes I talk too much about a piece of writing-- an idea for a novel, a story, an essay--before  I sit down and actually try to write it.  Lately I've been all hopped up, back from book tour, over-stimulated, and I've grown accustomed to having lots and lots of conversation.  I have some time now to settle in quietly and think and write -- but what have I been doing instead?  Talking, talking, talking.  I've talked to a few friends, I've talked to my husband, I've even answered the dreaded question at cocktail parties and barbecues: what are you working on? And each time I talk about it, I feel the very essence of the idea--the moment, the shimmer, the image, the piece of language--slip away a little more.  I start to lose my footing before I've even found it.  The idea begins to go flat.  What was I thinking, anyway?  Why did I think it was worth exploring?  Where before there was the beginning of a landscape in my mind, suddenly there is only dust.  All because I opened my mouth and let it loose, instead of harnessing it on the page.

For years I have kept a quote from Nietzsche on the bulletin board above my desk: "That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts," he wrote.  "There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking." When I talk about what I'm thinking, instead of simply thinking it--when I talk about it instead of grabbing a notebook and starting to lay down words, what I'm really doing is succumbing to my own anxiety.

Is it going to be any good? Does the story have legs?  Can I create momentum?  Is it something anyone other than me will care about?  Here's the thing: I cannot possibly know this. Until I write it, I will not know.  I can talk about it until I'm blue in the face, but all that will happen is that it will wither and die before I've had a chance to find out.

I've long been aware that the whole idea of being inspired is a dangerous one for writers.  What does it mean, anyway, to be inspired?  Is it necessarily a good feeling?  One of joy and incipient productivity?  The muse alighting, perched gently on the writer's shoulder, whispering a stream of words that find themselves lining up effortlessly on the page?  I don't think so.  At the risk of pissing off the gods of creativity, I think that the muse is elusive at best, and may well be a fiction we tell ourselves.

All I know is that if I had given in to this idea of inspiration over the years-- if I had waited to feel that eureka moment each morning before I began to write, my output would be much smaller than it has been.  Instead of seven books, I might have had a story or two, or three, or five.  But not much beyond that -- because most days, when I've sat at my desk, it has been with a sense of purpose, of desire, of longing, of diligence, of doggedness, but rarely have I sat down with a sense of inspiration.

Don't get me wrong.  Inspiration has come.  It has tiptoed into my writing room when I've least expected it.  It has shown up mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-idea.  But it generally doesn't precede me to the desk.  Inspiration comes out of doing the work: the hard labor of laying each brick on top of the next, one at a time, until what you've done begins to resemble a wall.  Often, it doesn't resemble a wall, or it's come out crooked, or in some way less than you'd hoped, and you have to smash the thing up and start all over again.  Inside this painstaking labor is where inspiration lies.  Only when you're up to your eyeballs, covered in dust, hopeless and bordering on despair, does the muse even consider paying a visit.

I remember once, working on a single short story for six months straight.  Draft after draft, I couldn't get it right.  It was fine, it was polished, even (and often a piece being polished before it's finished is the worst thing because it becomes harder and harder to see through its veneer) but it didn't sing, and I knew it.  I despaired.  I wept.  I was convinced that I had thrown away six months of my life.  Then, one morning, depleted from the stress, I became sick with a terrible flu.  I became feverish, my body wracked with chills.  I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat in bed with my story, which suddenly, through the lens of my illness, became clear to me.  I tore it up and started all over again from that place of feverish misery which transformed itself into...you guessed it...inspiration.

When I'm not writing, I'm a bit of a crazy person.  If I write in order to organize my inner life--to know what I think, feel, believe--when I'm not writing, my inner life is like a closet into which everything has gotten stuffed; messy drawers overflowing with junk I should have given away years ago, a jumble, a mishmash.  Hard to sort out what to keep and what to toss.  Every thought I have, I chase for a few minutes, like my dog chases a tennis ball.  Oh, that seems like a good idea!  Oh, wait--no that!  No, hold on--that's better! I am easily influenced.  When I'm in this state, I can be convinced of almost anything.  I should write a screenplay, say.  (For which I truly--unlike my husband--have no gift.)  I should write a sweeping historical novel.  I should write a modern, tight little novel in multiple points-of-view.  I should write another memoir.  I should write a book about writing.  I should write a hybrid of fiction and memoir.  Stop me, please.

The thing about this state of being is that it can either be enormously fertile, or self-destructive.  A writer can breathe into the emptiness, can wait patiently as the parade of bad ideas and externally-driven silliness sweeps by.  A writer can, in the words of my former teacher Grace Paley, take baths.  Or a  writer can tighten up, get anxious, over-eager.  A writer can start thinking about things like the marketplace, in which case, a writer will be sunk.  I've seen it happen over and over again.  This way leads to manufactured ideas, reeking of fear and manipulation.  Ideas that will eventually lead to a brick wall, or a desk drawer, or (worse still) a bad book.  The only solution for a writer not writing--a writer who is not yet ready to write--is to accept the avalanche of feeling, to welcome it, even, the way that when we meditate we welcome our thoughts and feelings with a sense of self-compassion.  Oh, I'm thinking that.  isn't that interesting.  Okay.  Now, back to the breath.  The book will come.

I've been thinking lately that courage has nothing to do with the absence of fear, but rather, with being willing to walk into the fear and straight through it to the other side.  With feeling the fear and not letting it stop you.  I've been on the road (again) this week, and I've had my moments.  I did a big radio show, appearing on a panel with some very smart people who I suspected might be smarter than me.  I appeared on TV, which always gets me agitated.  All through this, I found myself thinking about the difference between fear and excitement.  It's a fine line: the pounding heart, the sweating palms, the buzzing head.  As I walked from the green room into the recording studio, I though to myself: cool--look at what you get to do!  As I waited in the wings of the TV show, about to go on the air, I reminded myself that I was excited.  Not terrified.  And do you know what?  It sort of worked.

But when it come to writing, I think courage expresses itself differently.  What does it mean to find a voice?  To experiment wildly?  To be willing to fail?  Without the willingness to fall flat on our faces, we cannot create anything of value.  Without the gnawing, roiling, back-up-against-the-wall feeling of not-knowing, we can't begin to hope to know.  It's so easy to forget this.  To think that somehow, that the road to a powerful piece of work can ever be a smooth one.  Seven books, and I still have to remind myself of this.  In meditation, and in life, we are always beginning again.  We also begin again every time we set pen to paper.  What we did yesterday, or last month, or last year--that does little to bolster us.  We have to once again buck up our courage, face our fear, and walk--perhaps even with some small degree of excitement--into the abyss.

When I wrote Black & White, I had many questions in mind, questions that I wanted to try to answer by exploring the world of the novel.  First and foremost among these was the subject of privacy.  Where does a writer (or an artist of any kind) draw the line?  Is it all right for us to write about our parents, but not our children?  Or our parents, but only after they're dead?  Or children, but only when they're small?  Our spouses, but only if it's flattering?  Our friends, but only if they're either disguised, or it's pre-approved?  If we write fiction, are all bets off because it's fiction, no matter how thinly-veiled?   A writer's life is her laboratory.  Bits and pieces float up to the surface.  Wallpaper, for instance.  Or the smell of a stew simmering on a stove.  Or the way someone's mouth curves around a particular word.  Or a caught bit of dialogue.  Or an old couple and the way they hold hands.  Who knows what it is that  sparks us, that creates Didion's shimmer, of which I've written before?

I have always been mindful of the responsibility of being someone who publishes work in which others often show up as characters.  I never feel like I'm trolling for information, or am lying in wait for the next bit of inspiration to thwack me upside the head.  That isn't how it works, at least not for me.  But I am aware that there is a certain distrust.  A sense, in others, that maybe I'm taking mental notes.  And maybe, in a way, I am.  After all, that's one of the great advantages of being writer (and there are so many down sides; as I write this on tour, sandwiched in a middle seat on an airplane with a very large snoring man whose head is dangerously close to lolling on my shoulder...)  But I digress.  The upside is in the aliveness.  In the sense that around any corner, there is the possibility of something that feels exciting, real, true, worth exploring.  Something that goes ping.  That shimmers.

When that happens, what is a writer's responsibility?  There is a fine line between worrying about betrayal--and self-censorship.  There is an equally fine line between hearing  that little voice perched on your shoulder (on all of our shoulders) who tell us that we can't/shouldn't/mustn't -- and knowing whether that voice is speaking for the right reasons--or the wrong ones.  In my experience, most writers who are concerned about hurting others in their work--don't.  The ones who don't even think about it--those are the dangerous ones, running around like child soldiers wielding great big  guns.  Deep down, we know.  We know why we're doing what we're doing?  Pride? Envy? Resentment? Take-no-prisoners selfishness?  Proving something--as in, I'll show them?

All I'm saying is, if we pay close attention to our motivations, we know.  And what we know about ourselves will protect us--and those around us.

What is a sensitive person to do when she finds herself in a state of over-stimulation?  I woke up yesterday morning shaking--literally shaking.  Faint with exhaustion, teary in anticipation of just how many miles I had to travel that day.  I had been away from home--away from my husband and son-- for longer than is comfortable for me.  In the previous five days, I had spoken at events in New York City, Wilmington, Delaware, Los Angeles, and Sun Valley, Idaho.  I had been in trains, cars, big planes and little ones.  And finally I was feeling it.  The well was empty.  In today's New York Times there is an interesting piece on vital exhaustion, which may be the new term for nervous breakdown.  We are not machines -- though sometimes we (okay, I) treat ourselves as if we are.  As if there is no breaking point.  No point at which our bodies, our minds, our very souls sit up, trembling, and say: enough.

It occurs to me that we writers--who spend most of our time alone in our rooms, thinking, staring into space,  occasionally putting words on the page--are among the least equipped to be out there in the world doing what needs to be done for our books.  Don't get me wrong--I am one of the writers who really enjoys this aspect of things.  Not all of us do.  I've come to like speaking and reading to audiences, even as my heart flutters, even as I wonder and marvel that they've come out to hear what I have to say.  But we all need to know how to take care of ourselves, and what that means.  For some of us, it means not traveling at all (though these days I'm not sure how anyone sells books without it).  For others, it means careful monitoring of sleep, food, drink.  For me, yoga and meditation are my best tools for centering myself.  Last night, on the flight back east from LA, I bought myself one of those little neck pillows at the airport store.  As we waited in line for take-off, I leaned my head back.  Closed my eyes.  That small gesture of self-care made a huge difference--not necessarily because of the pillow itself, but because it meant that I was noticing that I needed comfort.  I silently repeated the Metta phrases: may I be safe, may I be happy, may I be strong, may I live with ease. As the plane flew into the night, I felt myself slowly calm.  I read a beautiful novel instead of the piles of juicy tabloids.  I began to come back to myself.

I've heard it said that writers are born with one less layer of skin--one less layer of protection--than normal people, or civilians, as I like to think of them.  I don't know if this is true of all writers, but it certainly is true of me.  I have long felt like a slightly neurasthenic creature who needs great amounts of solitude and quiet.  In the words of my wonderful teacher and friend Sylvia Boorstein, I am easily startled.  My natural habitat is my house--in the daytime hours--when all is silent.  Even the dogs barking at wild turkeys out the window makes me jump.  And I admit that I ask Jacob not to practice his recorder first thing in the morning.  I recently had a conversation with another writer I greatly admire, and she told me that she never travels far from home without earplugs, eye masks, slippers... anything to create a buffer with the noisy, noisy world.  I so related to that.  But what about when a buffer isn't possible?  What about those times when we need to simply be in the world in all its cacophony, to embrace the noise, the tumult, the...aliveness?

Over the years, I continue to develop tools.  These tools can be as simple as remembering to breathe.  To go inside myself, no matter what's happening on the outside.  To find the words that center me, and remind me that everything I need is right here, right now.  When I am internal, I am a witness.  I'm the outsider, the observer, absorbing and seeing everything around me.  Sometimes it's a little bit lonely--the price to pay for being on the other side of the window, nose pressed to the glass, looking in.  But when I'm too external, I become part of the world--and I lose my own outline.  I lose myself.  I do think this is the lot of the writer.  We need to be ever-so-slightly apart from what goes on around us, so that we can see it, feel it.  Ultimately, so that we can record and understand it.  Instead of berating myself (as is my wont) for the silence, the buffer I crave, perhaps instead I should see it as my greatest friend.

A couple of years ago I taught a course on memoir at Wesleyan University, and I noticed that many of my students (otherwise smart and generous people) were approaching the books I assigned them--some of my favorite modern memoirs!--with a jaundiced eye.  Why should we believe this? They seemed to be asking.  Why should we care? I chalked their responses up to the recent kerfuffles about made-up memoirs, what I have come to think of as pathological memoirs, in which the writers purposefully set out to dupe readers.  But as time has worn on, I've found myself mulling over some different theories about generosity--not just when it comes to reading memoirs, but when it comes to reading and writing--both fiction and non-fiction.

What does it mean to be generous?  To read generously?  To write generously?  Does it imply a kind of blindness, or dulling of the senses, or stupidity?  That's what our culture would sometimes have us think.  Opening a book with a sense of excitement and exploration--of hopefulness--rather than with a skeptical show me attitude, requires effort.  Hope takes more effort than skepticism.  Generosity requires greater rigor than approaching a book with a defensive stance.

This is even more important when it comes to writing.  When I sit down to write, I have to systematically eliminate all the nasty, judging, doubting voices in my head.  They crowd in the room all around me, threatening to take over.  Who do you think you are? They taunt me.  Why do you think you have anything to say? Why should we--why should anybody--care? This voices are the enemy of generosity.  And really, though I like to think of them in some metaphysical way as coming from outside myself, they come from deep within me.  From a dark place I always need to keep my eye on.  Perhaps it is most difficult for us to be generous to ourselves--and it all radiates outward from there.

Lately I've been noticing that my attention is often split.  I'm on the phone and checking email.  I'm driving and checking my iphone at red lights.  (Only at red lights!)  I'm listening to my son with half an ear.  I'm in the middle of my yoga practice but also taking mental notes about what I need to do after.  Talk about not being in the present!  I know I'm not alone in this.  It's a cultural malady, or I should probably say, a cultural reality, and it's heading in one direction only: everything is moving faster and faster.  Now that I have an ipad, I find myself, even when reading,  suddenly taking a break to check my email every five minutes--as if an internal beeper has gone off.  Apparently I've been concentrating, had a single-minded focus for too long.

I could talk about what this is probably doing to all of our brains, and our children's brains, and their children's brains... but what most interests me about the way that my attention feels split, or even splintered, is how it might or might not be affecting my writing.  I have a friend who uses a computer application that actually shuts down her ability to go online for several hours at a time--sort of an internet babysitter.  She swears by it.  I've been tempted to try it at times, but am still interested to see if I can discipline myself.  Sometimes I work long-hand.  That certainly works, and I highly recommend it.  There's nothing like the slow and tactile feeling of holding a pen, feeling it glide across the page, the ink itself, the crossing out of phrases, the circling of words, the use of arrows and asterisks rather than the neat-and-tidy cut and paste function.  Really, even as I type this now, I'm longing for a pen and a notebook.  I started Family History in a blue and white spiral bound notebook purchased at The Andover Bookstore in my husband's home town.  This became a bit of a fetish for me, and several years later, when I began Black & White, I stockpiled these notebooks.  I still have a half-dozen blank ones in my office closet.  I like the messiness of longhand.  I like the way the pages begin to look indecipherable to anyone but me.  I like being able to doodle.  But mostly, what I respond to is the slowness.  Sitting in a chair with a notebook balanced on my lap forces me to pay attention to one thing at a time.  And when I do that, I am propelled into the moment.  Into the present, and deeply onto the page, where, as a writer, I am most fully alive.

You must feel so exposed.  I've been hearing a lot of that lately.  At readings, at speaking engagements, or even from friends and acquaintances.  How does it feel to have exposed so much of yourself? Honestly, the question itself makes me feel...well...exposed.  But having written two memoirs and dozens of personal essays over the years, I have to say that I do not feel like I'm running down the street naked.  Or that people have somehow gotten their hands on my diary.  In fact, quite the opposite.  How to explain this?

Life, as we live it, is a messy, sometimes chaotic, rambling, shapeless thing.  Even as we try to shape it--with holidays, schedules, routines, rituals--still, it remains just outside our grasp.  We can have the illusion of control, but we are not, in fact, in control of our lives--it's one of the most complex and vexing facts of being human.  Life comes at us--it keeps coming at us, constantly changing, shifting, just when we least expect it.  This too, as the great Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says.  This too, this too, this too.  But when a writer sits down to write memoir, one of the extraordinary, hidden gifts of that process is that through the craft itself, through the shaping, forming, editing, pruning, thinking, that writer is--for that brief moment--in the driver's seat.  With all the time in the world at her disposal, the writer is creating order out of chaos.  Clarity out of confusion.  A memoir is not a diary.  Diaries (unless they are meant for publication) are like garbage cans, collecting the detritus, the trash, the ramblings of a mind trying to sort itself out.  I would die if someone were to read my diaries.  But when a reader writes to me about Devotion, or a young woman comes up to me to talk about Slow Motion, or I stand in front of a group of people who have read my work, I feel something powerful, something that has nothing to do with exposure.  It has to do with connection.  Of one soul reaching out to another soul as the poet Jane Kenyon once wrote, and saying I've been there too.

In the yoga and meditation world--really in the world of anyone seeking--the concept of intention comes up a lot.  Setting an intention.  Being aware of one's intention.  Remembering one's intention.  In the writing world, this word comes up far less, but I think I want to bring it into the dialogue about what it means to sit down to write.  Do we sit down with scattered thoughts and ideas?  With a wish and a prayer?  With a bit of self-trickery (as I have often done) pretending that it doesn't matter, the whole "here goes nothing" approach to beginning something new, which I've found helpful over the years because it silences the whispering voice that tells me I can't do it anyway?

People often ask me how I know if a glimmer of an idea should be a short story, a novel, an essay, a memoir, a screenplay--or anything at all.  That part of it always seems clear to me from the get-go, and I've been thinking about why.  Recently, a few loose ideas have been floating around my mind.  Two are clearly novels.  One is a short story.  One is either a screenplay or a magazine profile.  In all likelihood, only one of these (if any) will see the light of day.  I'll mull, I'll obsess, I'll talk a little about it with a trusted friend or two--and then I will sit down at some point, and embark.  Usually, this point of embarkation for me comes from a pretty committed place.  One idea will have risen to the surface and announced itself as The One.  I'm not much of a player, a tinkerer.  I spend quite a bit of time between books, and that time is usually all about coming up with the next idea.  This happens not from sitting at my desk tearing my hair out, but doing other things--sleeping, eating, yoga, walking, driving, taking baths.  In fact, just the other night, one of my ideas for a novel came to me while putting on my make-up before going to a wedding!  But once it does, this is where I think intention comes in.

Intention.  A beautiful word, really.  When I think of it, I think of a face: rapt, brow slightly furrowed, eyes focused.  A body, posture alert.  A certain readiness, framed by the moment.  Intention pulls us into the moment.  It tunes out the external, the detritus, the useless worries.  Come into this second, this minute, it seems to say.  Bring your whole self to bear on setting this single word down on the page.  And then the next one.  And the next.  And here we go.

Do you know what my least favorite question is, these days? 

What are you working on?

It's an innocent question, born out of curiosity, or simply because that's one of the things writers often get asked.  What are you working on?  Even in the best of times, I don't like this question.  When I'm in the middle of a piece of work, I rarely have the words for what I'm doing.  I become afraid that talking out loud about delicate, fledgling work might make it disappear.  I keep the following quote from Nietzsche pinned to the bulletin board above my desk:

"That for which we find words is already dead in our hearts.  There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking."

That's so Nietzsche.  But also so true.  If I can really articulate what I'm doing, then I'm probably not doing it.  In kitchen terms, it reminds me of what happens when you overcook a vegetable until it liquifies.  But worse than being asked what are you working on? when I'm working, is being asked when I'm not.

I am, as they say, between things.  Actually, this isn't exactly accurate.  I'm promoting Devotion pretty much full time, and given the wonderful interest in this book, I have accepted speaking invitations all the way through next fall.  It's hard to promote a book and work on a new one at the same time.  Hard--but not impossible.  Just the other day, I had a glimmer of an idea for a new novel.  And a non-fiction book I plan to tackle too.  (That's all I'll say--remember Nietzsche.)  But I also have to allow my interior life to settle.  A writer who has finished a book is a bit  like a snow globe all shaken up.  It  needs to float back down again, to allow for the possibility of clarity.

It's okay to be between things.  To rest.  To--as Grace Paley used to say--take baths.  (Grace would say that she did her best writing in the bathtub.  When I was her student, I thought she meant that she sat in the suds, scribbling--but later, I realized that she simply meant she took baths.)  To take walks.  To read, read, read.  To trust that there will be another book, and another, and another.  To have faith in the process by which the imagination asserts itself--in its own way, in its own time.

A number of years ago, there was a small item in the gossip pages about a book contract I had just signed.  It was a sizable contract for two novels, though if you actually consider the number of  years it took me to write both books, the annual income would sound less than extraordinary.  Nonetheless, the day the gossip item ran, I received a call from a novelist friend of mine, herself the author of several published books.

"You just grabbed the brass ring," she said.

Brass ring?  I knew what she meant--and heard the puzzlement in her voice, the competitive why you and not me edge.  But what struck me at the time, and has struck me many times since, is how wrong she was about that.  There is no brass ring.  The procuring of agents, publishers, book contracts, sales, reviews, grants, awards--all writers can be forgiven for comparing, for believing that such a moment might signify arrival.  Except that there is no such thing as arrival.  You arrive, and discover that the front door has been moved.  You arrive again, and it has been moved again.  You realize, at a certain point, that you'd better damn well enjoy the journey, because there is no destination.

Recently Devotion hit a couple of bestseller lists--one of them, quite high up on the list.  Michael, Jacob and I were in London when this happened.  I awoke, jet-lagged, in a hotel room to the news.  And truthfully?  It was a good day.  One, single, good day.  We went out to dinner that night, and all raised our glasses.

"Mom's a bestseller!"  Michael said.  And it was true. I was.  And I was happy.  For that one week, that one moment.  I tried to take it in.  I was pleased, and grateful.  But it was no brass ring.  In my writing life, there have been plenty of moments in which something I have hoped for, something I couldn't even have dared hope for, has happened.  The great review, the bestseller list.  The elation is fleeting.  Like a sugar rush, it is followed by an emptiness, a crash.  We writers are greedy creatures.  We want more, more.  There is no enough.

I was talking about this with Ron Carlson last week, over lunch on the beach in Positano.

"There's only one brass ring," Ron said. "It's being able to go back into the darkness in which we do what we do."

In other words, it's the writing.  And anyone who thinks otherwise is in the wrong business, for the wrong reasons.

I'm just back from Sirenland, and a very special week of teaching.  Ron Carlson, Jim Shepard, Hannah Tinti, visiting writer Nam Le, my wonderful husband, and thirty writers (and another twenty spouses, partners and children) who came from all over the United States to join us in the endeavor of thinking/eating/breathing the creative process.  It always amazes me that writers--prickly creatures that we often are--can come together in the near-sacred process of trying to make one another's work sing. To my students from Sirenland 2010, thank you for your generosity of spirit.  Arrivederci!