Good Editors

All my life I have complained about how much I really crave good editing. People who neither hack it up so that it’s looser, or doesn’t sound like your words; versus people who just sign off on your article since it does in fact have a beginning, middle, and an end and they can’t be bothered to do anything other than help structure it. The latter kind is actually what I’ve gotten a lot of lately – my book editor literally just shipped the whole first draft off to be copy-edited without giving me word one of information back.

So, the two things currently on my plate – and winding up – are an article for Nature and an article for Discover. And both of the editors have been good. Very good. They have suggestions, they explain them well, and the suggestions will truly improve the piece, and they want me to write it in my voice, they don’t just want to rewrite the whole thing, etc. But do you know what that means? It means I have to rewrite the damn thing. I have to actually put in the time to make it better. My GOD. They want me to work. I just don’t know how I feel about this.

Writing What You Know

I am paraphrasing substantially here, but I read a great line in a Herald Tribune book review this week:

"The problem with the admonition to write what you know is that in America what most people know is that adolescence leads to being cranky with your parents."

I have to agree that I am just numb with boredom by the amount of really-not-that-interesting memoirs and fictionalized-memoirs that abound lately.

(This has not stopped me from wanting to write my OWN memoirs of course. . . I mean I'm sure they'd be just a fantastic read! Really. At least for me.)

Cleaning House

Happy New Year to you all! I have been offline for awhile -- not because things have been going badly, but because things have been going well. The writing is flowing and there's just been TONS to do . . .

I think partially this is because I actually cleaned up my house. It makes all the difference I tell you. A friend of mine who is a writing professor, and therefore instills me with the sense that he knows everything in the world about writing -- even though I know that he struggles with all the same B.S. I do -- recently saw my office. My office was crammed to overflowing with all the boxes, clothes-to-give-away, artwork, cookbooks, presents, and other detritus from the other rooms in the house that there was just enough room to walk to the computer desk, if you're willing to step on a lot of paper to do so. John took one look and said: "Do you write in here?"

Honestly, I don't even know if he meant it the way I heard it -- which was of course "How can you possibly write in this pigsty?" For all I know, he really meant "Lucky you, you get a whole extra room to write in, when I only live in a studio." But I don't think so.

I said: "Um, yeah, usually it's neater." Which is, of course, a total lie. But clearly the time had come to feng shui that place up.

It's much nicer now. . . and lo! I can write!

The Great Huge Sucking Sound

I've told it to others. I repeat it to myself all the time. I know it in my bones --

First drafts are supposed to suck. You have to get something on the page and then you can edit it.

But man, does my first draft of this book suck. I mean it's just so disheartening.

Orson Scott Card . . .

. . . is brilliant. He is a fantastically compelling writer, who has the amazing knack for churning out novels that have -- get this -- different plots and characters in them. He even writes novels that are vastly different in tone when they have the same characters in them. He is the only writer who has two whole books on my favorite books of all time list.

This is why I am thankful for him today. Having read pretty much all of his books (I'm not that excited about his Alvin the Maker series, simply because I don't love fantasy -- which for those of you who are not up on the genre, is way different than science fiction.) I just discovered he has a non-fiction book out there -- Characters and Viewpoint. It's a book on how to write interesting characters, and so in my current Definitely Need Others To Jumpstart Me phase (which is still going well, by the way), I bought it.

Card pointed out that while the temptation is there to write about characters based on people you know (and one should of course draw on what one knows) this doesn't actually work in practice. For the simple reason that you don't know the people around you as well as you need to know your characters. If you draw from real life you might tell a story and justify it by saying: "Well, that's what happened." But the reader is left bewildered as to why the character might have done that. If you don't delve into your character more deeply and let the reader know the character's motivation -- something you truly don't know at a fundamental level about the person who did it in reality -- then your prose will fall flat.

And wow did I need someone to tell me that. I'm not, obviously, writing about people I know. I am writing about something even harder. Real people whom I've only read about. Or read their writing. And I have been trying to stick to that -- I use dialogue culled from words they actually wrote, I rely on versions of their personalities that others have described. I mean, no wonder I have gotten bored when writing about Tycho. He's as one-dimensional as I could possibly make him. He's totally the character I got stuck on; writing from his perspective was what jammed me up two months ago. I have to let my creativity really fly free and turn him into a much rounder person.

I am realizing that I have to take this attitude when working with the plot too -- just because that's what really happened doesn't make it interesting. I am smart enough to know this to a certain degree. I have definitely embellished, or at least tried to come up with explanations for why things happened the way they did. In addition, I am lucky because most of the stuff that these guys did really is fantastic and enthralling. But I am understanding in a way that I didn't before how much I need to make sure that the whole book reads with that level of excitement -- and I am finally freed to really make the story interesting.

Card is brilliant I tell you.

Blocked

I am sitting in a coffee shop in Woods Hole, STARING at the screen, trying to throw myself back into Kepler and Brahe with a vengeance, and mostly I am . . . staring at my computer screen. It doesn't help that my favorite coffee shop in Woods Hole got wireless access and so e-mailing becomes a far too accessible procrastination tool. But really. This shouldn't be so hard.

I've been stumped on this book for a solid month now I think -- partly 'cause I've focused elsewhere, getting ready for my trip. But also because I am finding myself having to write about characters I just don't know as well. And so I stare at the keyboard, take a sip of coffee, stare some more, turn on my e-mail -- hit send/receive a few times, turn off my e-mail, sip some coffee, write a sentence, turn back on my e-mail, realize no one has written me in the last two minutes, turn it off, stare at the screen, watch the people go by, wish I had a copy of Writing Down the Bones to help me out with some fun writing exercise to get me started, finally say Screw it! and just write something here instead.

Why doesn't this ever get easier?

Query Writing

OK, I just e-mailed off a parapraph query that literally ended with the sentences: "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!"

And the editor wrote back within an hour and said he loved the idea.

I swear casual -- good and interesting of course, but comfortably casual -- writing makes all the difference.

(Since he still has to check with other editors, I'm not going to jinx myself by telling what the story is yet, but I have my fingers crossed, 'cause it's a story I've wanted to do for awhile. . . )

Drinks

So I'm sitting at my favorite coffee bar -- which, OK, is also a BAR bar -- and the guy sitting next to me brazenly ordered at 1 o'clock a Maker's Mark. A Maker's Mark!

It was like a challenge I couldn't turn down. I couldn't stop staring at his drink, I was so tempted. I mean aren't fiction writers supposed to drink? I'm a fiction writer, right? Didn't Hemingway do this all the time? There was no reason for me not to order a drink.

So I did.

The bad news is that it didn't help my writing. The good news is that it didn't hurt it either. Hmmm. . . this may lead to far more interesting afternoons. . .

The Maker's Mark guy on the other hand is curled up on the couch almost asleep, barely able to work. Amateur!

Lessons Learned

So I don't forget. . . I want to write down the two most important things learned from this workshop. (How is it that we forget such basic things? These are things I KNEW already, just one needs to be reminded regularly. )

1) The Lede is all. I say this to others again and again -- the first paragraph is where the reader decides the value of the whole piece. That first paragraph decides what grade you'll get, whether you get out of the ticket, how much they'll pay you for the book, whether they'll accept your pitch. And yet, I haven't put in enough time really pulling together scintillating, grab-you-by-the-throat ledes. I got some great feedback from my workgroup on how to work on ledes both on my current pitch to Smithsonian, and on my book proposal on alchemy and so that is on the top of my to do list.

2) You can't put anything good out if you're not getting lots in. Every story takes gathering three to four times as much information as you end up putting into the final piece. Some of that is dedicated research, but a lot of it --the best metaphors, the connection to real life, the good ledes -- is just the stuff you already know. And you're not going to know it if you're not reading constantly. Trust me, I read constantly, but it's mostly fiction. I have set up reminders on my outlook to read the Science Times every Tuesday, as well as a handful of other great sites. And I'm resubscribing to all the magazines I want to write for -- you can't write for them if you're not reading them regularly.

Santa Fe Writing Workshop

Continuing the trend of trying to connect up to other people as a freelancer, I spent the last week at a science writing workshop in Santa Fe. I applied several months ago both because I thought it might be a good way to kick start magazine writing again, and because I was encouraged to do so by one of the leaders of the workshop (who oh, also just happens to write book reviews for the New York Times -- not that anyone's noticing. :-) )

There were about 55 students there, with really diverse ranges of experience and expertise. Some were scientists, who were just starting to think about switching or augmenting their careers with writing. Some worked in press offices. Some were established freelancers. One was a children's book writer. (Oh, and one was a scientist studying male "houseboys" -- the short answer is they're well educated and make $200 an hour, sometimes just to cuddle.)

And, of course, as per usual, talking to all these people doing interesting things just got my batteries completely recharged. I have a list of 72 thousand things to do post-the workshop and I'm trying to get on all of them while I still have the motivation, and before next week's crisis of "why oh why did I ever think I could handle this?!" panic sets in.

First Drafts

So . . had writing group meeting this morning, and got feedback on my (very very rough) draft of the first twenty pages of the book. And, of course, I have been snapped right back into OH MY GOD THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO stage. Suddenly I am torn between wanting to edit -- since there were all these great ideas given to me -- and wanting to keep writing writing writing, and get more of the first draft done (I'd say I've written a quarter total). And I can't decide which to do, and of course feel vaguely stymied.

I was, however, reminded again that first drafts are OKAY. I don't know why we need to constantly be reminded of this. But KZ offered a great metaphor for writing -- the first draft is just about nailing in the posts. Like telephone poles. They point the way, they set up the framework, you've got a skeleton. Then, with suggestions from your readers, with your own editing, the second draft is about putting in all the stuff in between. Laying the wires, filling in the details, smoothing the edges, refining the product. I love this metaphor. It's not saying anything I didn't know -- or don't keep reciting in my head "It's ok Karen, this is just your first draft, you'll make it perfect later" -- but it somehow says the same thing in a different way, and I think one constantly needs to be reminded that you HAVE to go through the first draft stage before getting to the final stage. We keep hoping that as we get better we can skip some of this initial b.s. But truly I think the mark of a great writer is simply that they are good editors, and they can take that first draft and polish it up to brilliant beauty.

I just have to be told over and over again, in different ways, that it's ok to write a first draft -- and just because it's not perfect yet is no reason to give up. But it's hard to remember that I tell you. It's hard.

Artist Dates

In one of those books that most writers have picked up at some point, The Right to Write, Julia Cameron suggests that writers need to repeatedly "fill the well." She recommends going to one -- for lack of a better term -- "cultural" event , by one's self, a week. A museum, a lecture, a symphony, an art class, whatever. This doesn't have to be -- and perhaps shouldn't be -- something that is connected to a subject you have written or want to write about. It also shouldn't be an acitivity where you spend the entire time thinking about how you could weave this experience into a story. Instead, the idea is just to make sure your head is crammed chock-full of information, experiences, knowledge, sensory input, so you can draw on it at some point later when you least expect you're going to need it.

I keep pretending that I'm going to do this once a week. I keep not doing it.

I went to a lecture today on the narwhal -- that whale-ish creature with a unicorn's horn. That horn, it turns out, is a tooth, that protrudes out its upper lip, on the left side only, and extends for like 10 feet. Evolution has played some weird weird jokes out there, people. But the real issue here is that, as one always knows will happen, going to a lecture like that just energized me. I have a handful of story ideas I want to follow up on -- some directly related, some not. And I am more motivated in general on the stuff I'm already working on, since I got connected again to modern science and was reminded how fun and thrilling it can be.

So, artist dates. You heard it here -- I hereby solemnly swear to go on one a week for REAL.

The Tiara

After a great several-week spurt of good writing, I have totally lamed out over the last week, and written pretty much nothing. It is directly correlated to a mood swing -- though that turns into a chicken or an egg cycle, since the moment I force myself to write, I get into a better mood, so the "I'm cranky and therefore I can't write" excuse isn't such a good one.

But I am going to get some writing done today, I will, I will, I will -- and to help with the cause, I have put on my trusty tiara. Those who know me well, know the tiara. It is left over from my third grade princess costume and it has carried me through years of homework assignments, deadlines, life crises, or --to be honest -- just plain cleaning the house when I don't want to.

Everyone should have a tiara.

Exhibit A:

It is the night before I am supposed to give a talk on my senior physics thesis. I am completely and totally blocked, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to talk about, life sucks. My friend, and fellow physics major, Kent, knocks on my dorm room door at about 7 o'clock, to find me staring at my computer, desperate. He says: "forget this, you need a break" and takes me off to see the movie Jacob's Ladder -- one of the weirdest mind-games movies ever. I get home at 11, with a totally new pretty-close-to-what-I-can-only-imagine-being-tripped-on-acid-feels-like attitude, throw on my tiara, light candles all over my room, and pump that talk out. The tiara comes through.

Exhibit B:

It is the night before my graduate school applications are due -- I think I'm in good shape. I have written all the essays, have gotten all my recommendations, I just need to fill out the information on the basic forms and do a few short answer questions. I discover that one of the applications has a whole extra essay that I had not even realized was needed -- and I certainly haven't started. I panic. I call my friend Jane, who in her most blase tone says: "No problem. You know what to do. Put on the tiara, go get a cup of coffee laced with Baileys, light the candles." I got in to every school.

Exhibit C:

When my friend Catherine was sad one day, she decided she needed to wear the tiara out. Three of us went out for dinner and we all found a tiara to wear -- the waitress looked vaguely askance, but never asked anything about it. Jen finally leaned over and whispered to the waitress "She's a bachelorette" . . . within minutes the whole restaurant knew who the bachelorette was, and we were the most fun table in the place. Everyone sent us drinks, everyone asked the bachelorette to dance. It was awesome. Totally snapped her out of her mood.

Exhibit D:

A few months ago, I came home from lunch having just broken up with the guy I'd been dating -- and I put the tiara on. I was due out at a happy hour that evening, but just couldn't bring myself to take it off. I mean I NEEDED that thing. Here's a funny thing about tiaras -- it turns out that when you walk down the street at 6 on a Friday afternoon in one, nobody even bothers to ask why you're wearing it. Hell, no one even looks twice. I wore it all weekend -- including a drive up to New York City with multiple stops at Jersey Turnpike rest stops. At a brunch on Sunday, one of the female guests brought her pet turtle -- she carried it around, she made kissing noises at it, she showed it to everyone, talked about it incessantly. And all I could think was: "Who needs so much attention that she'll bring her turtle to brunch?" A beat later, I thought: "um, yeah -- this from the girl in the TIARA." I laughed for the first time all weekend.

The tiara rules. I highly recommend it for jolting you out of moods, for forcing you to focus, for just getting motivated. I have mine on now, and I am going to write write write write. I swear.

Newt Haikus

I went to a party Saturday night that was billed as a poetry slam. I have to admit I have this weird aversion to the whole artiste theme sometimes -- I was always going to be a physicist, and so admitting that I'm a writer gets stuck in my craw occasionally. I came prepared to listen to others read their poetry, and I was also prepared to be well-behaved about it, but I had a wee bit of a chip on my shoulder about the whole thing.

Instead, they totally sucked me in with a CONTEST. I mean if you're going to make me compete, then I'm going to get psyched up, completely involved, and try to win. (In fact to be honest, we were supposed to work in teams, and I pulled a classic Karen move, and left my assigned team, grabbing just two friends to go with me whom I knew I could work with. Hey, writing is about creative genius, you've got to indulge it.)

So we picked a word out of a hat and had to write haikus and then read them aloud. I worked with my friends Eleni and Elizabeth and we won handily -- though I think mostly because everyone wrote serious poems and we understood that the way to the judges' hearts was to make them laugh. . .

And, of course, we picked the best word ever: newt. Our four poems were (and for one of them you need to know that Sunday was the huge pro-choice rally in DC on the mall) --

The frog was not a prince.
They never turn out to be.
Next I'll try a newt.

Which newton to choose?
The best Newton is a fig --
My lunchbox food rules!

Newt is off the hill.
He's not marching on Sunday.
His sister may be.

Apple, apple, splat
Under the tree Newton sat.
Aha! Gravity!

Intermediate Writers

Why are there no books for intermediate writers? There are wonderful, spectacular books for beginners. Stephen King's On Writing -- brilliant. Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life -- delightful. Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird -- great read, great lessons.

I've learned a lot from these books, and I go back to them regularly to get reinspired. But at a basic level, the solutions they offer are ones I already know -- aimed more at convincing yourself to keep going, to be confident in your writing, to force yourself to sit in the chair and just pound it out, to keep mailing off manuscripts despite rejection. But I no longer need the "buck up kiddo" speech. I no longer need to do affirmations to convince myself that I'm a writer -- I am. I know it. I don't have those awkward moments when I tell someone I write and they say: "Oh. Are you published?" Yes, I am published. What I want now is a book that magically takes me up the next level. I want the handbook on how to be an A++ writer. And, most importantly, to have it be simple.

Let me explain. Several years ago a book came out on housekeeping called Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. It was all the rage. Everyone gave it to everyone else for the holidays. I, on the other hand, was supremely disappointed -- it didn't give me tips or tricks or ways to protect myself from the onslaught of ever more dust. It suggested instead that I. . . clean things.

Every week, said the book, I was supposed to:

"Change the bed linens and bathroom towels.

Vacuum rugs, floors, upholstered furniture and lampshades.

Wash all washable floors.

Dust all dustable surfaces and objects, including pictures, mirrors, light fixtures, and light bulbs.

Wipe all fingerprints or smears from doorknobs, woodwork, telephones, computer keyboards.

Wash down entire bathroom: toilet, sink, tub, wall tiles, toothbrush holders and all fixtures, cabinets, mirror, floor.

Wash all combs and brushes.

Clean entire kitchen: clean refrigerator, wipe down stove and other applicances inside and out; clean sinks, counters, and tabletops; extra-thoroughly wash backsplashes; scrub floors

Clean air-conditioner filters and humidifiers according to manufacturers' recommendations.

Wash out and sanitize garbage cans."

EVERY WEEK. I don't think I've sanitized my garbage can ever. And cleaning the fridge is definitely a twice a year affair.

I mean this book was just no good. I was supposed to keep a cleaner house, by becoming really organized and caring about cleaning. I wanted the book that said: "If you do these three things and jump four times on one foot and howl at the full moon, your kitchen will stay clean 17 times longer." No such luck.

I have solved the problem by hiring a housekeeper. Starving writer stereotype be damned -- I'm happy to starve so I can pay and not have to deal with that stuff.

Books about writing are kind of like that housekeeping book. Oh, they have some suggestions. You know like you could tie yourself to a chair in order to keep yourself there. You can set a timer to ensure that you work for 45 minutes straight before rewarding yourself with a peek at your e-mail. You can write friendly notes to editors in order to get on their radar screen. But these books still insist that you have to do the work.

Where's the book that tells me how to make it easy? How to skip the hour of bloodletting that happens as you stare at the keyboard before you finally get into flow? How to bypass the query letters or the book proposals and just have an automatic in with all the editors? I need that book. Where's that book??

--From a girl who wrote 1257 words today.

Doing the Math

My favorite English teacher in high school, Mrs. Buchanan, quickly got used to the idea that I could never plan ahead when I wrote a paper. I took a lot of classes from her throughout my four years at National Cathedral School but it is the two writing classes that I remember the most. I took a class called "Critical and Creative Writing" in which we took a week to write any particular assignment, handing in early scratchings mid-week before the entire piece on Friday. Somehow she was surprised every time when my first paragraphs were smack out of the middle of the essay -- I would add the introduction and conclusion later.

She was better about accepting my complete and total inability to write an outline. For a class on how to write a term paper -- I wrote mine on George Bernard Shaw's play Heartbreak House -- we had to hand in a detailed outline before we were allowed to begin writing. My outline looked like this:

I. Introduction
II. First Argument
A. Supporting Statements
III. Second Argument
A. Supporting Statements
IV. Third Argument
A. Supporting Statements
V. Conclusion

I swear. That's what I handed in. Mrs. Buchanan said that "for me" it was pretty good.

The point of all of this is that somewhere along the way I made a U-turn. I am now outline-obsessed. I have discovered that if I know ahead of time what I am going to write about everything flows. Writing -- in of itself -- is a piece of cake. Imagine writing a letter detailing your day, or telling a memory from your childhood. You are fully conversant with the story, so pulling together the words to tell it, and then typing the words into the keyboard is simple stuff. And so it goes with me and articles and books. If I know what I'm talking about, if I've done enough research, if I have written down an outline, even some simply bulleted list, the actual transfer of information into sentences is no work at all.

All of which translates to my currently having a 30-page outline for the book I'm writing. Three-Oh. Plots and conversation ideas and settings and ironic twists all mapped out. Eat your heart out, Mrs. Buchanan.

And it helps, it really does. I only stare at the computer screen for like 30 minutes before starting to write a chapter, instead of say an hour and a half. Because, I mean, what's supposed to happen is right there in black and white, right? It helps.

But here's the part where it doesn't. I know that my current outline calls for 96 sections (each section can be anywhere from a few paragraphs to a ten pages). I have a first draft written for about 20 already. I had this dream I was going to finish a full first draft by June 19, before going away to a science writing workshop in Santa Fe. So I did the math. I have 76 sections left to write.

And 64 days left in which to write them.

That's more than a section a day, including weekends. And, to be honest, it's been taking me about three days to do each section. (Though I had a banner day on Wednesday in which I pounded out a whole section in one morning -- it was a beautiful angry scene, and so much fun to channel the character while writing.)

Someone once explained to me about how runners feel somewhere about half way through a race. (An experience I will never in my entire life ever have, I assure you.) The feeling of disquiet, knowing you've already put in so much work, and yet there's so much more to go. To be fair, the years of research I've put into this book means I'm well over half way finished, even if it does take me longer than I'd hoped to write it.

But, my goodness. There's no way I'm going to get this finished by June. And I DO know the story already, so the writing isn't awful, and I have my pretty outline, and it's doable. One step at a time and all that. It's just. . . there's so much more to go.

What It Takes

I am sitting at Tryst, having had a lovely burst of writing energy for the last two hours. I have, I'm afraid, done fairly little work on this book proposal since I set myself the October 3 deadline. The weekend was the weekend -- and I swore when I became a freelancer five years ago that except for in the face of emergency deadlines, I would maintain weekends and evenings as no-work times. Its too easy to let your work creep into every facet of your life when you work at home, and so I'm strict about working during normal business hours. (There is part of me that worries that this is a bit of an excuse . . . but by and large it works for me. I guess partly because it does successfully force me to work during the week days, and not leave work until the last minute, which not every writer I know is good about doing.)

Monday, I hosted a birthday luncheon, so with cooking and eating and cleaning up afterwards that took up the whole day. Tuesday I sat down in front of the computer and managed to do a little editing, and a great deal of online research, but actual writing somehow eluded me -- possibly because I had to teach a pilates class at 7 AM, and again at 1:30, so the day was kind of broken up. In addition, getting up at 6:30 just KILLS me, and I I was vaguely sleepy all day. I've found that the number one necessity for a good writing day is that I'm thoroughly well-rested.

And so, that brings us today. I am out of the house -- another boon to getting writing done -- and the last two hours has seen a solid 1000 words of writing on the "outline" section of my book proposal.

When writing flows you just wish you could bottle the feeling. What is it that sometimes makes it all work? The thing is, I am smart enough to know that it's not all that mysterious. There is this fantasy about writing that sometimes you're just in the mood and sometimes you're not. Sometimes, at 3 AM, or when you have the right amount of bourbon in your system, or when you're suddenly inspired, then that is the time to write, and you can't force it otherwise. But I think that's a fantasy that only those who write occasionally maintain.

Because I know what goes into a good writing day: exactly the things I listed above. Plenty of sleep and no other distractions to be found. About half the time I plan on working outside of my house, I talk myself into not doing so -- perhaps I'm waiting for a phone call, or I don't want to spend the money at a coffee shop, or I'm not in the mood for the 15-minute walk or any other excuse I can come up with. And I believe those excuses when I make them, promising myself that I will work just as much with my butt in that Aeron chair at home. But it's a myth. And I have to remember that.

Sleep and no distractions. That's all it takes. . .

Writing in Public

Somewhere out there in the cosmos, an idea was born that all writers have some innate talent, some creative gene, such that beautiful prose springs naturally from their neurons through their Mont Blanc fountain pen onto the page. Dazzling sentences, beautiful plots, perfect imagery dancing out of a calm mind, without any work at all.

It is the bane of freelancers, this image. We all secretly think that everyone else is more organized, more dedicated, more creative, more something than we are. That the world is filled with journalists and authors who spout their writing effortlessly, and that we, we alone, are perpetrating a sham.

I belong to the National Association of Science Writers, and one of my favorite on-line conversations took place a number of years ago, when everyone admitted that the thought of calling up someone to interview sent them into a panic. We all had rituals and procrastination tools we used to avoid calling someone the first time -- and all of us had assumed we were the only ones who hated this very fundamental part of being a journalist.

As it is, I have worked long and hard at creating the routines that actually keep me in a chair to write or to call an interview. I have had to train myself that the first draft of anything is a disaster, and that no one puts out a perfect piece on the first go-round (with the possible exception of John McPhee, who insists that whole books pop out full-blown from his head to the page -- but I think this belies the fact that he spends years researching and editing the book in his head before he commits it to paper. . . ) And you know what I'm really horrible at? I have all these great ideas and then I don't pitch them. It kills me. I have a great idea, I think I should send it off to someone, I don't, and then invariably the article I wanted to write shows up in the exact magazine I wanted to write it for, but someone else wrote it. It's just unforgivable that I should have had this happen so many times and yet haven't adjusted my behavior.

And so, I've decided to do it all publicly. Perhaps if I keep an honest record of what I'm doing, I will manage both to be a little more together about it, as well as to do some damage to the fiction that all other writers are better at this freelancing stuff than we. I'd like to flatter myself that despite what I see as my own inefficiencies I am a "successful" writer. So perhaps I can convince others, or at least myself, that "successful" writers aren't all paragons of organization.

It's a good time for it. I have just handed in the first draft of a manuscript on a book on Einstein, so I'm in a "beginning" phase. One of those glorious times where you're convinced that for the next project you will be organized, motivated, efficient. It's like the beginning of a school semester -- I have new notebooks and new pens, and am developing all my new routines . . . Of course, when I was at school, such organization lasted me about a week, but perhaps, maybe, possibly, keeping a writer's journal about my routines, might actually help me keep them.