I recently heard a novelist say she never watched The Sopranos. It was like hearing a composer say he never listened to Bach.
A few months ago The New Yorker ran a profile of James Salter, a writer who, according to a recent review in The New York Review of Books, constantly had his stories rejected by The New Yorker. Writers take heart: They may think you unworthy today, but years from now they’ll want to run 5,000 words on your life and work.
Saturday morning Hania received e-mailed birthday wishes from her cousins in Warsaw. They have an advantage in remembering her birthday because their kitchen overlooks the prison where she was born.
In the evening we drove down to Miami for dinner at Michael’s Genuine Food. As soon as we sat down I noticed that a line of poetry was written high on the wall, with the name of the poet – Campbell McGrath – written after it. What a wonderful thing, I thought, to walk into a restaurant and find your writing on the wall, followed by your name, there for everyone to see. It would make your night.
But later I realized that if this happened to me I would immediately engage in a bout of self-editing. I would be so focused on reworking what I had written that I wouldn’t have time to look at the menu. A much better adverb than the one I had used would all of a sudden occur to me. It would ruin my night.
This past fall I sent an announcement to the book editor of the Miami Herald about the appearance of my story, “My Days with the Anti-Mafia,” in The Best American Travel Writing 2012. It never ran.
Yesterday in the announcements section of the Herald’s book pages I read about a local author who is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Erotica category.
The Joys of Freelancing would be a slim book. (Confessions of a Freelancer would fill volumes.) But earlier this week I received in the mail a large envelope from the Oxford American which contained two copies of the Spring issue (my essay on Key West appearing on page 44) and a card thanking me for my contribution, signed by a group of editors and interns. In my 30-odd years as a writer, this was a first.
When I was starting out as a writer back in the 70s I came up with the theory that no good mail ever comes on Saturday. And now it never will.