Fuck You

Don’t face me. Stay right where you are. I have perceived judgement. Not by you. But by your family. Your mother to be specific. Of course, I didn’t hear her say anything. I just heard you on the other end: “Well, I like her.”

Sure you came to my defense. Sure you came to my defense. Sure you came to my defense. But what am I to do with all this animosity I already feel.

Don’t you see? I’m sensitive. My emotions flare up like the herpes virus. Certain emotions highjack my brain. And certain emotions have highjacked my brain for as long as I can remember. If I could run halfway up the stairwell, bury my face in my arms and have a meltdown, I would. I would do to you what I did to my mother whenever she wagged her finger at me for attempting to interrupt her while she was on the phone: I would punish you.

My M.O. seems to be this: If you don’t want me, then I don’t need you. As a matter of fact, fuck you. Go fuck yourself. You’ll pay for this. You’ll wish I wanted to interrupt you.

Because I am sensitive, I do not take rejection well and I perceive rejection everywhere. Even when I know better, even when your opinion or your mother’s opinion means nothing to me, even when I know how wonderful I am and that their opinion is more a reflection of them than of me, you can all go fuck yourselves. Now watch close (or don’t) as I divest from you emotionally. What do I care?

You’ll never know how much. How sensitive I am. How badly I take rejection. You’ll never know, and here’s why:

I am so bad at taking rejection that I overcompensate by inviting it. To make up for the fact that I care so goddamn much about what you think, I will take it like a champ. I will never waiver in your presence from the image of strength and maturity that you have for me. That is a key feature of the spite house that I will build for you. You will never even know just how badly you hurt me. You will never know just how cruel I can be. All you will suffer from is a lifelong sense of loss while I continue to fortify your romanticized view of me as someone who is strong, enigmatic and intangible.

Meanwhile, I will secretly write a manifesto rescinding my love of you, denouncing my need for you. The manifesto will say something along the lines of, go fuck yourself. I should have never given you the opportunity to hurt me and now that I am hurt, I will deprive you of all future opportunities to do so.

One wall, two wall, old wall, new wall. I will build a fortress of walls around myself. Around Alex. The girl you didn’t even realize you knew will stay hidden from you forever more, and always out of reach.

I don’t need an advice column by Cheryl Strayed to tell me that I am being immature. I already know that it’s unfair for me to treat you this way. You don’t deserve this. You came to my defense and you’ve only ever supported me.

I know that it is my job, as an adult in pursuit of healthy, functional relationships, to short-circuit my childish sensitivities. So that is what I, here, am doing. “Channeling,”—as they say—my emotions. Turning my petulant, reactionary, sensitive, vindictive, destructive, fuck-you, go-suck-a-dick, middle-finger, tongue-out, nuclear meltdown levels of rage into something “productive.”

Thanks to me, you’re welcome.

You are what you say

Who we are is the basis of what we say. I believe that every time I speak, it is my complete and total identity leaving my mouth in the form of words. The complex compendium of bespoke desires and bespoke fears, the soil of my personhood, my root beliefs, the naked seeds of vulnerability, some of them split open and sprouting new weeds with new adaptations, thorns, thresholds, and thirsts, all of it, every bit of who I am—it all gets packed together by some atomic force into a subatomic speck, which rides the waves of my double-you-oh-are-dee’s. I am spewing myself at you. 

The Beginning of an Essay i Stopped Writing and the Preamble to a Relationship i Stopped Having

I could write a list as long as the dictionary with reasons, non-reasons, bios, and red flags that make me swipe left on Tinder. “Singer. Songwriter. Model.” Left. “New in town, show me the real New York.” Left. Photos at Burning Man, no photos at all. A homicidal glint in your eye, a smile where the tip of your tongue pokes out between your teeth. I’m not into it. Call me picky, but I know what I don’t want. 

My “Swipe Right” criteria, on the other hand, is a lot more loose. All I’m looking for is: a good face (I know it when I see it) and a good sense of humor (which ironically disqualifies anyone who explicitly describes themselves as having a good sense of humor). After that, it gets complicated. I’m a woman. I’m used to being hit on, objectified, harassed. Now I’m on Tinder, matching with women, and feeling unsure of how to be. Knowing all the things women don’t want to hear, trying to figure out what women do want to hear—coming from a woman. 

I struggled. I had high standards for the kinds of women I wanted to talk to, but felt inadequate myself. I wanted someone effortlessly funny, but couldn’t come up with a better opening line than “crushed or cubed.” I gave up on icebreakers and just tried my luck with “Hey.” It was a salutation that often got iced. Until this one girl. Jackie. 

“Hey,” she responded.

I re-reviewed her profile. No bio, but great photos. And by great photos I mean a great face. A face so great that I couldn’t believe she liked me. This girl looked like Charlize Theron with her head shaved. Intimidatingly beautiful. 

I played it cool. Followed her lead. Didn’t want to say anything that would make her ghost, as had been done by many to me, and by me to many. I was careful not to seem too eager. To not give to much information. Message too many times in a row. Answer too quickly. But to also be encouraging, interested, supportive. What this ultimately looked like was a whole bunch of small talk smattered with lightly playful guessing games (like tell me what bookstore you live near, and I’ll try to guess where you live). She was gorgeous, bald, and mysterious, and out-of-my-league, so I tried to reflect that same energy back to her instead of being who I am (someone who uses a lot of extra lettersss, and writes as quickly as they speak). I talk fast, and I text fast, too. I’m self-aware. A New Yorker. Well technically from Long Island. But I’ve always tried to downplay that. Going as far as lying and saying I’m from Queens. I don’t lie like this anymore. But I am certainly not being myself with moody Charlize Theron over here.  

To my surprise, it works. She asks for my number. She texts me. Says she’s busy this weekend but wants to hang out soon. Asks me when am I free. Am I free Thursday? I think about it—not about Thursday, but about meeting her. I think about how this could be anywhere from boring to uncomfortable.  How can I feel comfortable if I don’t tell her the truth? How can I tell her the truth if I don’t feel comfortable? Such are the questions you are plagued with when you conveniently forget to mention that you have a boyfriend. 

First thoughts, one January morning

My dad was waiting for me and my brother to shower

I could hear Jon walking up to my house. I could hear him talking to my brother. I could hear him uncovering evidence of the girl who was in my bed the night before.

I must put a tampon in but instead I ring out a giant tampon and the blood is blue.

My mom is eating donuts.

I’m outside of my high school.

I look down and there are hundreds of Juuls and other e-cigarettes just littering the ground.

Next to me is Alexa.

We wait in line, with our flat, Home Depot cart, which holds a box and a bin for the camping trip we’re about to go on. Is mine in there, too? I hope.

I lie down on top of it. It starts rolling. it rolls down the stairs. I’m yelling because I’m scared but I also know it’s going to be funny, assuming I don’t get hurt. The cart halts. “And cut!” shouts the director. Oh, good, this was all a stunt. We’re not really going camping. And I find that a relief.

Two girls who are fat and ugly bully me. I tell them what they’re doing. I say: you two are being bullies, but they refuse to own up to it.

I didn’t do anything to either of you.

Overheard at Sweetleaf

You said you didn’t have the bread. If you have the bread, hit him up on IG and say ‘Yo. This is Henry’s boy. What’s good-good with the good-good?’

Ode on a Scab

Ode on a Scab (or perhaps, an elegy)


Oh, scab in my ear, grotesque and hard 

Your clotted body clings to the skin 

that you wish to be beneath your char. 

Burnt umber, lumpy, dry and cracked in 

a cartilaginous cave, which compared 

to the lobe, is outright overlooked.

And to the canal? Not good for much. 

Hidden from sight, tucked under the rook  

Even I cannot see you've repaired. 

To see, I must hold, so first, I touch 


my nail on your crust, rougher than brick. 

I find your hardest edge, nearly healed. 

Then I scratch, hook, pinch, pull, pick pick pick

And I can’t stop picking til you're peeled. 

True satisfaction abandons grace. 

My body bent yet stiff in plain view

My fingers move to remove your bark.

With a tab of scab well-gripped, I brace

for the tear-jerking rip in the dark

spawning raw flesh smooth and fresh blood new.


Beholding your corpse, I see you're gross 

like my need: to pluck you from your nest. 

God, dam this flood! Or else diagnose  

who causes this caustic deep skin quest.

An influx of feelings with tickets  

to ride an already sold-out train?

Evict them all from where they reside.

Next time skin breaks, you need not fix it!

Do not rush, but rest, you restless brain.

Time heals. Blood dries. More, all the same.

The Witness

Evening pages, I suppose. I don’t know why I thought, or rather felt compelled to sit on the couch. That’s not true. I do know why.

Once she came home, it felt like everything I did or planned on doing was a performance.

That is, after all, what defines a performance—the presence of a witness. And once there is a witness, I feel like I must perform, entertain, please, engage.

It took all my strength and a little bit of absentminded whim-ness to sit down on my bed, in my room, where I am hidden.

I walked back and forth, getting a pen, filling up water, throwing away garbage, hanging my towel. I took my sweet time in the bathroom after I showered. I just killed time in the hopes that the witness would excuse herself. Leave the living room, the performance space.

But no. The witness sat, quietly on the couch, eating the stale, coconut, oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies I made last weekend, and swiping vertically, through photos on her Instagram feed. She didn’t say anything. But I could hear her hope loud and clear.

My discomfort in the silence yanked at me like a big, untrained, puppy. Though struggling, I resisted. Pulled back. Kept my conversation in place, where it was, in my head.

As I already mentioned, I paced nervously back and forth. Occupied myself with tasks, hoping to run out the clock. Praying for the witness to get up and leave. But the witness remained idle in her seat. Scrolling through her socials like she was at a bar waiting for her date to arrive, or in a theater waiting for the lights to go down and the curtain to open. What’s my line? Oh it could’ve been anything. I could have spoken at length or started a dialogue. I could have discussed my day. Turned each mundane triviality into a story worth sharing.

But I bit my tongue. I bit my tongue and I bit my tongue. I thought of the songs I listened to today. I like Dance Yourself Clean. And Just Cuz You Feel It, Doesn’t Mean it’s There. That’s not the title. I thought other private thoughts. Thoughts I really care to think about without the reaction or opinion or ears of a witness.

What if I charged a fee to enter the Losing Well? A monthly fee? A fee per entry? Would people pay? Would it defeat the purpose? Is my privacy something that can be bought? If the witness was willing to pay me, would I sell her my inner most thoughts? Thoughts were once worth a penny. These days, with inflation and all, they gotta be worth at least a dime. But what if I only charged a penny for my thoughts. Would it be more art that way? I am using art as an adjective there. If commercialization decreases the inherent value of my art, perhaps the only way to combat that is to treat the commercialization as an artistic medium, too. Render it useless. Pay money—not as a means to consume art but as a participant in a social performance piece.

Eh, I should delete my art. It’s diluting my writing, isn’t it? It dilutes my writing.

Why is this a concern? Why am I so concerned with the viewer. I told my therapist today that my new goal is to stop caring what others think.

I practice it the best I can, but I still do not embrace it.

Accompanied by my silence, by my protest of performance, by my decision to continue what I was doing and was going to do before a witness came along, is guilt. Fear, too. An urge to apologize because I feel like I am hated. I feel like I am, in certain ways, failing.

My nose is dry my mouth is dry. I had something to say to the witness—something I could say, but I chose to ride out the seconds in silence instead. It was scary. I felt out of control, like an inexperienced surfer, tube-riding inside a curling wave, unsure of whether I’ll reach the light at the end of this water spout before it crashes down and swallows me. And at the same time I felt bad about my desire to reach the end. It felt like I was hurting the witness on purpose. when i could have just started the show. And despite all this fear and guilt, I did it. I kept all my words to myself. I went to my room. Sat on my bed. Opened my notebook. Tested my pen and spoke my mind. It was will but mostly luck.

I can’t help but think.

I am thirsty. My cup of water is across the room. The witness resigns. Gets up. Shuts off all of the house lights and disappears into the night. A fly has found me, under the only light still on.

I’ve never known how to keep a notebook organized. I’ve never been able to keep my writing sequential. I’ve always worried and fixed and worried and fixed but how crazy would it be if I stopped?

Gotta read the book Adam gave me

Gotta write the email to Martha

Gotta perform

Gotta get a new witness.

Hello, fly.

Keep the pen going—my phone is between my toes. My wrist hurts. I haven’t stretched with intention in quite a while two weeks?

I ate burrata for dinner. The cashier forgot to charge me for it.

I’m still very thirsty. must reach my water now. the water i filled so as not to choose between performance and failure. I’m happy to have made it through to failure in the end. now I have a water cup. and my words. they’re mine all mine and I am happy enough for now.

I heard one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard in my life today. Spotify recommended it. I didn’t listen to the whole thing, but the beginning went a little something like this:

it’s bad to be it and

worse to admit that

we’re the worst band

to ever exist

we’re trying to be cute

by being self-deprecating

and it’ll work on some of you

but most of you will agree

we’re not very good or cute

I don’t have interest in that kind of band personally. I don’t have a genuine interest in 20-something-year-old white boys rapping ironically either. However, perhaps it is this particular distaste that explains my fear of what people will think of my unfiltered, unpoetic, uncorrected, unedited, unexcellent, unorganized, unimpressive and almost completely nearly un-performative writing.

An unedited orphan from the novel

Nausea. committed. I am half-committed. What else is new? Well I don’t look in the mirror but I think I look good but then I see myself being looked at and I’m struck with a sinking feeling that I try to ignore.

On Balancing Work and Friends

Originally published in Brokelyn Magazine, Jan. 22, 2019

“On Balancing Work and Friends”

Things my boss tells me:
-You’re not a musician
-Get-rich-quick-schemes only sometimes work
-There’s no such thing as
writer’s block, only
lack of discipline.

All my friends are disciplined
in exaggerating.
“As you know I’ve been sober for 2 weeks.”
No you haven’t you stupid bitch.
I’m sorry, I
didn’t mean that.
I just
don’t care,
meaning
I could easily
hate you,
but friends choose not to
care when friends
can’t be anything
other than
who they are.

That’s why my boss also says that
when it comes to comedy,
aim for drama.
When it comes to drama,
A-minor.
When it comes to singing,
aim sharp.
And when it comes to
friends—friends, listen up—
aim very
very low.

Avoid good friends.
For in good friends,
Expectations
grow like weed.

My boss says friendship’s
a function of love

If “X” is for you
And “one” is for me
And they say that love’s
a reciprocal
function, then why
is 1 over X

One graph with two lines
on opposite paths
toward zero, which has
to be freedom, but
that is another
function completely.

So we stay moving
ever nearing but
never reaching our
zeros, our selves, our
New, solitary
functions, and remain
in love: a very
rational function.

If love’s forever
(Which clearly it is)
friendship’s a tangent
Many parallel
lines. Oh look at all
That potential for
so many friendships.

Though each one is bound
by a set of two
invisible lines
—like pi over two—
(Here’s where I lose you.
Cuz pi is constant
and irrational,
so pi’s what I feel,
and all that I feel
over this twosome
is where our friendship
disappears), the line
of each friendship is
infinite in its
potential for both
satisfaction and
disappointment.

Friends expect I won’t
disappoint. But I
already have. You
hate my whimsy when
I theorize almost
as much as you hate
feeling insecure,
and yet still you say
you resent me for
never being home.

What about me? I
hate that you can’t see
this pun (times itself)
is what I derive
from this function of
you: a ride up and
down without any
promise of reaching
the height of value
to make it all worth
while, nor a threshold
where you’ll understand
because we’ve agreed
Enough is enough.

My boss tells me that
friends only want to
party like 1984.
Loyalty is abuse.

Thus, if love is a
rational function,
as I’ve shown it is,
(friendship, a tangent)
Be irrational,
my friends. And never
promise or set a
precedent that you
will not be selfish
and irrational.

Be your own friend, and
soon like me, you too,
will be your own boss.

Milan Kundera on the music of the novel

My favorite excerpts from a 1984 interview with Milan Kundera.

In describing the need for new art forms, he names these three:

(1) a radical stripping away of unessentials (in order to capture the complexity of existence in the modern world without a loss of architectonic clarity);

(2) “novelistic counterpoint” (to unite philosophy, narrative, and dream into a single music);

(3) the specifically novelistic essay (in other words, instead of claiming to convey some apodictic message, remaining hypothetical, playful, or ironic).

On “novelistic counterpoint” a.k.a. the union of philosophy, narrative, and dream in a single art form:

In my view, the basic requirements of novelistic counterpoint are: (1) the equality of the various elements; (2) the indivisibility of the whole. I remember that the day I finished “The Angels,” part three of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I was terribly proud of myself. I was sure that I had discovered the key to a new way of putting together a narrative. The text was made up of the following elements: (1) an anecdote about two female students and their levitation; (2) an autobiographical narrative; (3) a critical essay on a feminist book; (4) a fable about an angel and the devil; (5) a dream-narrative of Paul Eluard flying over Prague. None of these elements could exist without the others, each one illuminates and explains the others as they all explore a single theme and ask a single question: “What is an angel?”

On the unity of a novel:

It’s the unity of the themes and their variations that gives coherence to the whole. Is it a novel? Yes. A novel is a meditation on existence, seen through imaginary characters. The form is unlimited freedom. Throughout its history, the novel has never known how to take advantage of its endless possibilities. It missed its chance.”

On a novel’s fundamental words:

But I would like to stress above all that the novel is primarily built on a number of fundamental words, like Schoenberg’s series of notes. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the series is the following: forgetting, laughter, angels, “litost,” the border. In the course of the novel these five key words are analyzed, studied, defined, redefined, and thus transformed into categories of existence. It is built on these few categories in the same way as a house is built on its beams. The beams of The Unbearable Lightness of Being are: weight, lightness, the soul, the body, the Grand March, shit, kitsch, compassion, vertigo, strength, and weakness. Because of their categorical character, these words cannot be replaced by synonyms. This always has to be explained over and over again to translators, who—in their concern for “good style”—seek to avoid repetition.

On numbering chapters:

The chapters themselves must also create a little world of their own; they must be relatively independent. That is why I keep pestering my publishers to make sure that the numbers are clearly visible and that the chapters are well separated. The chapters are like the measures of a musical score! There are parts where the measures (chapters) are long, others where they are short, still others where they are of irregular length. Each part could have a musical tempo indication: moderato, presto, andante, et cetera. Part six of Life Is Elsewhere is andante: in a calm, melancholy manner, it tells of the brief encounter between a middle-aged man and a young girl who has just been released from prison. The last part is prestissimo; it is written in very short chapters, and jumps from the dying Jaromil to Rimbaud, Lermontov, and Pushkin. I first thought of The Unbearable Lightness of Being in a musical way. I knew that the last part had to be pianissimo and lento: it focuses on a rather short, uneventful period, in a single location, and the tone is quiet. I also knew that this part had to be preceded by a prestissimo: that is the part entitled “The Grand March.”

On dreams and on Kafka:

There is nothing to decipher in Tereza’s dreams. They are poems about death. Their meaning lies in their beauty, which hypnotizes Tereza. By the way, do you realize that people don’t know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), et cetera. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself. Novalis knew that when he praised dreams. They “protect us against life’s monotony,” he said, they “liberate us from seriousness by the delight of their games.” He was the first to understand the role that dreams and a dreamlike imagination could play in the novel. He planned to write the second volume of his Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a narrative in which dream and reality would be so intertwined that one would no longer be able to tell them apart. Unfortunately, all that remains of that second volume are the notes in which Novalis described his aesthetic intention. One hundred years later, his ambition was fulfilled by Kafka. Kafka’s novels are a fusion of dream and reality; that is, they are neither dream nor reality. More than anything, Kafka brought about an aesthetic revolution. An aesthetic miracle. Of course, no one can repeat what he did. But I share with him, and with Novalis, the desire to bring dreams, and the imagination of dreams, into the novel. My way of doing so is by polyphonic confrontation rather than by a fusion of dream and reality. Dream-narrative is one of the elements of counterpoint.

On brevity and “the art of ellipses”:

In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length. Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is one of the two or three novels that I love most. But don’t ask me to admire its gigantic unfinished expanse! Imagine a castle so huge that the eye cannot take it all in at a glance. Imagine a string quartet that lasts nine hours. There are anthropological limits—human proportions—that should not be breached, such as the limits of memory. When you have finished reading, you should still be able to remember the beginning. If not, the novel loses its shape, its “architectonic clarity” becomes murky.

…if I had written seven independent novels, I would have lost the most important thing: I wouldn’t have been able to capture the “complexity of human existence in the modern world” in a single book. The art of ellipsis is absolutely essential. It requires that one always go directly to the heart of things.

On balance:

My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.

Originally published in the Paris Review, Issue 92.

Katie's dick

I don’t know why I was so happy to find out that Katie has a dick. It was a dream-come-true within a dream untrue.

She’s my step-sister. In my dream, we were on vacation, sharing a bed. We gave each other a sisterly, goodnight kiss on the cheek. Then a peck on the lips.

Next second, we’re tongue-kissing.

When she took off her pants I couldn’t believe it.

And yet, it was such a relief.

***

Before I ever met Katie, my mom told me about her. She lauded her as being “granola,” which is to say “really down to earth.” In my mother’s opinion, Katie is much more down to earth than me, too.

If my mom knew a thing about astrology she’d know that Katie was just an Aries.

I know several other Aries. They are of course all unique, but united in my mind by a common pragmatism. Even though they are all stunted, wrought with bespoke neuroses, and acting out their unresolved childhood issues just like the rest of us, these kinds of people present with a gas-powered forward-moving energy that is best described as “adult.”

Pair this with a beautiful girl who couldn’t take a flattering picture to save her life, and you get a magnetic individual, with maternal energy and a good sense of humor.

The Aires energy can feel a bit square. But don’t be surprised when they show up at a stranger’s party with a bag of blow to share.

When I met her I was sixteen and dating Julius. Julius and I broke up before he ever met Katie, who was still dating Paul. In the midst of my next relationship, Katie would break up with Paul and start dating Skyler. After six months Skyler and her would break up and Katie would start dating Caleb.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t imagined what it would be like if Katie and I both decided we were gay. What we would say to our parents. How they would react. If it would be weird. Bad.

All the women I’ve ever been attracted to were like Caity. She is my kind of woman. Beautiful but unextraordinary. Funny but generous. Crass yet clean. Honest yet private. She is a woman like me, but more down to earth.

One of the few times Katie and I hung out one-on-one, no parents or friends or boyfriends around, we got to talking about sex and relationships, as girls do. We talked about our controlling, volatile exes, our sex lives with our current partners. She opened up in a way I had never expected her to.

I said something about how there are certain women I am really attracted to.

And for some reason, I was totally caught off guard by her response. More caught off guard than the time she whipped out that bag of cocaine at a party.

“Oh, sometimes I feel like I’d really be happiest with a woman.”

I didn’t expect her to agree and I certainly didn’t expect her to double down. She went on to say that some of her female friendships have made her wonder if she’s gay.

This filled me with pleasure. And this is where I stumbled. I lost hold of my usual fluidity when it comes to conversation and became tongue-tied. I said yes, I agree, but what I wanted to say was I think I love you. Obviously, I couldn’t say that. So I just continued to repeat, in different ways, yes I agree. I can totally relate, I get what you mean.

In my head, I’m kicking myself for the distance that I am throwing between us with every word I say. I was like a violinist who accidentally started playing their solo twice and now was making it worse by continuing to go.

Her words felt like a come-on but couldn’t be interpreted as one for sure. One part of my mind knew that we were just two step-sisters, shooting the shit the way girls do: vulnerably.

But another part of me knew that this is the way two equivocally bicurious girls flirt with each other: through a wall of uncertainty. We pussyfoot until the window closes and life makes the decision for us.

I don’t know what the dream means anymore than I know what my feelings mean. I don’t know if Katie and I are really compatible. Am I gay for Katie or am I just attracted to what Katie represents? If I can’t be as down to earth as Katie, then the next best thing is to possess her. Yes, perhaps I am just projecting my self-esteem onto Katie. Perhaps I am playing out some unresolved psychological issues. Or perhaps we both are. And perhaps, for that reason, we’d be perfect for each other.

Hemingway: The writer is a well.

Knowledge, however, demands more responsibility of a writer and makes writing more difficult. Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job even though only a few hours a day are spent on the actual writing. A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill. I see I am getting away from the question, but the question was not very interesting.

The well is where your “juice” is. Nobody knows what it is made of, least of all yourself. What you know is if you have it, or you have to wait for it to come back.

An excerpt from George Plimpton’s interview with Earnest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21, The Paris Review