writing and the internet and my novel

i write everyday

i'm been working on my novel

here's a typical 'session' of me working on my novel

1. get coffee and drink half of it

2. check e-mail

3. check some other things

4. check my other e-mail and download the manuscript of my novel

5. get up and go to the bathroom

6. sit back down at the computer

7. check e-mail

8. maximize the manuscript of the novel in microsoft word

9. begin to read it

10. feel a little uninspired

11. check e-mail

12. feel bad that there are no new e-mails

13. think about maximizing the manuscript of the novel in microsoft word

14. think briefly about my future

15. feel a little doomed

16. drink the rest of the coffee

17. look on the internet for something to inspire me

18. google news my favorite authors

19. check e-mail

20. use the bathroom

21. feel a little hungry

22. go outside and buy a banana, and tea

23. eat the banana, drink the tea

24. use the bathroom

25. back at the computer, check my e-mail

26. feel social and good from the coffee and the tea and from having just been outside; answer my e-mails

27. maximize and scroll through my novel, quickly, without actually thinking about or acknowledging it really

28. scroll to the top and begin to read my novel

29. notice that my eyes are unfocusing a little

30. think about other aspects of my life

31. think about my short-story collection

32. focus my eyes

33. stretch my neck

34. stand up and stretch my neck and arms

35. select-all my novel and change the font size to eight and single-space it all, to gain perspective

36. scroll down, quickly, like a game

37. stop suddenly

38. read over a section

39. delete a comma that i had added the day before

40. delete an adjective that i had added the day before

41. delete some other things that i had added the day before

42. go to the part that i consistently enjoy working on and write one or two sentences and add em-dash parentheticals to a few places

43. rewrite those one or two sentences for a long time

44. finally combine the two sentences into one sentence and rewrite that sentence and then finally get a really good sentence there

45. feel really good and social after writing that sentence that was really good

46. reply to some more e-mails because of feeling really good and social

47. send some e-mails to people

48. go on AOL instant messager to talk to people

49. talk to people for a while

50. use the bathroom

51. google and then technorati some of my favorite authors

52. begin to feel a little tired and uncreative

53. look at my novel

54. tell myself to spend one hour straight only working on the novel

55. acknowledge to myself that it won't happen

56. check e-mail

57. tell myself one hour starting now

58. get up to use the bathroom

59. realize that the music i have on is getting annoying

60. turn off the music

61. feel really agitated and hopeless

62. threaten myself to work on the novel or else

63. begin to read the beginning of the novel

64. realize that that sentence i thought earlier was good is derivative and not even that good and go to where it is and look at it and then delete it

65. go to 'edit' and do 'undo-delete'

66. copy the sentence and paste it at the end of the manuscript

67. go over all the 30,000 words pasted at the end of the novel that i am not going using for the novel

68. find that some of those things are really good

69. try to re-insert some of those things into the currently 10,000 word novel

70. tell myself i shouldn't trust myself to do this right now, since the coffee was a while ago and right now i won't think that anything is good, overall, no matter what, in life

71. type 'PRINT THIS OUT AND ORGANIZE IT' on the top of the manuscript

72. print it out

73. check my e-mail

74. use the bathroom

75. e-mail the novel to myself

76. read over some drafts of poems i'm working on that are in my gmail's 'drafts' section

77. work on those a little

78. read over all the sixty or so 'drafts' of e-mails that i have

79. delete some of those

80. go outside and buy another tea

81. decide to work on my novel for thirty minutes straight or else

82. download my novel

83. check e-mail

84. google myself

85. google my favorite authors

86. google my name and the names of my favorite authors

87. maximize my novel and think about screaming

88. check e-mail

89. go to amazon.com and read reviews of books by lorrie moore

etc.

also, i left out 'check how many people have visited my blog,' 'read other people's blogs and make amusing, irrelevant comments,' 'put my head down on the desk and listen to one or two songs without thinking,' and some other things

curtis sittenfeld

she wrote prep

and when she was 21 or 22 she wrote 1993-94 (click on it and read it)

one of my favorite short stories

it has two endings

the chronological ending, where the main character is in the 'now' of the story

It is 1994. She tries to imagine where she will be a year from now, and she thinks, Probably here. The idea of changing her life in any substantial way seems laborious and unlikely. It is so hard to envision. It would require, almost, for her to be a different person, and she'd do that, she'd change, if she knew where to begin. But she doesn't.

and the...other ending, where the writing of the story actually ends, which is one year earlier, the day before 1993

She was completely alone. But in a strange way, her loneliness contained its opposite; everywhere around her lay the possibility that things would change in the year ahead. She drew closer to the Hungarian woman, so close she could have rested her palm on the woman's back. "Are you happy?" the woman asked again, this time more insistently, and at that moment heading up Newbury Street, Hannah was on the verge of saying yes.

so i read that and then my brain processes what has just happened

hannah was completely alone, my brain processes, yet she was almost-happy

and the story ends

and i quickly think, 'okay, so, an almost-happy ending that is actually sort of sad, since she is completely alone'

then i even more quickly think, 'wait...that was a year ago'

then in a sort of rush i think about the following (and somewhere in this, and this happens very fast, within one or two seconds or something, i stop thinking and just sort of feel the ending, which enters me, and because the story ends right before 1993 and begins right before 1994, i feel not just the ending inside of me, but the entire story, and when i say 'feel' i mean that my brain is not thinking at all, i am just 'feeling,' which is sort of like in real life: when you have a good day and you say, 'that was a good day,' instead of saying something like, 'that was a good day because it had good dialogue and symbolism and a leit-motif that started at breakfast and culminated in that metaphor that happened at the end of the day, when i ate cold pizza and went to sleep' or whatever):

where hannah is now, in 1994, she wants to be a different person but does not know how to begin

and she is, now, in 1994, thinking about a year ago, in 1993, when she was completely alone, and almost-happy

and how she was almost-happy because of the possibility that things might change in the year ahead

but now it is a year ahead, 1994, and nothing has changed

so in hannah's mind, then, in 1994, she is thinking about 1993, and is (conjecture from here on out; what was not on the page but what i felt; and did not think, but that later, now, thinking back, can think) coming to this conclusion

that her almost-happiness, then, in 1993, was because of something that did not happen, which is her changing from 1993-94, and so was, in a way, not even real, a kind of deception

and so hannah, in 1994, must feel sorry for her 1993 self, who was almost-happy

and if she, in 1994, feels sorry for her 1993 self who was completely alone and almost-happy

then what must she feel for her current, 1994, self, who is completely alone and not happy but just wanting to change into a different person and knowing that she probably won't?

the ending of this story is so emotionally complex

that it transcends happiness or sadness...when i think about the ending i can only think about it briefly

after i give the ending a very brief sort of attention

the entire thing and then the whole of the story sort of just enter me

and i just feel it all

and cannot think about it anymore

because i am feeling it, the entire story, which has entered me

and i don't feel sad or happy or anything

it just feels like i need to go out into the world and be nice to people and never hurt anyone and never be annoyed or irritated

but not really that either

it's more a feeling of...something else

an intense, neutral feeling

and i feel something like this extremely rarely when reading

yet this story didn't win an O'Henry Prize or a Pushcart Prize and it wasn't in Best American Short Stories

and wasn't anthologized anywhere else that i know of

and so won't ever be taught in MFAs

and will be forgotten

i guess this is because

1. the main character in the story did not have any 'real problems'

2. the main character did not 'change' and did not 'learn'

3. the story was about white people interacting with other white people

4. the story was not about any of the religions

5. the story was not set in a foreign country

6. the story was not about racism or cultural identity

7. the story was not about death or grieving

8. the story did not have drugs or anti-depressant medicine or anti-anxiety medicine

9. the story did not have politics, war, terrorism, poverty

the story was not important enough

tao lin (interviews)

go here to read what i have said

a tragic honesty

out of the two or three biographies i've read i've never read one where the tone is one of wry, ironic detachment

in this biography of richard yates the tone is one of wry, ironic detachment

there is a deliberateness on the part of blake bailey, the author of this biography, to make things funny, to follow long, excruciating passages of richard yates having seizures or whatever with short, deadpan, ironic sentences that consistently made me laugh

i had always sort of avoided Richard Yates because people described Revolutionary Road as heartbreaking and sad and sentimental and i didn't really want to read those things

no one said funny or wry, so i thought that it would be unreadable, because people always say that whatever book is funny and wry

finally i read it

Revolutionary Road is funny and wry

it is satirical, has a forcedly unsentimental, almost doomed, tone, and a voice that is sarcastic and detached and amused and critical and resigned and deadpan

richard yates is not the dull, safe, suburban, unfunny, unintelligent, uncontroversial writer that i had somehow assumed him to be based on his association with realism and 'clear' prose, and based on what i've read about him and his books, mostly on the internet

i shouldn't assume

richard yates is clinically insane, drunk, against just about everything, loud, shy, hilarious, playful, a shit-talker, kind, sympathetic, destitute, intelligent to the point of thinking that other supposed normal intelligent people are idiots, miserable, lonely, confused, depressed, controversial, six foot three

and the tone of the biography is also all that

and if you read this book, you will treat the following people better, maybe

old people, 'insane' people, people who go around mumbling things like they're insane, people who appear disheveled and dirty, people who are alone all the time and appear 'insane' or 'inhuman'

i'll quote some passages now

[about a bad review he got by anatole broyard]

Yates quipped that Broyard's reviewer bio [...] should read, Anatole Broyard wanted to fuck Richard Yates's girlfriend in the early Sixties.

[about his novel The Easter Parade]

When a friend tried to compliment him on the novel's "consistent symbolism" [...] Yates was almost aggresively dismissive--as he put it, the book was "autobiography" rather than "allegory": "Emily Fucking Grimes is me," he laughed.

[about richard yate's apartment]

"It was so bare and awful," said Peggy Rambach [...] "Dick was the least bourgeois person I ever met," said Mark Costello [...] As for that particular apartment, Costello summed it up as "fucking grim." [...] Robin Metz remembers staring at the circle of crushed cockroaches around Yate's swivel desk chair..."

[about his "skid-row figure" appearance (because of his constant drinking of alcohol, smoking of cigarettes)]

...he was morbidly conscious of the way people stared at him on a daily basis, as if he were a curious and disturbing spectacle. "How do I look," he asked [...] after his ejection from the Parker House. "Is something wrong with me?"

[about a girl he sort of saw sometimes, the publicist for The Easter Parade.]

"What the hell did you get me up to Boston for, you bitch?" Yates would turn on her. "You're just a groupie!"

[about a reading he was invited to where no one showed up]

He sat in the silent lecture hall while his two sponsors gazed at their watches... Yates suggested they adjourn to a bar.

[about a letter of apology Yates wrote to his psychiatrist of many years (Yates had called him stupid and screamed at him)]

"Take care of those two beautiful girls," [Yates] closed, referring to a portrait in Burr's office of his young son and daughter.

[self explanatory]

"All I want is a story in the goddamned New Yorker!" [Yates'd] rage when discussing the ups and downs of his career; also he'd started referring to staple writers for the magazine with an almost reflexive opprobrium--particularly "John fucking Cheever" and "John fucking Updike."

[about being rejected by Esquire]

Yates responded to this latest rejection by calling [Gordon Lish, Esquire editor] on the phone and abusively accusing him of favoring only "name" writers; finally he threatened to "get on a plane and shoot [Lish]"

[some more quotes]

Other than Milch, Yates's only companion during these months was a three-hundred-pound recovering heroin addict named Larry, who was dying of AIDS.

Sheer desperation was the only thing that kept Yates going. He was tired, anxious, and broke, in no condition either to teach or write at anything like his old level, yet the only alternative was death. His students' work was mostly bad, and Yates couldn't think of anything to say about it; he began to take double doses of tranquilizers [...]

Around this time Yates had a seizure in the foyer of the Crossroads.

For an ashtray he used a large salad bowl [...]

When not in the hospital or seated at his desk, Yates spent his days in an alcoholic fog.

"It's okay, we just had a little seizure here," a medic said as they loaded Yates onto the gurney.

[a month before he died]

...he called Bob Lacy and asked the man if he'd like to know what he, Yates, had done the night before; Lacy said he would. "Get this," Yates wheezed. "I got smashed last night, and then you know what I did? I sat here on this couch in my lousy apartment reading the first chapter of Revolutionary Road out loud to myself and crying like a baby...Tears running down my cheeks. Can you believe that?"

some statistics

i'm not sure why i'm doing this

i guess it's interesting

but i'm not sure if it's a good idea

i do know that it has nothing to do with depressing books

still, i feel like this is something i'd probably be interested in, if it were an idea being talked about by other people, in the distance, or something, which it isn't

blogs who respond to none of my e-mails and don't link to this site

http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

http://rockslinga.blogspot.com/

http://www.theoldhag.com

http://www.tinglealley.com

blogs who respond to some of my e-mails but don't link to this site

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/

http://moorishgirl.com/

blogs who respond to some of my e-mails and link to this site

http://esposito.typepad.com

blogs who respond to most or all of my e-mails and link to this site

http://chamm.blogspot.com

http://maudnewton.com/

http://mobylives.com/

i'll probably delete this post soon

i feel like i've done something wrong somehow

rejections of a story i wrote, ranked from most personal to most impersonal, with commentary

i am interested in reading other people's rejection letters

i sometimes google 'rejection' and 'mid-american review' or whatever

i will post some of my rejections here

here are selected rejections (e-mailed ones) of one of my more controversial stories

the band leftover crack is featured in the story

and their lyrics are quoted a little

their lyrics that are quoted are

mcdonald's will bloom as the major competition
between jesus and the devil for this government's religion
people so caught up in the freedom that they see
while america's fucking over every single country

Fuck America
Fuck America
Fuck America
Fuck America

the story has 9/11 in it

another thing the story has is the idea that people don't have free will

it also has kids who talk shit about that band good charlotte

here are the rejection letters and what i sincerely liked about each

Dear Tao:

Thanks for sending us “Cull the Steel Heart, Melt the Ice one, Love the Weak Thing; Say Nothing of Consolation, but Irrelevance, Disaster, and Nonexistence; Have no Hope or Hate—Nothing; Ruin Yourself Exclusively, Completely, and Whenever Possible.” I’m sorry for the long delay in getting back to you. As you know, One Story is run entirely by volunteers, and as a result it takes a long time for anything to get done.

There was a lot to like in this story, especially the title! The writing had a great deal of energy and some really sharp moments to it, but in the end we decided it was a bit too hard to follow for our readers. I’m afraid we’ll have to pass.

Sorry to send bad news after all this time, but we were impressed with your writing, both here and in our short story contest, and hope you’ll try us again soon!

Best wishes,

Hannah Tinti

i like this letter from one story because of its honesty

that they decided to pass because the story would be too hard to follow for their readers

i would be too afraid to admit something like that

people would accuse me of 'selling-out' somehow, i would fear

but really it's a legitimate problem

for example, if i had a literary magazine, i wouldn't publish thomas pynchon

i also like that the entire title of the story was written there, and that something was said about it, the title

i also like the two exclaimation marks

i really like it when there's an exclaimation mark at the end of a long sentence

it gives it a sudden speed and makes me feel like a kid again, for a moment, before i realize how i've been manipulated

Dear Tao,

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read your stories. I am afraid they do not quite work for us at this moment. However, please keep us in mind and if you have any new work, feel free to email me.
Thank you and have a great weekend.

Best,
Yiyun

this was from the forthcoming A Public Space

i like that she told me to have a great weekend

it was the fourth of july weekend, then, i think

and i like the conversational "feel free to email me"

Dear Tao,

Thank you for your submission to Night Train. "Cull the Steel Heart" is exquisitely written and a fine portrayal of post-9/11 angst. Though I enjoyed it very much, I'm afraid it's not quite right for Night Train. I didn't feel the many strands you had going here--9/11, the relationship with Dana, music, homelessness, Colin's emotional ennui-- were successfully brought together at the end. I also felt some of the energy was lost during the extensive narration of the concert.

This is a purely subjective opinion, however. This is excellent work, and I'm sure other editors will feel differently. Good luck placing this, and please try us again in the future.

Cami Park
Associate Editor

i like the specificity of this one

Dear Tao Lin,

Thank you for participating in the SLS/St. Petersburg-05 annual literary contest. We at SLS were impressed by the strength and overall quality of your work -- and would like to offer you a fellowship in the amount of 20% off the two-week program tuition cost (or 25% off for four weeks).
Please let us know if that is something you might be interested in.

We look forward to hearing from you.

All Best,

SUMMER LITERARY SEMINARS
St. Petersburg, Russia/Nairobi, Kenya
www.sumlitsem.org

i like the parenthetical note, the 25% off thing

Dear Tao,

Thank you for submitting your work to the Missouri Review. Thought it doesn't meet our current needs we appreciate the opportunity to consider it for publication. We wish you the best of luck placing this elsewhere.

Sincerely,
The Editors

this one seems like a form letter

but look

"though," is misspelled as "thought"

do they type all their rejections?

or do their form-letters strategically have typos in them, so as to give them a personal, all-humans-make-mistakes feel?

We're sorry to say that this manuscript is not right for us. Unfortunately, we are receiving so many submissions that it is impossible for us to reply more specifically. We thank you for the chance to consider your work.

The Editors

this one was from the new yorker

i think i lied to the new yorker

i think i put that i had an MFA and that my stories were forthcoming in the paris review

i think it's okay to lie to the new yorker

anyway, i've found out that they have three levels of form-letters, i think

because other rejections i've gotten from them are

We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.

The Editors

and

We're sorry to say that this manuscript is not right for us, in spite of its evident merit. Unfortunately, we are receiving so many submissions that it is impossible for us to reply more specifically. We thank you for the chance to consider your work.

The Editors

the third form-letter is the same as the first, only they take out "...in spite of its evident merit..."

but the second form-letter is completely different than the other two

terrorism and reading and writing and thinking

in writing, i guess one mostly tries to be as specific, lucid, and true as possible

one asks why, and keeps asking why, until one reaches a state of mind where all things are equal, are the same, where all there is is just one thing that wants to avoid suffering and get at happiness

and this happens, in writing, by thinking hard, by thinking detachedly, objectively, without pride, ego, self, opinion, without cliches, catch-phrases, without using anything said in the $$-driven media, on TV, in magazines (anything said quickly, said with influence from $$, and said with an arbitrary point-of-view), by thinking without ideas, points of views, categories, or preconceptions such as

'i'

'we'

'us'

'them'

'good'

'bad'

'evil'

now

thinking hard about what happened in london today

(and thinking without vagueness, abstraction, or the use of arbitrary words)

fifty or something people were killed

which is sad, of course

but a lot more people are killed each day in iraq, africa, afghanistan, etc.

and a lot more people die of poverty and disease each day

and the world's richest 1% recieve as much income as the world's poorest 57%

and what is the difference between killing someone with a bomb and killing someone by smoking a cigarette (cancer) and killing someone by negligence?

objectively, maybe, in the end, there is no difference

one person dies; one person dies; one person dies

in the second and third examples, the narrowness and smallness of human perception of time, space, etc., the preconception of an ego, of 'i,' of being separate from that other person, and other things, distorts what has actually objectively happened

and what is the difference between killing someone with a bomb in order to change the world and a Buddhist who kills himself with fire in order to change the world?

i don't know

one person dies; one person dies

the terrorist and the Buddhist, i believe, both want a world in which every person is happy and free, unoppressed, equal, etc.

so i don't know

and is the life of a rich person more important than that of a poor person or that of a terrorist?

if you think hard enough, then doesn't 'important' become a meaningless word?

an arbitrarily created word?

don't the rich person and the poor person and the terrorist all want to avoid suffering and get at happiness?

aren't all live things in the world the same in that all that is desired is to avoid suffering and get at happiness?

and 'evil,' etc.

aren't those created words that cause distortion, increase 'i' thinking, and move people away from a Zen state of mind?

and aren't these all facts?

that the answer to all these is 'yes'?

i think maybe they're all facts

and i don't mean to be self-righteous

and i don't feel self-righteous or anything

just sad, ashamed, confused

and ...

knowing that the conclusion reached by so many philosophers and writers is that confusion is the highest knowledge

and knowing that 'i'-lessness is probably impossible, that consciousness maybe is inextricable from having an ego, that a Zen state, where all is one, is probably either impossible or a euphemism for 'death,' that probably nothing in this post will console anyone who is dead, who is sad, who has been victimized, etc.

... very insecure in anything i've said in this post