East is East, South is South, etc.

Just finished reading T.C. Boyle's East is East which includes a hilarious send up of a writing colony. Boyle's fictional colony is located near Savannah but otherwise quite like MacDowell, where he has been a resident....although I suspect it's also like Yadoo or any of the big colonies.

I heard about the book while I was at MacDowell but when I went to the Peterborough library to check it out I couldn't find it in the stacks. I approached the desk with some trepidation. MacDowell colonists are free to use the public facilities of the little town of Peterborough, including the library, but it's no secret we're mildly resented. Maybe because the colony pays no taxes, maybe because New Englanders are inherently suspicious of artsy-fartsy creative types. Maybe because the local rescue squad gets tired of running out to the colony for cases of alcohol poisoning, bear baiting, or half-hearted suicide attempts.

Anyway, the library looks over her half glasses at me and stonily informs me that someone from MacDowell took the book and never brought it back. She refrained from saying "What else would you expect?" but it hung in the air.

So now, a full year later, I have ordered the book off Amazon and I laughed out loud as I read parts, mostly about the over-the-top rivalry of two female novelists at the colony. In real life I never encountered that kind of cruelty at MacDowell. Our readings after dinner - while undoubtedly nerve wracking for whomever was presenting - were fun ways to get together and bounce around ideas and rarely sparked criticism or controversy. I may have been so far out of the loop of name artists there that I failed to see rivalry if there was any... but I don't think that's the case.

So why did I find Boyle's book so funny and true? Because I've certainly seen artistic envy in action before and I give him credit for having the balls to skewer it. (I give myself credit for using both "balls" and "skewer"in the same sentence.) Part of what made the book so biting is that these colonists are thrust by accident into the middle of a tragedy with international implications and they are so wound up with themselves and their pecking order at the colony that they completely fail to recognize what's happening. Until one of them decides it's her chance to move into the lucrative world of gossip journalism, that is.

God, you've got to love the colony world. It's so weird and self-absorbed and incestuous and out of touch with reality. I hope I get back into it soon.

Northward Ho

Today I sent off an application to Ledig House in upstate New York, a writing colony that seems to have a particularly international slant in that a large percentage of people attending come from outside the US. Starting the colony application process all over again has made me thoughtful...you have to answer those impossible Miss America-like questions such as "What is your book about?" or "How would you describe your creative process?" You're pulling together the recommendations and the SASEs and writing your little essays and then it begins to feel like you're the world's oldest and most hopeless high school senior applying to a "stretch school" like Harvard. Bottom line is: Everybody wants this. Why should they choose you?

But there was something different about it this time. Ledig House requested a sample of recently published work and I just took an advance reader copy of the book and plunked it in the envelope. That sure as hell was easier than torturing myself with some 25 page writing sample. And I was also thinking it was sort of a strategic thing to do - hard to say who will be reading the applications but it's another way to get my book out there, to have someone outside my small circle come in contact with it. For so long, being a writer has been about explaining what I want to be but at some point - maybe just holding the advance reader copy in my hands - it became more about what I already am.

So I sent off the book and said "I want to write a sequel to this."

There's also the matter of when to go. The book comes out March 29, 2010 and I feel like the Mayans, like my calendar suddenly ends with a set date. I honestly cannot imagine anythng beyond the publication of the book. For all I know on March 30, 2010 the sun will rise in the west. My experiences with my published friends has given me clear warning that problably nothing will change....the book will come out and my life will go on pretty much as it always has. To expect life changing events to follow publication is foolish. The cruel part is that your publisher wants you to be "available" for the first three months following the hardcover publication of a novel, presumably to deal with the flood of interview requests and reviews and demands for appearnaces on Oprah that are statistically unlikely to come. Hard to say what "available" means, but I think most writers interpret it as "at home, waiting for the phone to ring, and not working on anything else."

I know that I can't do this. I have to make plans for April of next year....and May and June and all the months beyond. So I hope that Ledig House says yes. Or MacDowell or Yaddo or Jentel or UCross or somebody.