With Writers Like These Who Needs Enemies?
...We need another word for frenemies that means "people who actually hate each other but exist in the same writer scene and live in Boston"
I used to beat myself up a little bit because I didn’t have more writer friends. Nobody to confide in after sitting long hours typing stuff like this and sending it to nowhere, knowing it would get read by no one in particular and received by nobody.
It’s a tough profession, but beyond that, it’s a tough profession where there's really no finish line (you die) nor any tangible rewards (you die broke and unknown.)
I found myself early on in my career in newsrooms, and I figured those were writers enough, but I’ve come to find out that journalists are not writers. They’re different branches of the same dysfunctional and always-needing-attention tree. Same kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus—but different species altogether.
I toyed (as all writers do when they hit The Writing Wall*) with the idea of going back to school and getting an MFA, but then I googled “what’s it like MFA,” and that solved the problem.
(*The Writing Wall btw is sending multiple works out to agents/small publishers/literary sites/soon-to-be-shuttered websites and the occasional New Yorker submission because Andy Borowitz sucks, and why not let me suck just as badly—and learning over and over and over again that really, there’s no need for any of your words, and even if you were clever that day about this thing or the other, someone more clever beat you to the punch. And that’s it, that’s the game. Realizing this and folding yourself in twenty pieces and trying to disappear into a bake-off show is The Writing Wall.)
So my compromise to myself came almost a decade ago when I decided to go to a writers’ conference. There I would make both inroads AND writer friends. I chose a location close to me that happened to be one of the most beautiful, if not dramatic, settings on Earth: Big Sur.
And their conference also happened to specialize in the genre I was working in: A middle-grade book that is basically an update of the Stratemeyer Syndicate books (Think Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins) but starring kids dealing not only with a more today-ish mystery but racial and economic inequality, split homes, the rise of fascism, and impending climate doom—sounds like a blast, I know (I get it, I need to get my pitch down better.)
I went to this thing, and it was three days of gloomy Big Sur mornings, which for someone like me is absolutely inspiring. The conference started out with the ringleader Magnus, a swarthy Swedish program-directing crooner who greeted us all with a little tune on his acoustic, the rubbing of the strings echoing into our writerly souls over soggy scrambled eggs and gummy slices of honeydew. It sounds much more cringe than it was.
It was there, at breakfast, where I realized I was (beyond Magnus, who had already caught the eyes of more than a few participants) The Only Male in the Room. Welp, there was one other guy, an older gentleman who wrote a horny-porny “Teen Space Quest" that I’m sure got bought right up.
Overpowering even the bins of bacon and sausage and home fries was the waft of Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey, and whatever the smell is when your Stevie Nicks collection Chico’s blouse comes fresh out of the dry cleaning bag.
The breakouts were ...pretty brutal and not because anyone was petty or unsupportive, quite the opposite really; I found my little folder of manuscripts with suggestions in the margins not too long ago during a garage clean out, and all the notes were like “Great, appropriately alliterative, and want to read more (!).” And “This character reminds me of my nieces—keep going (!).” And the verbal comments were even more encouraging, stuff that kept me warm when I skipped the last sessions of the afternoons and ran up toward a waterfall and a nearby peak.
As I later found out, there are two sides (well, there’s actually a bajillion) to writers. One is the public-facing “supportive” side, and the other is the darker, like whatever the word for beyond dark and sinister is... they’re a few clicks past that, other side, known as What Other Writers Really Think of You, Another Writer.
As cliche as it is to say the tea was definitely spilled all over the pages of a ho-hum October weekend New York Times Magazine in a long-form takedown, about a writer named Dawn, a Boston-based writers’ group called GrubStreet (of course, why do all writers’ cabals and college improv groups have similar-sounding names?), a Facebook sub-group comprised of the same members, a kidney donation, a “heartfelt letter” to the group, this fucking heartbreaking and VERY writer-centric line, “After many years, [Dawn “The Kidney Person”} Dorland, still teaching, had yet to be published,” no (or tacit) recognition of her on the Facebook group about the voluntary donation of a vital organ, a run-in at (guess where?) at a writers’ conference btw Dawn and a member of the group, and then a reading at a little book store in Boston by that same OTHER writer of her short story ABOUT A KIDNEY DONATION!!!
And that's just episode one of season one. It goes on from there (and on and on) into the subworld of other writers’ conferences, more Facebook messages, texts, emails, and personal meet-ups back and forth, other writers’ work dealing with the same subject matter, Dawn's own unpublished novel, other writers’ workshops, cease-and-desist letters to a Boston-based book festival, and eventually (because this is how it always ends) lawyers and a defamation suit blah blah blah.
Anyway, read the whole thing because 1) It’s pretty much like reading an episode of The Love Boat that would get pitched and then rejected because there’s much too much unrealistic chemistry and chicanery going on, 2) Dawn is now published(!!!) and will likely will get her streaming deal and 3) Maybe never move to Boston (you knew this already), ESPECIALLY if you’re a writer and donations—any kind—are always best kept to yourself, ESPECIALLY if you’re going to write about them.
So, the reality is my Big Sur writing conference did not cause (or bring back out) any trauma. I got my three minutes to pitch to a couple of agents who acted interested (they weren’t), and then I spent the next eight years workshopping and revising the book, which I’m happy to say is temporary on top of a slush pile somewhere on this very day.
Did I make any writer friends? No, not that time. Not at all. There were numbers and emails exchanged and hugs at the end, and overall it was like when you wake up after a night at a smokey bar, some of my shirts never really lost that scent of flop sweat and high-end cologne and industrial tetrachloroethylene.
But there was something about it, that world; I could only stand at the edge and glimpse into, never tempted to dive in. Maybe I wasn’t ready then, maybe I’ll never be, but at least I figured out then I don’t have the intestinal fortitude (or the missing organ) to be a true writer friend.
Dodgers vs. Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals finished the MLB regular season, winning 17 games in a row in September, but the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers were just as dominant to cap off the year with a 22-7 run in September and October (the Cardinals were 23-9 in that same timespan.)
It’s not a fair outcome for the Dodgers, who are the Best Team in Baseball 1(a) tying a franchise record of 106 wins and falling just one W short of the San Francisco Giants, who set their own 139-year franchise record on Sunday’s last game of the season with 107 wins.
If MLB is going to go ahead and do a playoff system with wildcards and one game-play ins and install the universal DH, they might as well stack rank clubs by record and put the one and two teams in opposite brackets.
There’s no way, in other words, that the Dodgers should be facing a play-in or one-and-done elimination scenario.
But that’s the rules (for now: the dominance of the Dodgers—along with the fact that they’re the only West Coast team that pulls any kind of national ratings—will provide just as good a case study as any during winter talks to switch up playoff rules). So off to Chavez Ravine we go tonight for a do-or-die, all-in, loser-go-home tilt.
Los Angeles went 106-56 in the regular season, 16 games ahead of the Cardinals. St. Louis makes an argument for getting hot at the right time, but the reality is they’re outmatched.
The Cardinals’ starter Adam Wainwright had an incredible career-defining season with 17 wins and an ERA of just over three. But the Dodges’ midseason acquisition Max Sherzer has been practically unhittable (1.98 ERA in 12 starts in blue; pretty much enough to almost erase the Trevor Bauer fuck-up from fans’ and baseball’s mind—operative word: almost.)
Vegas is so confident that Sherzer will dominate, and the Dodgers’ veteran been-there-done-that clutch playoff hitting (the best in the league) will fall into place even though they’re the play-in game, they’re still the World Series favorite at +400.
There is one thing to note about the presumptive Cy Young award winner in his start tonight, as good as he’s been with the Dodgers in the second half, he’s had a shaky last two starts: He was shelled for six runs (five earned) and 11 hits in 5 1/3 innings against the Padres a week ago and he gave up five runs in five innings against the Colorado Rockies six days before that.
But even if Mighty Max goes down early, the Dodgers, among other things, are an outstanding late-inning team. I think about the home-run binge they went on just six days ago in an 11-9 comeback bid over San Diego to keep them within two-game striking distance of the Giants, punishing the Padres' relief in the late innings to notch another victory from a three-run deficit in the eighth.
Take the Dodgers +225 over Cardinals 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5 at Dodger Stadium
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