marya hornbacher

Poetry & prose

Marya Hornbacher — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:42:49 GMT

...On the matter of poets beloved by some of you: Here's a few from Laurie, in the field of the contemporary poets...

Mark Strand (a favorite of mine)
Marie Howe (ditto)
Stephen Dunn (possibly in my top five—introduced to him years ago by the infamous Lora K.)
Billy Collins (best guy for a title ever, in my book—Picnic, Lightning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room—how do you beat THAT?)
George Djanikian (new to me...you?)

Calling for more...step up, folks.

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Got a TON of emails in praise of Regina Specter—we are officially her fan club. Have put her on 3 recent mixes. Listening to them alllllll the time.

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Ok, what's the story with the Best American Poetry 2007? Anyone else check this one out? I recommended the whole Best of... series last fall, BUT, my friends, I'm not at all sure about this one. Guest Ed. Heather McHugh. Her intro possibly one of the weirdest of all time--all about wordplay, and too precious by far, to my tastes. The poems veer close to the language school of poetry, and to my mind play closer to the surface of the page than the depth of the poem.

CAVEAT: it is ENTIRELY possible that I'm just too damn dumb to get the stuff.

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The poetry jag—the output part—has ended, which was necessary because I needed to get on with the business of pitching the new prose work. Had the MOST killer writing day Sunday. Did that thing I love to do—moved into my new favorite coffee shop (for Minneapolitans—Common Roots, on Lyndale) and just SAILED through a proposal for a proposal. No word on that yet, sorry. Will keep you posted. As I've said, it's still all very embryonic at this point, so I'm a mumbling idiot on it anyway. While that thing cooks with the people it cooks with, I'm working on a couple of articles. Good to get the reportorial juices flowing again. Feels like I haven't used that part of my brain in about ten years. In fact, it HAS been quite a few...cross your fingers in hopes that I actually know how to DO it anymore...if not, my friends, we have a problem, because I have assignments and deadlines and contracts to meet...

So like I said: it's all about prose right now. The poetry jag resulted in 13 new pieces, and in December I'm going to sit down on my floor in a pile of paper and start submitting to lit mags. We shall see...

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In other news: so very little news it's almost newsworthy how little is going on. In one of those work phases where I'm not totally sure there's a world out there, but I hear there is...Somebody fill me in.

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YUCK: We're moving. WHAT A DRAG. The dogs will absolutely lose their little (really little) minds. Soon I'll be buried in boxes, unhanging art, packing up the library (oh, god, perish the thought....last time I moved it was 27 boxes of books alone...say, some of my friends think it's weird I organize my books by genre, alphabetically— I don't think it's weird AT ALL—how else am I supposed to find anything??), and all this RIGHT in the middle of the fall writing spell. Fall and winter are my best writing times, and I'm going to lose a month of it to being frizazzled. Drat.

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Little known fact: Fargo, North Dakota has a SERIOUSLY kick-ass literary scene. Who knew? Check it out if you're ever near the area...

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And that's it for me today, people. See? I really AM blogging again. Ppptttthttt! Cheers to all!

Peace,
M

Coming home

webmaster — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:27:36 GMT

Well, folks, I put away my suitcase.

I realized it had been sitting open on a chair in my bedroom, in various states of pack and unpack, since March. It's what, August? It's not all tour, of course--that ended at the close of May. But my own life has taken me all over the durn place this summer. Now the suitcase is put away, and my spinning head (Exorcist-style) is slowing down, and I'm finally able to take in what's going on around me. Which, in truth, is not much--and that's just fine with me.

So I find it's a lazy late summer, hot and sticky where I am, people out in droves at the coffee shops and outdoor cafes, on their front stoops and standing on the corner, puttering in their gardens, walking around the lakes. It's a perfect time of year to grab my laptop and hit my favorite coffee shops to people watch and get some work done. Work has felt so scatterbrained the last few months--working here, in a New York hotel room, in a Starbucks in Florida, a golf resort somewhere else (don't ask), never really knowing where I am, feeling like I have to wrestle my brain to the ground in order to get it to produce anything coherent. But now, hooray, I'm back at my desk at home, and the work is coming along like gangbusters. Feels awfully good. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time writing notes in longhand, which I never do, and I'm going through at least one pen every few days. Either I talk too much (entirely likely) or there's a lot brewing. Who knows.

I'm reading a ton. Latest is Eat, Pray, Love--any thoughts on that one? And an old friend just reminded me of two books by the brilliant novelist Kirsty Gunn--Rain and The Keepsake. Both incredible, and if you haven't found her yet, find her now. I'm dying to start Going Native, by Steven Wright, kind of a modern On the Road (which I just reread--good grief--what do you guys think of that one? I'm mixed). Find myself thumbing through a lot of e.e.cummings again lately, and FINALLY catching up on my blasted New Yorkers. Have also been madly making mixes. Latest favorites are The Weepies, Glen Hansard, Regina Specter (lord but I've fallen in love with her stuff), and a few others. Anyone, anyone? Thoughts on these? CALL FOR SUGGESTIONS: I'm dying for new material. Groups/solo artists I need to know about?

So that's the scoop from a place relatively near Lake Woebegone. More soon.

WEBCAST TONIGHT 5:30 PM Central Time

webmaster — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:57:40 GMT

WEBCAST LINK

Quick pub date post

Marya Hornbacher — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:54:03 GMT

Hello, all!

Since the Early Show has been moved, I got to sleep in till a whopping 4:30 a.m., which felt DIVINE. Of course, in classic tour fashion, moving the show means I'll be flying back to NY after I've left for another city to do it a different day, which will entail a very early morning indeed, which will not feel divine. So it goes. I am cultivating some very impressive circles under my eyes, I have to say.

A shout-out to all the kind people who took the time to listen to the Diane Rehm show. I so enjoyed hearing your questions and comments, and I appreciate you tuning it.

So it's pub date. Weird, weird, weird, exciting and weird. I've got a couple of interviews today, then a pre-reading hangout with my dear friends who are coming to NY for the reading, and then the reading itself. I can't wait to kick it all off, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing all of you who'll be there tonight--as well as all of you who'll be at the readings across the country as I move west.

All my thanks to all you folks who have supported my career over the years; and thanks to the newbies just now beginning to read my books. I'll do my best to write you some good ones.

Big cheers,
Marya

EARLY SHOW MOVED

Marya Hornbacher — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:07:30 GMT

Hey all,

The CBS Early Show orginally scheduled for April 9 (today) has been MOVED to a date TBA (likely later this week or early next). Will let you know when I have the correct air time.

M

New Blog Site for tour info and other musings

webmaster — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:54:00 GMT

Tour Blog

Here we go...and a media update

Marya Hornbacher — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:14:43 GMT

It's 4:00 a.m. on Monday morning, and in 24 hours (well, 25) I will try to do something about my hair (always an effort) and get on a plane for New York. Just wrapped up the talk I'm giving at Yale on April 4th, and fear I have totally confused myself and will accidentally give a lecture on one of the many things I have obsessed about while manic over the years, like (relatively recently) basketball, which I suspect will not be popular as a topic for a Master's Tea. Wish me luck on that.

Wednesday's when it really begins: I'll be on the radio show “Writers on Writing” on the Bay Area's NPR station KUCI-FM, 9:30 a.m., April 2. It's a killer show, and I'm thinking by then I'll have organized my brain enough to actually talk about writing, rather than basketball. We can only hope. The next day I've got my first reading at RJ Julia Bookstore in New Haven, CT. I have, as of this moment, no blasted idea what to read, and have strangely forgotten the entire book. I'll come up with something.

Note on schedule changes:
-Pace University, April 1, has been cancelled.
-The Seattle Town Hall "Forum on the Future of Health," on April 22, is ON. I'll let you know the time ASAP. If you're local, don't miss this. I intend to say at least one interesting thing, and will be wearing cool shoes.

Update on media thangs: this will change frequently, and I'll keep you posted on additions as they come in. West Coast media is just barely started as yet, so you West Coasters, just keep your hats on.

Week of April 7 (pub week): Interviews in/on

Time.com
GalleyCat
People Magazine
The Washington Post

April 8:

The Diane Rehm Show, NPR, 11:00 a.m. ET

April 9 (pub date):

"The Early Show" on CBS, 11:00 a.m. ET.

For Vermont locals: Vermont Radio (WBTN—1370 AM), time TBD

April 10:

"Here & Now," NPR (locals in Boston area, that's WBUR), 2:00 p.m. ET

April 15, Toronto (all times TK):

CTV Network — "Canada AM"
CFRB 1010 Radio — "The Leslie Roberts Show"
Rogers Cable – ‘Fine Print with Carolyn Weaver”

April 19:

Live streaming video interview—podcast available a few hours later. iDream.tv, 5-7 p.m. CST

April 24:

"Early Mornings" on KVON, Northern California, 8:30 a.m. PT
"Between the Lines," Associated Press Radio, time TK

...So, my friends, there you have it. With the assistance of my dear friend Ashley, I have made a truly comprehensive and perhaps absurdly over-detailed list of things to pack, which is actually a list of exactly what to wear at all times for the entire month of tour, which I actually need, because when I'm on tour I get so totally sleep-deprivation-addled that I need to consult a list in order not to go wandering out of the hotel in my underwear because the options of clothes I could wear confused me too much. The media escorts will not like this. In fact, as you'll read in Madness, there was a minor incident in London while I was on hardcover tour for Wasted; I had gone more or less around the bend, and was totally bats, and at some point found myself running down a rainy street, broke a heel, and went careening into a shoe store yelling, "U.S. SIZE SIX! BLACK HEEL!" and they were extremely nice and gentle with me, which was good of them, and then I went (posessed of said new black heel) running down the street again to get to my hotel to meet the media escort to go to BBC-TV, and she was very concerned that I was soaking wet (but I had both shoes!) and insisted that no, I must have a dry suit.

The idea is, obviously, not to go bats on this tour. I'll keep you posted.

Tour blog #1 scheduled for Wednesday. Keep an eye out.

Many thanks to all of you for your continued support of my work. It means the world.

Be well,
Marya

Pre-tour blog

Marya Hornbacher — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:02:44 GMT

Well, all, it's about that time: my first official reading from Madness is a week from today (at RJ Julia in New Haven, CT, for you locals thereabouts). Countdown to takeoff has begun. I leave Minneapolis bright and early next Tuesday morning. Somehow, of course, it seems like every thing I could possibly need to do has collected itself and landed between then and now. How does that always happen? You're going along, doing your thing, and then suddenly the days are packed end to end with infinite tasks that all seem equally important in the moment—buy mini deodorant, write lecture, iron black pants so that they will be thoroughly re-wrinkled by the time you need to wear them, brush up on research, feed cat. Prioritization seems to have escaped me, and I'm making every effort to stop running around like the cliched headless chicken. Ever have one of those days where it seems like the day won? Yesterday was one of those days. A variety of events conspired and dragged me back to bed. I gave myself an hour to lie there being overwhelmed. When the hour was up, I went back to my office and was overwhelmed sitting upright instead. I'm pretty sure that in the end, I triumphed over the day, at least insofar as the day, you know, ended, and I'm still kicking.

I'm going to make my very best effort to blog every other day while I'm on tour—April 1 through 25—and I can promise you those entries will be both brief and somewhat incomprehensible, as I'm anticipating significant tiredness, and am trying to train myself not to yawn so that I don't wind up yawning loudly on the radio. Note: two new radio spots for the radio listeners out there—"Writers on Writing," April 2 on Bay Area's NPR station KUCI, and NPR's "Here and Now" on April 10. I'll put these on the schedule when I get more updates on local events in a few days. There's a fun review in Elle this month, and there will be an article in People next week. For my far-flung U.K. readers, there are several articles in Irish and British magazines coming up—those have been great interviews, and the articles should be neat.

Meanwhile, all's well hereabouts. I've gotten some great letters lately, and am already starting to hear from readers of Madness—many thanks to all who've written. As you know, I'm not able to respond extensively, but I absolutely read everything readers send, and am very grateful that all of you take the time to let me know your thoughts.

I'm looking at a stack of books I'm foolishly planning to take on tour, because I have this fantasy that I'll have all sorts of time to read on the planes and before bed, when in fact I will pass out before I've even buckled my seatbelt on planes, and fall asleep halfway to the bed every night. But I will persist in this fantasy, and lug around a number of books because I like to have them near me, because maybe if I have them they will seep into my head by osmosis and I won't actually go a month without reading anything other than my own blasted book. This weekend I'm choosing the sections I'm going to read at readings—wish me luck, because a week from tonight I'll be standing in a bookstore and will have to read something, and I can't read someone else's book, which is sort of a shame, because if I could I think I'd read a little Neruda, maybe some John Donne. Sadly, this is not encouraged. So it goes.

All right—I'm into the ring to box with the day. Cheers to all, and for those of you who already have your copy of Madness, happy reading.

Peace,
M

Extremely verbose 3 a.m. blog

Marya Hornbacher — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:44:04 GMT

Crack of dawn greetings to all. What I'm doing awake is entirely beyond me. But there you have it: woke up at 1 a.m. bright and cheerful. Because I am terribly clever, I lay down last night for a wee nap at 6 pm and slept straight on through like a nitwit. Jeff was kind enough to wake me up to eat dinner; apparantly I was very chatty when he woke me up, and said all kinds of interesting things in my own personal language; I ate dinner and went dashing back up to bed; thus it is now 3 am and I forsee a nap at a totally inappropriate daytime time in my future, but of course can't sleep now. I did try. I got back in bed at 2 and had that weird experience where your cold feet hit a couple of warm miniature dachshunds, and because miniature dachshunds have no hair on their bellies and feel a little like ultrasuede, and are as I mentioned warm and since there are two of them there are eight little legs jumbled around, it feels like putting your feet on a couple of baby pigs. Milton (dachsund) was snoring, as was Jeff; Jeff is louder, but Milton is pretty loud, so sleep was not forthcoming for myself at least.

I am terribly sorry it's been so long since I blogged; I've been crazy. This is, if you ask me, a pretty good excuse, but I apologize nevertheless. I go more or less batsh*t every Feb 1 (this year it actually started Jan 31) and get sane around March 15. So things are looking up now, but I am not quite altogether there, and am still wading through the fog in my head. I am looking forward to being able to put two thoughts together at a time, yes, looking very much forward to it indeed, as thinking one random thought after another gets confusing and significantly inhibits my ability to do anything other than sit at my desk in my robe, beating my head on my keyboard, trying to think in a linear and/or even slightly orderly way and failing miserably. (I am also highly capable of naps.) I think it is positively fascinating in a seriously annoying way how the brain has its own calendar, and mine decides a couple of times a year to totally defect on a rigid schedule. "Why, here it is, February 1 (or July 20)! Time to blow up!" like a little ticking bomb. At least it's predictable. The idea, if I were a sensible person, would be to calmly say, Ah, my brain has blown up. Time to put on my robe and sit at my desk staring into space while the logic and language centers of my cortex tangle up for six weeks! And every year I swear I'm going to do it. I say, No work in Feb/July. Won't even bother. The reporter from People Magazine who's checking in on me to see how my journal is going (I'm keeping a Feb/March journal for People, which is both interesting and extremely difficult, see aforementioned language/logic center situation) said gently to me the other day, "Um, do you ever think about just taking February off?" and I said why yes indeed I think of it annually. And Ruth, when I was gnashing my teeth at breakfast on Saturday, telling her how I couldn't work and was going to lose it pretty soon, pointed out that in fact I had already lost it, just like I did a year ago and a year before that ad infinitum, and it was nothing to worry about. Ruth and I have had breakfast on Saturday virtually every week we're both in town for the last fifteen years, and I begin to worry she gets tired of telling me the same things over and over. But that's the nice thing about friends. They are very tolerant. Thank god.

SO, as for work, haha! So funny! It's gone rather slowly. But it's gone. I'm still puttering away on the new novel, and like it and hate it on alternating days. Entertaining, being a writer, with the liking/hating thing. I think there are people who consistently like writing; I am not one of them. I like it on and off. I have done much considering of giving it up entirely in the last few weeks, but have this sneaking suspicion I will not, because it is pretty much the only thing I know how to do, and a person has to have a job or at least some way to occupy themselves for the better part of the day, and I don't have kids, which is a vastly harder job, so I can't raise my kids as a job, so I have to keep writing. Additionally, every time I've decided once and for all to quit, I wind up back at my desk writing within a few weeks. Actually, this time of day reminds me of writing The Center of Winter. Well, reminds me of the last year of writing it--I was working at a magazine, and worked on the book from 3-7 a.m., and wound up very tired and then very manic, as will happen from time to time, and the upshot was I quit the magazine by moving into the hospital, but finished the book at very, very long last. Lord, thinking about writing Center gives me the willies. It took forever. The first three years were spent writing absolute garbage, in part because I was batsh*t ALL the time, rather than only Feb/July, and in part because I hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing, and kept bombarding my poor beliegured (I am fairly sure that's spelled wrong) editor with massive Kinko's boxes full of paper masquerading as a "book", knowing full well it was garbage but despairing at ever finishing the "book," but eventually I climbed out of the bottle of scotch in which I was soaking and finished the damn book. I like it. If you are a novel person and haven't yet read it, give it a read and tell me what you think. In any event, as I've mentioned before, writing a second novel appears to be vastly more fluid a process than writing a first. At least you can say to yourself, Well, you did it once, you can do it again. And it is certainly going more smoothly than Center, which I wrote for the most part in a closet.

On other fronts, 20 days till I leave for tour. Because of this, I decided on Sunday it was time to make a packing list (I do only have 20 days to think it over, after all). This evolved into making a list of everything I would wear every day for the month I'm gone, which resulted in me realizing I would need at least two outfits a day (why?), which resulted in a far more detailed list of what I would wear each day down to which shirt and which pants, and this led to the realization that in fact it would be easier to wear dresses, as they are less bulky and pack lighter and this would aid in me carrying a suitcase of highly organized and well-planned outfits for the aforementioned month. For a very brief moment, I remembered what I was told on my first tour: pack a carry-on and wash your clothes at the hotels. No no! A giant heavy suitcase! Much smarter! I will have no trouble lugging it around at all, especially since I notoriously wear heels every day because I am short, so skidding through airports and dashing from hotel to interview to reading while lugging this suitcase should be no problem; this reminded me that I should also plan my shoes, so I made a list of those, correllated of course with day and outfit in question. Did I mention I become very fond of lists when I'm crazy? They give me a sense of order. Having made the day-to-day list of outfits and shoes, I made a shopping list; being aware that I have, like many bipolar people, a special fondness for shopping when I'm crazy, I was very conservative, and also careful to plan every single thing I'd need to buy, including travel-sized everything, like shaving cream and soap, which made me realize that I might possibly forget something small while packing that would drive me nuts when I arrived wherever and realized I didn't have it, so I went back to the packing list and wrote down "toothbrush" and "socks," and a number of other things I might forget. Then I laughed at myself knowingly, realizing that of course hotels have soap, so I went back and crossed that off the list. Has anyone ever read the Frog and Toad books? They're the best. They are also the source of my parents' nickname for me, Toad. When they call me that in public, they get odd looks, but it's actually very sensible. Anyway, one of the stories is called something like "Toad Makes a List." Toad wakes up, gets overwhelmed by his day (not an infrequent event for me), jumps out of bed, grabs pen and paper, and begins his list, "Wake up." Then he realizes he has already done this, so he crosses it off. He writes, "Get out of bed." And proceeds with his day. So, on Sunday, it was suddenly 3 pm, and I'd been sitting there making lists for about twelve hours (there were many other lists I am not here including, though I should mention I made a list of what I already had so that I would know exactly what I needed, which necessitated a coordinating set of symbols such as + and * and !! so that I would be able to understand the lists at all, and then I realized I should really be using a variety of colored pens instead, so I did that), and my desk was covered with yellow notepad sheets which were covered with indecipherable scribbles, so after I made clean copies of every list, and then changed my mind and typed these lists into my computer, and rewritten all the lists a number of times, I made one final shopping list and went shopping, obviously taking my list. This resulted in many purchases, and the frequent situation where a salesperson would be trying to talk to me while I scribbled on my list, since I was recording exactly how much everything cost so I could later make a list of how much I'd spent so I'd stay under budget (which, thank you very much, I did), and recording also a variety of interesting thoughts that went through my head, as well as an updated list of outfits, so that when I bought something I would be sure that it was correllated with the correct shoes, because these things are important, and I didn't want to wake up one morning in a hotel on tour with seven minutes to get ready and not be able to consult a list and know what I should wear and with what shoes. The upshot of all of this was I actually spent two days shopping, because I had confused myself mightily, and wound up with 9 dresses and some mascara and five white t-shirts, because I like to have a lot of those, because every time I wear one I spill something on it and ruin it.

For obvious reasons, having spent two days at the mall, which I actually hate, I had to work at night, except for yesterday, when I took that nap, which meant that I worked this a.m. from 1-3 and will work again as soon as I finish this extensive blog. And on malls, stores, and pants: what is it with these clothing manufacturers? Who told them that everyone was very, very tall? The average American woman is 5'4". The average American women's pants are made for someone 8'6". I myself am 5'1.75" (that's almost 5'2", thanks). So: if I am approx. 5'2", and the pants at the store are trailing five inches past my feet, they are made for someone who is actually 5'7", which is 3" taller than even the Av. Am. Woman, which makes no sense, and drives me absolutely bananas, as I go scuffling around the dressing room trying to picture what my pants will actually look like once I get them hemmed, or once I grow 5" at the age of 34. This is made further confusing by the fact that all my heels are different heights; so I bring three or four pairs of shoes with me when I go shopping, so I can sort of somewhat take a guess.

My friends, I've gone on quite long enough. Perhaps I should post this one in volumes. Anyway, as I should be getting less crazier soon--by the way! The birds outside my window are back! They live in the oak tree to the right of my office, and they arrived a few days ago and started singing and that means it's almost spring, not including the three feet of snow on the ground--so I will blog again in about a week. During tour, I'm going to try to blog (briefly) every day, just to give you a sense of what tour's like and what interesting things I see all over the country. In the meantime, wish me sanity, orderly packing, and good work. All my cheers & good wishes to you.

Peace,
Marya

Quick Tour Schedule Semi-Update

Marya Hornbacher — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:08:51 GMT

Hello all,

Here's what I realized: Every tour date says it's a Thursday, 7pm, no? They are obviously not all that. However, I don't know all the times—I will in a couple of days, and will do an actual update then.

The public events:

Tuesday, April 1, 9:30 pm:
Talk at Pace University at eating disorder vigil

Thursday, April 3:
RJ Julia Bookstore, New Haven, CT

PUB DATE:
Wednesday, April 9, 7:30 pm
Tribeca Barnes & Noble, NYC

Thursday, April 10:
Brookline Booksmith
Boston, MA

Friday, April 11:
Reading in southern Vermont—info to come

Monday-Tuesday April 14-15:
Readings in Toronto, Canada—info to come
(Appearance on "Canada A.M." on the 14th)

Thursday, April 17, 7:30 pm:
Edina Barnes & Noble, MN

PODCAST APRIL 19: Info to come

Monday, April 21:
Vroman's Bookstore
Los Angeles, CA

Tuesday, April 22:
Lecture, part of "The Future of Health" Series
Town Hall
Seattle, WA

Wednesday, April 23:
Books, Inc. (which one to come)
San Francisco, CA

Thursday, April 24:
Powell's Books
Portland, OR

There you have it. Will update with times & locations as soon as I've got them. Hope to see you there!

Publication approaching: weird

Marya Hornbacher — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:56:08 GMT

Cheers, everyone—

I'm here in Chicago, staying with friends who are kind enough to let me crash & spend the days in an urban approximation of that cabin in the woods I was fantasizing about. Quiet, quiet days in an apartment high above the city (for Chicago folks, I'm in the South Loop), looking out at the freeway and then the magnificent Lake Michigan. Up in my part of the world, I'm used to the mountain/woods sort of Great Lake shore of Lake Superiors, and the forever-seeming sweep of this Great, unbounded at least from this point of view, is awesome. Big long windows let in gorgeous sunrises and falling darks in the evening, and today it's grey and misty out, the kind of weather that reminds me of the Oregon coast, where I spent a lot of my little-er years running up and down the sand, balancing at the edges of tidepools, falling in, balancing on high wet black rocks. My mom always calls these Oregon days, no matter where you are. So a grey day that makes lots of people feel weighed down feels very comforting & cozy to me, and it's always the perfect kind of day to stay in and write.

Today's all about characters & settings. Digging around in your head trying to find these people and places so you can see them clearly and put them on the paper so they become real to the reader is always a project; sometimes they come to you so sharply that you can get them down in a flurry, sometimes they're a little further off through the fog. Today's a little of both. But I am, in fact, working on what I am supposed to be working on, which as I mentioned last week, I definitely was not.

Speaking of Chicago, there is the Art Institute, which I adore (I have probably mentioned this before), with this spectacular collection of the Impressionists. The museum in all areas is curated and hung beautifully, moving in a very clear chronology through the various periods, so that you can get a sense of how the moods and popular fashions of painting and drawing evolved over time. There's also my beloved "Paris Street; Rainy Day," by Gustave Calliebotte, which hangs at the opening of the Contemporary area, which never fails to make me gasp. As do a couple of their iconic holdings, especially Hopper's "Nighthawks at the Diner" and several others, and their holdings of one of my slightly odd favorites, Georgio di Chirico (I may have misspelled his first name) are wonderful and fairly extensive. I fell in love with di Chirico when I was in school studying the Surrealists (there were quite a lot besides Dali, and I was looking partly at the visual art of the period but also a lot of the written work; di Chirico has a few things in common with Magritte, if you like M.). Anyway, my own giant book of di Chirico prints is ragged & should be replaced, but I am very attached to it. I am going to possibly embarass myself here, but I believe it's Mark Strand who wrote a poem studying di Chirico--it's not a common one, but if you can find it, read it, and I will go find its title later anyway. Also in Chicago: the wonderful small Museum of Contemporary Photography, which I loved, and which lately had an exhibit of really fine photographs on America post-9/11.

So publication nears awfully fast, and now we're at the stage where real logistical plans for tour get made—travel dates & vehicles (planes, trains, automobiles), specific times for interviews and readings get confirmed, and there's lots and lots of email popping up all the time. It's hard not to get freaked out or overly distracted by all of it; it's exciting & nerve wracking, and time seems to have speeded up somewhat as April 9 nears. (Note to New Yorkers: I will be speaking at an eating disorders vigil at Pace University on April 1.) And every day I increasingly dread the endless airports, which I just hate. Taking my shoes off and my computer out and my way-too-many bags and coats etc. off—maybe if I packed a little lighter? Sigh.

I've oddly started listening to alt-country music, and am having a fantastic time with it. All I knew of it before was my slavish adoration of Lucinda Williams; turns out there's more. But if you haven't listened to her yet, do so ASAP.

Time for work & enjoying the foggy Chicago day.

Peace,
M

I love this job!

Marya Hornbacher — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:36:07 GMT

Which also I hate, but this week I have loved it more than I have hated it, so on the balance, we're in good shape and ready to go.

First of all, I was in Florida this week. (Any Floridians out there? Is that what you are called?) Florida is good for me because there is, you know, sunshine. Which there is not in Mpls, and when there is, it somehow coincides with 20-degree-below-zero weather, which is just perverse of it. Anyway, Jeff was on vacation, and the rat lay around basking in the sun while I worked, WHICH, as mentioned, went wonderfully well. I kicked out some fifty-odd pages, a good chunk of what I'm working on, and for once there was that thrill writers get when they're pretty sure they're writing decently/not horribly/almost acceptably, because I was having such a good time I just kept going. I hit a wall Thursday and took two naps and was certain the magic was gone, over, never to come again, but Friday morning arrived and I was back at my desk. Ok, actually, I was sitting at a patio table trying to block the sun with an umbrella, because I am a bat and prefer to work in the dark (true fact--it's now four a.m., I've been up since one a.m., don't even ask).

Sadly, the bummer of how wonderfully my work week went was the fact that I was not writing what I was supposed to be writing. I was writing what I am supposed to be writing several months from now. Which means that, to my dismay, I can't just sally forth with my very entertaining spree of writing what I feel like writing, and must instead go back to what I am supposed to be writing. I have given myself one day to sulk.

On the matter of grey vs. gray, some kind poster has informed me that it is a matter of British vs. American spellings. I will continue to use British spellings, because if they started the language then I think they know it better than I do, and they are ultimately right. I will also (as I mentioned in my post replying to that post) continue to use 'deamon' and 'humour.'

Sanibel, Florida, is really a very odd place. One of those places with its own subculture so specific to itself that it seems a little surreal to me, who is/am (? where the hell is my grammar these days?) from a subculture so specific that it would seem weird to any Sanibelian.

Have I mentioned yet that I have been consumed with a desire to leave town and go to a cabin in the woods so I can write? It seems a little suspicious to me that I am constantly fantasizing about a cabin in the woods when I am about to go on a tour cross country that will be in no way like a cabin in the woods. SPEAKING of tour, a few more events that we haven't posted on the schedule yet: For those of you in Canada, I will be on Canada A.M. on either the 14th or 15th of April, will let you know. Can't remember which of these I've mentioned, but look for interviews in The Washington Post, People Magazine, Elle, Glamour (which may I point out uses the British spelling), and The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio. There will be more as the date approaches. All of those publications will be in the April issues. Also, a reading has been added: Northshire Books, in Manchester Center, VT, on April 11.

I may have forgotten to mention this, and you may already know, but Madness is available on pre-order at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com.

I'm absolutely loving the discussions that are afoot on the posts. Keep it up, I love reading it, and there are more people out there reading them than are writing on them, so keep the lurkers entertained.

Here I go on one of my tangents/favorite topics, and am about to sound to many of you like a total loony, but I will persist. If you're looking for a little peace of mind (surely one or two of you are?), a way to get back into your body (another one or two?), a way to settle down the brain chemistry (a few more of you there?) then this is what I can tell you: meditate. When you have learned to be still with yourself, even for a few minutes, you can clear your mind of all the flotsam and jetsam that it's grabbing at and trying to worry about and preoccupying itself with and thereby blocking out all the clearer, more peaceful things it really wants to be filled with, and just breathe. How many therapists have told you this? I know, I know. I'm telling you too. And when your bodies are healthy and strong (and not one fking second before), yoga. If you're tempted to misuse yoga as a symptom, don't do it. Wait until you're in a mental and emotional and physical space where you can really appreciate all the mental/emotional/physical strength and quiet it can bring you. In the meantime, sit down and meditate. Some days I sit there in the dark (I meditate when I wake up) and listen to my thoughts go whizzing about like a bunch of little maniacs, and that's fine; the trick is to just ignore them, let the thought whistle and zip all by themselves. They are perfectly capable of being frantic without any help or attention from me. And the more I practice letting them go on their own way without getting into it with them, the better I am able to feel calm even while my thoughts go nuts. And some lucky days, I sit there and am totally quiet, and have let go of all the day to day junkola that usually fills my head and distracts me and keeps me worried. Either way, it's a wonderful thing to try: take a few minutes, or a lot of minutes, and just sit quietly and breathe. Do I sound like a total fruitcake? I don't care a bit. It's working for me. When I do it, I start the day in a quiet place, and can hear myself think the real thoughts, write better, handle situations with more ease and confidence, and spend a day without nearly as much internal mayhem. When I don't do it, well, the mayhem returns. Just trust me on this, and give it a try.

It's Sunday morning, 4:32 a.m. CST, and the winter sky is a soft dark red (does this happen anywhere but in the north?). It's beautiful. Time to read a little poetry before I start my day. The Wonderful Lora (of Interlochen fame, for Wasted readers) sent me this poem, the first thing I read when I woke up, and something I'm posting above my desk. From Lora to me to you:

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~

Peace, all.
M

One of those weeks...

Marya Hornbacher — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:37:39 GMT

Sheesh, people! It's only Monday, and I feel like I'm ready to take a nap until, oh, May. Last week was seriously one of those weeks. Somehow it seemed like eight thousand things were happening, and yet mysteriously nothing got done. Well, a few things, but it's that weird stage of writing where I'm mostly doing it in the back of my head—I'm puttering around doing research, taking notes, making outlines, doing character sketches, and preparing to write the next section, so at the end of the day I look at my desk and see mostly, um, coffee cups. And indecipherable pages & pages of scribbles. This is one of those times when I hear the chorus of sages over the ages (nice rhyme, no?) saying peacefully, "Trust the process!" and I just want to kick them. Who wants to trust the process? I want results! I want instant gratification! I want magic! Sadly, that's never the way it goes, and you'd think I'd be used to it by now–I've only been doing this for almost twenty years—and if it was that much of a problem, I'd have learned how to do something more sensible. Instead, my friends, I gnash my teeth and bitch.

All's well here in Minneapolis, insofar as February is right on track and delivering its usual ghastly landscape of soot-blackened piles of snow along the streets, bleak grey (gray?) sky, and miserable-looking Minneapolitans trudging around in their jackets/hats/scarves/gloves/boots, all of them with that expression on their face that says "Get me the hell out of here before I die of an overdose of the color grey (gray)." As for my brain chemistry, it too is right on track, and with the arrival of February it has defected entirely, and I spend my days talking myself out of the conviction that I should crawl under my desk and stay there until, oh, May (see above), when it will finally be sunny again. This is the part of the year where we Minnesotans, with our possibly annoying ever-present cheeriness, start to wonder if everyone else in the country is right about how totally insane we are to live here in the north. Well, it's not Alaska. Though wouldn't Alaska be cool? Aren't there polar bears there? Maybe not. I know my geography not so well. I passed 8th grade geography only very marginally, because of the kindness of the teacher, who overlooked the time I punched Jeff Carver in the nose (a poor decision) because he said girls were dumb. Well, he said girls were dumb! What was I supposed to do? Maybe not punch him. Nevertheless, somehow that is why I don't know geography, and was absolutely convinced until very recently that China was sort of directly under England. Jeff, who learned this not long after we met, mentions this to strangers as often as possible.

Madness inches ever closer to publication. This is alternately exciting and anxiety-producing, partly because I sort of believe that my books don't really exist, in any sort of literal sense, and are actually only books in my head. I feel the same way about articles. Whenever I see one (a book of mine or magazine containing an article I wrote), I'm shocked, and want to know how it got there. I feel like hiding under my jacket so no one will know about it. But I hear they are, in fact, books/articles that I wrote, and that people do in fact read them and are aware of them as actual things, so I am trying to wrap my brain around the idea that soon Madness will be sitting on a table in a bookstore when I walk into it, and I will once again fall over in shock and try to take the whole stack and hide it under my jacket, for which I will probably be arrested. No, not really. I'll just leave the bookstore as fast as I can. This will not work well during tour; I am supposed to stay in the bookstore and give a reading. So I suppose I will do that. I hope many many of you will be at those bookstores for those readings—when I'm not being bewildered by the whole situation, I actually love readings and meeting and talking with readers, so on that front I can't wait. However, if you do see me looking bewildered, or catch me running out the back door, you'll know why.

In the meantime, I'm just plugging away at the new book. It too is exciting and anxiety-producing, as writing always is when it's going well—on the one hand, there's the whole thrill of watching a book take shape in your hands, and on the other hand, there's the worry that the book is in fact awful, and you're just deluded into thinking it's going well, and you should probably delete the whole thing and start over. But you keep going...and that's where I'm off to now. Have a great week!

Cheers,
M

Sunday blog 2

Marya Hornbacher — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:45:57 GMT

Again I posted before I was done! Sorry. In truth, folks, I've been using my brain far too much this week, and as a result have run out of IQ points and become very dull. I'm mostly lying around in my pajamas looking at the gorgous day, drinking coffee, and chatting about insignificant things—an excellent way to spend a Sunday. I hope all of you have had a great week, and I swear I'll post something more interesting in a few days. Just wanted to check in, shout out, and let you know I'm glad you're stopping by the site. It's great to have you here. Lurkers, start posting. We know you're there!

Cheers,
M

Sunday blog

Marya Hornbacher — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:42:46 GMT

Hello all!

Shocking: A day off! It's been a nutty week, more stuff getting ready for Madness publication. Fun news! I'll be on the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio on April 7. Will post the time when I know it, but I hope you will all tune in. She's a great interviewer, and it should be a lot of fun. Meanwhile, I had a great chat with a reporter from Glamour Magazine on Friday—that interview will run in the April issue. And lots of work this week on the new novel, long chats with a couple of people about how that's developing, a few new scenes written. Whoosh! By Friday night, I was ready to crawl into bed with my shoes on.

So today I'm lounging around in Chicago visiting an old friend. We're (get this) going ice skating. I don't think I've been on ice skates since I was twenty, when I had a spectacular argument with my then-boyfriend about how skating was done—he seemed very certain that there was a correct way, and I needed to know it—I didn't agree. Sadly, that relationship was not long for this world, but so it goes. Thus, I will attempt to skate today without knowing the correct way—in all likelihood, it will be a grand failure, but who cares? It's a fine thing when you get to the point in your life where you really don't care how silly you look landing on your butt anymore, as long as you're having a good time. It's tragic I no longer have the fabulous purple skating dress my father gave me for my sixth birthday. Oh, that dress! Beloved purple skating dress! I was such a sight in that dress, soaring around the skating rink at the Sun Valley Mall in northern California! For the youngsters among you, that would have been, um, 1980. For those of you my age and older, how did we get so old??

End of Wednesday blog (start reading at previous blog)

Marya Hornbacher — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:43:52 GMT

...anyway, the opening poem in Thirst has been on my mind for days.

My work is loving the world....

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and not yet half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

Now, back to my work at being astonished.

Peace,
Marya

Wednesday blog

Marya Hornbacher — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:40:30 GMT

On other fronts, I continue to discover the obvious. True fact: If you are a smoker, and you quit smoking, and you have a cigarette, you will start smoking again, and be a smoker. I knew that.

So I'm sitting here, 10:12 a.m., feeling cranky because I'm not writing. This is because I have been up since 3, writing; but that doesn't count, because now it is normal work-day hours, and I am not writing. True fact 2: Writers are fking crazy. In addition to being, well, crazy.

But, yes, I WAS writing, when I was still working like a normal person, earlier today, before I became a failure and realized I would never write again. Yesterday I woke up and dashed into my office and wrote a scene that, ok, took place thirty years after the scene I was supposed to be writing—ach, so it goes. Today I returned to the scene I was supposed to write, wrote it, and wrote another one. Then I read it to Jeff, who is a great fan club, especially when he's sitting there in his robe half-asleep and nodding as if he's listening and then laughs at places where it's not funny. This is when I demand, Are you awake? And he leaps awake and says, Oh, yes! Yes, of course! Great scene! And I say, But you don't like it! And he says, I do! I like it! And I say, No, you hate it! And he says, What in the hell are you talking about, you maniac? No, he doesn't. He's very nice about the whole thing. My painter friend M. and I have husbands who are not writers/artists, and we always marvel at how generously they ignore our weirdness and just go about whistling as if we are not like living with frantic yipping chihuahuas.

On writing a novel: it's hard. It seems so easy at first onset of the idea; this idea is quickly, radically smashed, which when you are a novelist is both problematic and perversely thrilling, so you want to write it even more. On writing a novel that takes place in part before I was born: even harder, but also a good artistic stretch. It is actually a little bit like journalistic reporting; you take a subject you don't necessarily know all that well but are fascinated by (ok, sometimes with journalism, you are not in fact necessarily fascinated by it AT ALL, as in the case where I was assigned a story about "window treatments" when I got my first job in magazines, and didn't know what a "window treatment" was, but didn't want to tell my editor, and had to call my mother, and learned that in fact they are "curtains"), but anyway, with a novel, one would hope to hell you ARE fascinated, which in this case I very much am, and so my days spent doing research are delicious. My friend Lora (poet & journalist) was telling me the other day about the time she heard Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, the recent The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and the too-rarely mentioned The Final Solution, which has one of the best characters ever, a parrot) say at a reading that he sometimes finds the spark for his writing while he is digging around in his research. I have a similar habit; I'm screwing around reading this and that, digging here and there, and without even realizing it, I'm writing scenes in my head. Of course, my scenes then show up at 3 a.m. and I go write one that takes place thirty years after what I'm supposed to be writing. I wonder if Michael Chabon does that. He's a remarkably normal person. He might not. He and David Foster Wallace are two of my favorite living writers. I met Chabon once, and behaved very badly. I won't go into it. Never mind. This is me crawling under my desk.

Fun with Side Effects! My eyes just went into their morning triple-vision thing. Herewith, there may be typos. Sorry.

Actually, only one thing left to say today. I was reading the stunning new collection of Mary Oliver's, Thirst, which I love so much I may already have mentioned it

Friday blog

Marya Hornbacher — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:01:07 GMT

So today I woke up at 2 a.m. Great. FYI: Not a good idea to go to sleep at 6 p.m.; you will wake up at 2. (Hey, I was tired.) Then there you are, stuck with your middle-of-the-night frettings and nonsense for another zillion hours before the sun comes up and you return to your saner self. It is very silly to be doing yoga & meditating at 2 a.m. And of course this "meditating" amounted to said fretting. Today's fret topic: work. What else? So I arrive at my desk at normal work hours, already having worked myself into a tizzy—I will never write again! The novel will be terrible! What will happen when the book comes out? Why do I write books? Why didn't I get a sensible job? The problem with writing: you never know if you're doing it right. You sit down every day, and even when you have your scene list next to you (the list that tells me what I will supposedly write that day), you start the scene and have no idea where it goes next. It is the ultimate in uncertainty and ambiguity. And of course those are just two of my very favorite things. Not knowing—I'm just a pro at that.

And to top it off, when I woke up at 2 and felt it necessary to hit Jeff on the head several times to try to wake him up so he could have a nice chat with me in the middle of the night, the rat refused to do so. Speaking entirely in his sleep, in his own special sleep-language, he explained very rationally in gibberish that I could sit up all night by my very own self and fret well enough without him. When I finished laughing so hard I fell off the bed, I thought about how extremely cool and weird the brain is in its ability to create entire grammars and vocabularies that make sense to the sleeper but no sense to the waking world; the brain in its endless coolness, no?

I have been terrifically impressed this week with how much the folks I know in recovery are kicking ass. Notes on this in the ED board.

So this week was spent dashing back and forth between a poem that is nagging at me, the first few scenes of Section 2 of the new novel (ok, the first scene, and a really elaborate scene list for the next 12...), and various things coming up with pre-pub stuff: a couple of interviews, including one that I think appears today in People Magazine, and some plans for articles that will come out closer to April 9. Will post news of those when I know when they'll come out. As for the endless fretting about the novel, my agent has, I'm pretty sure, put me in her spam folder so I'll stop bugging her about how many scenes I should write per day/week/month/forevermore in order to write the book Exactly Right. Her only response is, Would you just WRITE? So, because she knows everything, I'm just writing.

As for endless fun with bipolar, I forgot my meds the other night. DON'T try this at home kids—not fun. I'll be bats all day today, and kicking myself for forgetting, and remembering with horror all those years I spent pretending I didn't really have it (no, really! all this chaos is just, you know, situational!) and refused to take my meds and was bats ALL the time—ugh, it just gives me the willies & the nightmares now. For those of you with any kind of mental struggle—for God's sake, take your meds. I don't want to hear any nonsense about how great crazy is, and how much it helps you "create"—forget it. Read the comments on the mnartists.com discussion on the Madness blog for some smart, insightful words on how the image of the crazy artist is crap—we need to be on our toes to do good work, and that means taking care of our wayward brains.

Weirdest thing the other night: I had a conversation with a person who thinks that mental illness is, ok, partly chemically-driven, but mostly psychological. I fell out of my chair. I am so used to being around people who know about mental illness, and know it's a brain disease, and has an entire body of brain research to support that, which concurrs with all the psychological research that is learning to develop therapies that help people deal with the psychological and emotional EFFECTS of the brain disease, that I often forget that a whole lot of people—most—really still believe it's a matter of character. Lordy, I hope that the publication of Madness will help dispell that notion at least a little bit. But it's also up to those of us who have it to talk to people on a case-by-case basis to bring awareness to the public about the medical nature of mental illness. Hey, maybe if people were aware that it's an illness, they might actually support medical research funds to find treatments that can more effectively help us MI people function well—we're perfectly capable of doing so, if our treatment works. I'm sick of being consigned to the slag heap of people whose illnesses aren't taken seriously, and therefore aren't given the research funds to help us out. I'm not asking for much, people—just some basic awareness that my illness is an illness, and as such deserves the same efforts to treat it so that I can kick as much ass as I'm capable of doing. Lots of ass, thank you very much. Much kicking ass. And I think a lot of us could do with a titch less stigma? No? Well, it's our job to make that happen.

Weather report: cold. Grey and cold. (Say, does anyone know for sure whether it's "gray" or "grey"? I always get it wrong. I have gotten it wrong in every book I've ever written, and every time the copyeditors change it to the other one, and I do it the other way in the next book, and the copyeditors change it to the other one again. Please inform.) So I've got the trusty lightbox on (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the trusty lightbox, it's a box that lights up—I'm so clever it kills me!—and mimics sunlight & triggers the production of vitamin D, so that people whose mood flags/plummets during the lightless winter months can get a little light and keep mood up to par. It's often covered by insurance—look into it if you're one of those people, because it really does help), and fantasizing about warm sunny places, and trying not to think about February, which seems like a very long month up here in MN, where it's winter five months of the year. I'm not really sure what those settlers were thinking, settling up here in the semi-tundra; but there you have it, and now we're here, and we have Minneapolis, which is awesome, so that's good payoff.

Ok, so those of you checking out the tour schedule: Jeff hasn't had time to correct it yet, but the San Francisco date has been changed to APRIL 23 (not 24); I'll be in Portland APRIL 24. He'll get those changes up this weekend—right after we take down the Christmas tree. Yes, I know it's January 11. We've been busy. Give us a break—one year we left it up till February. So, on the whole, we're doing pretty well.

As for tour: the idea is I'll blog every day while I'm on it. I can't guarantee it, but will do my best.

Enough out of me. Back to the novel. See you next week. (And for thoses of you lurkers who aren't posting yet—for heaven's sake, post!)

Cheers,
M

Other publication!

Marya Hornbacher — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:56:26 GMT

If you go to mnartists.org, you'll find a two-part dialogue I did with another artist about the role of mental illness in creativity and art. Pretty interesting, and stirring up some good discussions here. Let me know what you think!

On other matters

Marya Hornbacher — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:56:26 GMT

A week into the new year, and I'm still staggering around wondering what happened. So it goes. I've had a wonderful last month working exclusively on some new poems, which I've now worked into the ground and need to leave alone for a few days—the fabulous poetry shredders/editors are on them, a couple of my friends and colleagues who know insane amounts about poetry, read it voraciously, and are generous enough to turn their beady little critical eye to mine.

As great as that was, tomorrow I dive headfirst into the next section of the novel I'm putting together little by little. I haven't worked on a novel in a few years, and it's a whole lot more fun now—writing my first novel, The Center of Winter, was awful. I loved the book in the end, but the million years I spent writing it were basically years where I was teaching myself to write a novel. Not as much fun as it sounds. But now, with this new novel underway, I can actually enjoy it. Writers talk to themselves while they work, growling, muttering, sighing, yelling, stomping off, occasionally cracking up. I'm looking forward to a few months of talking to my office walls before I go on tour.

I'm doing a few touch-ups to that way-I'm-living thing—I do it from time to time, add a few things to the routine, take out a few that aren't working for me, and looking forward to a brand new year. Hope all of you are as well. See you next week!

Cheers,
Marya