tonight’s list
1. Went to see Whisperado last night with Tor-meisters Liz and Irene. Patrick Nielsen Hayden plays a mean guitar, let me tell you. Keep tabs on Jon’s blog for upcoming gig announcements.
2. Hit the Strand beforehand with Leland, and promptly gave a little girlyswoon over their ever expanding handbag line:
And then I systematically ruled each one of them out.
And then left empty-handed.
3. Okay, that’s not true. I left with this:
My glee goes without saying.
4. Mr. Wood emailed in a panic to let me know that my LOCAL write-up (mentioned yesterday) is actually in LOCAL #4, not LOCAL #3. Do pick up #3 anyway. Do pick up them all.
5. From the “don’t hate me for bringing this up again” department:
And on the seventh James Frey mention, she rested. Thank you for bearing with me. I won’t even get into that Indian guy. Oh, wait, I just brought up that Indian guy.
See, here’s the big reason why the Freys, LeRoys, and That Indian Guys fascinate me. Way back when, right after PLATFORM #1 hit the streets, a very cool, very kind literary agent approached me about turning PLATFORM into a Real Live Book. And she was dead serious. I remember her saying, “There’s nothing fresh out there. This is fresh.” I was incredibly flattered, and, as you can imagine, gave it a lot of thought. But in the end, I couldn’t do it, because I would have had to make stuff up.
Or maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would have found the story if I’d gone looking. Regardless, I’ve always demanded that PLATFORM stay true. I mean, those “only in New York” moments that you couldn’t make up if you tried are always the best ones anyway.
I understand the importance of a good story, but when “true” and “narrative arc” go head-to-head on my own non-fiction page, “true” wins out, pretty much every time. I don’t claim to know a whole lot about creative non-fiction and the limits of truth-ness there, but I do know my own comfort levels.
So the PLATFORM book went unwritten, and I remain fascinated by memoirs. The line between truth and fiction, the demands of story and truth are fascinating. But I didn’t want to dance on that tightrope myself.
Incidentally, I’ve really felt like taking to the platform lately. I have no time for this right now whatsoever. But it’s a sign of something, something different than what the platform was about when I was writing PLATFORM. We’ll see.
Besides, it’s too fricking cold.
