From an MIT newspaper article about Junot Diaz that Marci sent me:

So how did he triumph over his writer’s block? For one thing, he set aside the sci-fi book that wasn’t coming together. Beyond that, it was a matter of persistence and hard work.

“I just bullied myself through it. I just kept throwing myself out into the wilderness of the word,” Diaz says. “I would write 200 pages, get [expletive] depressed and crazy, sit around for two months, and then come back and write another 200 pages. It was endless. Sometimes they don’t come easy.”

Ah goodie, a peek at what lies ahead.

I mentioned this to Andy, and of course we got into a little fight about it. It seems like when it comes to my writing, we always end up arguing. I say he just doesn’t understand, when of course he does, he’s already written a book, plus he knows me really well. And he says I’m just too unmotivated/distracted/scared/easy on myself. Which isn’t always true. But probably sometimes is.

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Junot Diaz, who gave me feedback on my short story “The Tenth Time,” just won the Pulitzer in Fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Congratulations to Junot!!

(Thanks to Marci for the heads-up.)

Think I can do it someday?

My morning writing sessions have been going pretty well this week. It’s certainly much easier to focus when Riley crawls into my lap and sleeps. Before, I had to keep him in the corner of my eye at all times, since I was never really sure whether his whimpers meant that he needed water, wanted to play, or was five seconds away from peeing on the carpet.

But then again, his adorable snuggly-ness compels me to hug and kiss and pet him a lot, which somewhat reduces my productivity. I guess you win some, you lose some.

Speaking of which… A few months ago, I sent one of my stories to Junot Diaz, the fiction editor at the Boston Review whose first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has been quite the success both with critics and the public. He responded personally, which is wonderful and rare, and one of his comments was that my story was “strong but young.” (See the win-some-lose-some connection there?)

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