Writing about writing again, but sometimes confessions are necessary...

“I hate writing. I love having written.” - Dorothy Parker

I bought this from The Rumpus.

I can’t tell if this is too “inside baseball” because many of my friends are writers. We do what writers do: 1. Talk about writing. 2. Procrastinate. 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

I AM working on a second book. It has a shape and a focus, but I tend to be “all or nothing” about my projects; if it can’t be perfect, then I don’t want to make the effort. And there are so many important things that need doing. Earlier this summer, I realized I forgot to watch The Wire. So I watched all five seasons in about a month like it was my second job. Then I had to start watching Luther, because Idris Elba.

I put off buying an e-reader forever. I LOVE BOOKS. How could I betray my beloved READING EXPERIENCE with an electronic device? Then I bought a Kindle Fire and it made me feel like I could live without paper forever, even just for the thrill of thinking of a book I once read a million years ago and being able to download it at 1 a.m. and read it. Instant gratification. Writing is not instant gratification. Unless writing a Tweet, which is extraordinarily satisfying. I have written almost 8,000 of them, which in sum total is a book-length work, albeit a boring one.

I still write ideas down in a paper notebook. I also have Evernote on my phone, laptop and tablet. I can’t say that technology has made be more productive (probably the opposite), plus instead of just a notebook full of brilliant ideas mocking me from the depths of my shoulder bag, the mocking comes from multiple sources. I have Tetris on my tablet for some stupid reason. A feed reader of informative blog posts and articles to attend to. I’ve watched 50 episodes of Shin Chan on Hulu in the past three months.

All of this side business (bullshit) means that my notes stagnate, angry, unruly, unattended to: “Hey, um, so…think you’ll get to work on me this weekend? You know, ‘cause you said you were excited about it and all, but here we sit—how long has it been? A month? I know you’ve got all that television to watch and those naps to take and, well, I’m sure that fascinating thing about your ex-boyfriend from a million years ago really needs to get written for your blog. I’m sure all of that takes precedence over, say, the possibility of a review in the Times before you turn 80. Whatever.” My notes are a sarcastic bitch.

It probably doesn’t help that I want my second book to be mine-all-mine, not advice, not for anyone else, my Didion book. And I decided that 45 would be a good age to publish this unwritten masterpiece, which is not right now, but later. Except this one doesn’t want to wait and it isn’t going away. But I push back. I’ve been on central time for three and a half years now and I still can’t get used to prime time television starting at 7 p.m. I have a day job that requires a lot of reading and editing, and it pays the bills, so if I feel like watching four hours of television or staring at the ceiling instead of writing, hey, at least my bills are paid.

Weary of covering my ears and humming every time a new thought surfaces, I set a schedule. I resolved to sit down and use the 5,000 words of notes I have accumulated, turn them into 60,000 words of brilliance, and I will do this for 10 hours a week. Last week, I wrote for one hour (not counting day job related writing or navel-gazing blog writing or Tweets or vaguely insightful Facebook posts). I know it’s bad when things I hate take precedence over my writing schedule: Laundry. Vacuuming, which I do monthly when my dog is at the groomer so she won’t go mental when she sees the Bissell Pet Vac (as in "good for sucking up pet hair," not "good for sucking up pets," but dogs think what they think). Financial paperwork that I don’t care about (someone else can figure out how to roll over my 401(k) into whatever stupid savings thing that won’t cause me to have to pay taxes). Did I already say laundry?

I have coached writers. I know what I am supposed to do when my brain wants to scrub the bathtub and organize the linen closet before I can sit down to write. Those are the thoughts I should ignore. I should sit in front of a blank page and let the words come. I should deactivate my Facebook account. I should stop reading the amazing ideas of others and start writing my own. Physician, heal thyself? I used to think it was weird to see doctors smoking cigarettes or eating fast food, but maybe it’s not weird at all. Maybe it comes down to a choice: Help others or help myself.

So, first step. I will forget the “what ifs.” What if this person gets mad because I wrote a thinly veiled description of a thing that happened a long time ago? What if people judge me? What if I don’t have a second book in me? What if I fail? Then I will find the rational part of me that hates the fact that I am never satisfied with my last great achievement and convince it to hunker down and get to work on a chapter outline.

I’m telling you these things because I need you to know that I am not fragile. You can expect things from me. I won’t flinch, make excuses, or fall apart. This is what we do, my friends. This is what we do, having written. Let's all write like motherfuckers.

Inspiration here, there, everywhere...

While I love my Kindle (the instant gratification got me), I'm still on the fence about buying books. When I moved to Austin, I culled my five bookshelves down to one bookshelf full of favorites and first editions. I love to run my hands along the spines, turning them over in my hands, flipping through paper pages and reading my notes in the margins (yes, I like to underline things and write in my books). Sure, I can keep thousands at my fingertips with my Kindle Fire, but I cannot bring myself to get rid of these last shelves, these paper memories, these literary giants that sit side-by-side in tidy rows. Vonnegut lives here. Hemingway lives here. O'Connor lives and lives and lives again.

I stumbled across this Etsy shop recently and fell in love with the inspired illustrations with quotes from literary greats. I want to buy them all, hang them so they can be seen from where I work most often (living room, couch, laptop).

These two are my favorites, but it was so hard to choose. F. Scott Fitzgerald makes my heart beat faster. T.S. Eliot makes me want to spill all of my secrets. Jane Austen makes me want to write letters that I'll never send.

I went to Barnes & Noble earlier this week with a friend and we ended up sitting on the floor of an aisle in fiction, leafing through paperbacks (even as we looked up e-books on our phones), pulling books from the shelves based on covers alone, putting our faces close to the open pages and inhaling the paper and ink and wondering if we're going to be the last generation who knows what book stores smell like. Will we someday try to describe it to younger people, our reading glasses perched on noses twitching as we struggle to bring the sense memories back, wishing we would have bottled it way back when, closing our eyes as we remember what it felt like to turn the paper pages? I think yes. We writers love our books. We writers are going to have to be curators of paper museums, preservationists of ink smudges, storytellers of the printed word.

A little housekeeping...

Since my book has been out since 2008 and I haven't done a signing or workshop in about a year, but still want to keep updating my other site with career advice, info, wage gap, etc., I finally gave it a makeover. And added a few posts I was extremely late in gathering.

More tweaks to come when I have more time, but in the interim you can check it out here!

You're fired!

I'm quoted in an article in this week's Charleston City Paper (photo & all...you know how much I love having my picture taken). It's a good piece and I think a lot of people will identify with some of the stories, especially if you're one of the hundreds of thousands who show up for work every day wondering if today is the day you're going to get laid off. Also, I'm thrilled they mentioned my book!

Read the whole thing and see photos here.

Hittin' the road, Jack...

Nicotine gum: check.

Xanax for flight: check.

Favorite pen for book signing: check.

I'm hitting the road this afternoon for readings and book signings in Columbia (Thursday) and Knoxville (Saturday). You can keep up with me and my mini-book tour (more Charleston events are lined up this month!) here.

Book signing tonight!

Center for Women on Cannon Street, free, 5-7pm.

There will be food. And books. And me.

If you're in Charleston, stop by!

MIA....

I have been, yes. I'm not quite ready to discuss what's been going on in my personal life lately (please don't die from shock). I have become more reticent in the past few years, but this time it's because I'm saving all of it for book number two. If I blow it all here, what am I going to write about next? Politics? Already sick of it. Sex? I've had my "closed for business" sign out for a while now. My past? It's taken me years to finally get all of that buried in a tight little corner in the back of my brain for some therapist to try and ferret out when I'm 60. I'm having some new adventures, kids, and they are good ones.

We'll talk more soon, I promise. I miss you when I'm not here.

On the radio...

My first radio interview for Skirt! Rules for the Workplace will be tonight!

Details here. Listen and you get a free pass to mock me afterwards.

They're heeeeere....

Now it's real: I have a book and I can hold it in my hand. My advance copies arrived this week. Let the shameless self promotion begin!

If you're a reviewer and would like an advance copy of Skirt! Rules for the Workplace , email me at kelly.love@skirt.com. I'll be your best friend (or at least your hi-bye friend) forever.

New book, new site...

I've been tinkering around with this for weeks and am finally ready to share. My new "author web site" is up at kellylovejohnson.com. It's going to be a home for my first book (and hopefully my second...and third...and fourth) and other writings. Since I'm self-taught with the web design stuff, I'm still playing around with it, but I'd love to hear what you think.

Incongruities...

Sometimes entire weeks feel like a battle between Me and Me. I constantly fight not to turn inward, inward, inward. It's self-obsession to the nth degree, as if that level of scrutiny could possibly make me better, smarter, or happier. I must get something out of it, or I wouldn't do it, right?

I often wonder if I have some kind of mental illness that makes me incapable of communicating with others on a deep and lasting level (because it occurs to me every now and then that even my family and closest friends don't know the "real" me). But I communicate for a living.

I surprise myself by occasionally dreaming about people I've only met once or twice or people who are under my invisi-square radar. That must mean I pay more attention to others than I think I do.

I hate cherry-flavored things (they taste like cough syrup to me), but I love fresh cherries and will eat them by the bagful in the summertime.

I wish I could just write books and not have to worry about the other part, like actually marketing and selling them.

I'd like to be in a committed relationship, but I'm not willing to work at it.

I judge people most harshly for things I am guilty of myself.

I wear shoes that I love even though they hurt me.

Five for Friday...

Listening to: "Only You & I" by Tim from Misspelled Marquee. I found it through IndieFeed's podcast last year and it's been part of my iTunes top 25 most played ever since. Also, The Whigs "Technology," James Figurine "Apologies," and The Black Angels "Black Grease."

Eating: A hard boiled egg (but I wish it was an egg & cheese bagel with ketchup) and a microwave organic veggie lasagna my art director gave me because I forgot my real lunch today.

Reading: A really awful book my sister gave me called How to Sleep With a Movie Star. It's mind-numbing brain candy, but Katie thought I'd like it for some reason. I'm worried that she thinks my job is like the one the main character in the book has at a Cosmo-esque women's magazine. It is not. And I do not care about movie stars or sleeping with them.

Wearing: Boys jeans (don't ask), my newly repurposed belt with the skull/bottle opener buckle, and a black Banana Republic tee.

Thinking about: My next book proposal. Apparently I don't have enough to do, so I'm ready to start another manuscript!

What one does when one finishes a book manuscript in just under three months...

I finished it on Friday afternoon and sent it all to my editor. And then I did the following:
1. Cry (happy tears).
2. Giggle my ass off.
3. Schedule a 90-minute massage for early Saturday morning.
4. Go home, sleep, wake up for an hour, go back to sleep.
5. Get massage. Feel human and amazing enough to grocery shop at Whole Foods following massage.
6. Eat lovely roast beast sam from Whole Foods Deli for lunch.
7. Sleep, an excellent nap with no fits or guilt or jerking awake.
8. Wake up, call BFF, go shopping at mall.
9. Return home and wonder what to do with free time. Decide to watch Shortbus (loved it; incredible, riveting, shocking...but would not recommend to the even slightly prudish).
10. Feel inspired and write essay for May issue even though I promised to stay off computer for 24 hours.
11. Wake up early Sunday morning with the whole day stretching in front of me like a lovely giant yawn. Eat cereal in bed, go back to sleep until noon.
12. Spend balance of day washing clothes, cleaning house, going through weeks of mail, and calling much-neglected friends.

Now that I know I can do this book thing, I've got three or four more ideas rolling around that I might put to the test in the next few months. For now, I'm not jumping into anything else too quickly. I have a long overdue haircut scheduled for Tuesday and lots of parties to take my new party dresses to this weekend.

Blogging against sexism...

For today's Blog Against Sexism Day, I thought I'd share a little piece-in-progress from my upcoming book (pub date January 2008), which is all about women at work. Fighting sexism in the workplace has been a passion of mine since I got my first job at 15. Now I get to write about it and really make a difference.

Myth: Men make better CEOs.
Fact: Men make more CEOs, but that’s only because people believe fables like “men are more aggressive” or “men are cutthroat.” It’s irresponsible to make broad, sweeping statements like this about either gender. I’ve known women who are more competitive in the business world than any man you’ll ever meet. I’ve seen women walk into boardrooms à la Joan Crawford addressing PepsiCo (“don’t f*ck with me fellas, this ain’t my first time at the rodeo”), bring an out-of-control meeting to attention, close on a merger agreement, and book a flight to another city to meet with employees for a company they just bought—all in the space of 10 minutes.

Women are natural nurturers and problem solvers, no matter how assertive, aggressive and ambitious we are. Every company in the world is about the bottom line; without it, our economy would crash and anarchy would ensue. Companies are getting smarter and beginning to realize that gender diversity is beneficial to their bottom line. Where men fail, women can succeed—and vice versa. Gone are the days of choosing the “right man for the job.” Logically, considering that companies are placing higher value on the cost savings of employee retention and having a compassionate business model, corporate America is waking up to the fact that the right man for the job is often a woman. Regardless, we’re not asking to replace every male CEO with a female. What we do want is an accurate representation of the gender balance in corporate America on the list of CEOs in corporate America.

We don't want more. We just want the same. Every woman has the power to help close the wage gap. We don't even have to march or carry signs. Just ASK for more money, ASK for the promotion, ASK what you can do to earn it, ASK how you can move up that ladder. And if you don't get the answer you want, move on until you find a company who will pay you what you're worth. If we all stand up for ourselves, corporate America will have to find someone else to fetch the coffee and work for 75% of our male counterpart's salaries.

Get updates on my book and more at the Skirt! Books MySpace page. (as if you need another reason to FINALLY get on MySpace!)