Or maybe, in this unending cycle of relentless news coverage, we have already totally forgotten that the Oscars even happened.

If this is the case, well, I’m sorry. I had a dental emergency that left me in an incapacitated narcotic haze for the past two days, unable to eat solid food or even to change out of my To Haiti With Love CFDA T-shirt (which I bought the other day, partially out of sincere concern for the beleaguered island nation and partially for the cheap thrill of at last being able to afford a clothing item at Bergdorf Goodman) and now that I’m conscious again, I want to write about the Oscars. So please bear with me here: let’s all pretend it’s yesterday and we still care.

We’ve all heard of the infamous Oscar curse, in which an actor (often prematurely) wins an Oscar and then falls off the face of the Earth, only to make occasional reappearances playing opposite extremely bright and/or disabled children in  Original Movies or  to be vilified by vengeful ex-spouses in the Huffington Post. So maybe the winners are the ones who could really use my help this week, but that’s just too bad. I don’t like winners, especially not these winners (except for Christoph Waltz, who falls right into the sweet spot in my Venn diagram population of one, where strange, small European men old enough to be my father converge with people who have played Nazis: a revelation about my psychosexual idiosyncrasies that I find actually almost too disturbing to share–operative word: almost–which, for me, is really saying something.)

And while the assorted famous rich people I’m about to boss around may not be losers in any traditional sense, this week, at least, they’re welcome to comingle with all the underemployed and un-beloved who can’t quite seem to get an Internet meme started down here in Loserland.

So Welcome, Selected Losers! This one’s for you.

Best Supporting Actor Losers:

Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones: There’s been a lot of talk this year about how you should have received the nod for your portrayal of the world’s most supportive husband in Julie and Julia rather than your turn as Chester-the-Molester in The Lovely Bones, the most moving film about serial child killers ever directed by Lisa Frank. Maybe so, but you wouldn’t have won anyway. You want an Academy Award, Stanley? Stop playing Meryl’s adorable sidekick. Not only does she get all the press out of every movie she’s in, the woman is Oscar poison (see bottom paragraph.)

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger: Woody, if I were you I’d hightail it to a good endocrinologist because the long bones of your face seem to have grown since your days on Cheers and the kerning between your teeth is looking suspiciously wide. Acromegaly can be treated these days, simply by removing the tumor on the pituitary gland that causes the excess flow of growth hormones, and after your very public struggle with the disease, you can play Andre the Giant in the heart-wrenching biopic and win the Oscar they were going to give to Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler, except that nobody likes him.

Christopher Plummer, The Last Station: Congratulations on being alive, you old bastard! Go straight to the bar and commiserate with Peter O’Toole. He might have an honorary Oscar, but you still have your pancreas, so who’s the real winner?

Best Supporting Actress:

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air: Vera honey, if you’re serious about proclaiming yourself the next Streep, you need to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing to your face, because right now you’re looking less like Our Greatest Living Actress and more like one of those clear plastic Halloween masks that make people look like they have scleroderma. You seem like a serious person. I don’t want to see you in five months playing some asshole’s ex-wife on Entourage.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart: You’re playing a dangerous game, Gyllenhaal. Take a look at Farmiga. You can be a lot of things in Hollywood with a face pulled tighter than Jennifer Lopez’s Disney Princess wedding gown (Lopez, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this: you are a very pretty lady, but if I can see the outline of your bellybutton through the bodice of your dress, GO UP A SIZE) except for a kooky/smug earth mother/indie princess type. Let’s let the animated corpse of Meg Ryan serve as a cautionary tale here. Okay? Okay.

Best Actor

Losers:

Morgan Freeman, Invictus: You’ve played Nelson Mandela. You’ve played the President, you’ve driven Miss Daisy, and you were the omnipotent voice of the Penguins. The only thing left for you to do is to play God himself. Not pretend God like in Bruce Almighty, but the real God, as in God: The Biopic. (And whatever you do, don’t let Jamie Foxx talk you into letting him play “Young God.” He’s already turned the country against Ray Charles. If you let him do the same to the Almighty, we’ll all go straight to Hell.)

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker: A hearty congratulations, Mr. Renner, on the highlight of your career. I’m sure you can expect several very respectable offers after this minor triumph, and while it’s probably too late for you to be Tom Cruise, you can certainly be the next Michael Shannon, or, if you play your cards right, even the next Stanley Tucci–a versatile guy who is instantly recognizable and works all the time. I do, however, want to address some rumours I’ve heard floating around the blogosphere in no uncertain terms: STAY AWAY FROM CHARLIZE. That’s an order. You are at a critical point in your career and the last thing you need is to become Mr. Charlize Theron. Remember what happened to the last promising young actor she got involved with? That’s right: nothing.

Colin Firth, A Single Man: DEAR COLIN FIRTH/MR. MARK DARCY: I LOVE YOU, JUST AS YOU ARE. OKAY, I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT. GOODBYE.

Best Actress

Losers:

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire: Gabby, you are adorable. You are also extremely interesting looking and seem comfortable with that, which is why instead of losing 150 pounds and taking whatever Jennifer Hudson passes on, I think you should turn to the world of avant-garde fashion. No, I’m not having a stroke. Fashion is having a physically extreme moment right now (or is at least pretending to). What Beth Ditto is to Kate Moss, you can be to Alek Wek. I want to see you sitting front row at Paris Fashion Week and telling us about the new line you’re collaborating on with Karl Lagerfeld. And then I want you to tickle Karl Lagerfeld. Tickle him until he screams, screams for mercy, and the world will follow you anywhere. Oprah can’t live forever, you know.

Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia: Oh God, Meryl. I know. How many more fucking Academy Awards can you sit through where some other lady wins, and then spends her whole goddamn speech sucking up about how much better you are then she is, while you have to sit there smiling and nodding graciously like some patrician Lady Bountiful in a fucking John Singer Sargent painting? I don’t know! I don’t know! But I think I have figured out how you can make it to the Kodak Theater stage one more time before you die.

Meryl, you are going to have to play Adolf Hitler himself.

Think about it. It’s the perfect Oscar bait role. Accent? Check. Holocaust movie? Check. Full-scale physical transformation? Check? Reviled public figure to which you can bring a heretofore unseen humanity? Check.

Get Tony Kushner to write it for you.

And if that doesn’t work, then I think you need to stop showing up to these things. Because I don’t think I can stand watching your motherly blush of gratitude in 2013 as a weeping Miley Cyrus gushes about what an inspiration you are. I just can’t.

And here is some advice for you! You can follow me on Twitter at @RachelShukert! I hope you do!

Instead of answering a reader question, I’m going to do something a little different this month.

The Guardian newspaper in London recently asked a whole bunch of writers for their ten rules of writing. They got 29 responses, with well-known and respected writers like Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and Joyce Carole Oates amongst them. The compendium of all this information is a real treasure trove of useful writerly advice – I suggest you read the whole two-part article, here and here, as soon as you can. But for those of you who are a little pushed for time, I have pulled my favorite – and to my mind the most essential – of all the advice into the list below (English spelling left intact).

It was hard to cull these nuggets from so much wisdom, and my choices certainly reflect my proclivities as a reader – I couldn’t help but draw more heavily, perhaps, from those writers that I admire most. But this list also addresses the concerns that I see arising most in the writing students and coaching clients that I work with day after day. It’s amazing how many of the writers questioned by the Guardian had some version of “be persistent” on their lists, or how many of them suggested that you need to be careful about what criticism you listen to.

So, for better or worse, read on. Personally, I’m printing this list and sticking it up by my desk – and taking down that picture of Virginia Woolf while I’m at it.

1. The first 12 years are the worst. (Anne Enright)

2. Don’t give up. (Ian Rankin)

3. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom. (Jeanette Winterson)

4. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet. (Zadie Smith)

5. Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide. (Roddy Doyle)

6. Read aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear). (Diana Athill)

7. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. (Roddy Doyle)

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments. (Roddy Doyle)

9. Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: “I’m writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job.” Publisher: “That’s exactly what makes me want to stay in my job.” (Geoff Dyer)

10. Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something. (Geoff Dyer)

11. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand. (Anne Enright)

12. Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes. (A. L. Kennedy)

13. Learn what criticism to accept. (Ian Rankin)

14. Know the market. (Ian Rankin)

15. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. (Will Self)

16. Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page. (Zadie Smith)

1. Inadvertent Affronts. Once, in an editorial meeting, an often intemperate publisher I worked for started talking about the stupidity of all Republicans. I said as lightly as I could, “You know, there may be Republicans in this room right now.” (I knew there was at least one.) She said, “Naahh–that’s impossible.” As with most inadvertent insults, this one resulted from incaution and a failure of imagination. Short of broadly agreed-upon evils like child abuse, Nazis, corruption, genocide, and so forth, in conversation it’s wise to withhold opprobrium for any phenomenon or category that may include anyone who is listening, unless one actually doesn’t mind or welcomes the prospect of alienating others. Such deliberate provocation makes perfect sense for . . . well, provocateurs–and debaters, politicians, and ranters–but its constant practice will severely limit the range and depth of friendships its practitioner can have. Another example of incautious offense: At lunch, a literary agent asked me who edited my writing at a certain magazine. I had never talked to this person before, but I sort of lost it and gave her an impulsive earful about what I considered the hopeless incompetence of that editor. A chill settled over the table as I complained. I stopped in midsentence and said, “Oh, no–she’s probably your best friend or something.” She nodded.

Other, less obvious unintentionally insulting and wounding hazards lurk in the course of conversations, especially at the start, especially with new acquaintances, and especially with regard to personal life. The subject of children–having them or not having them, how well they are faring, their possible difficulties, their relationship to their parents, and so on–presents particular dangers. A good friend in his late thirties recently told me how difficult he found the question “Do you have children?” from people he had never met before. I commiserated and said that I thought that in most cases, this was a taboo question. But I didn’t ask why in particular he found it difficult. That he did told me enough, unless he decided to tell me more. Information about family matters and finances should generally be donated rather than solicited.

I’ve called these kinds of tough moments inadvertent, but they nevertheless betray insensitivity on the part of those who cause them. If you’re on the receiving end of such hurtful remarks and can remember that they proceed from a fault in the other person’s character, even though doing so requires a kind of superserenity approaching genuine Buddhism, it helps. Such moments reveal weaknesses on the part of those who create them far more than they reflect poorly on you. If further exchanges with these people have similarly painful results and few rewards, you should just avoid them. In a work situation, like the GOP editorial-meeting disdain, sadly there is often no choice but to grimace and bear it.

In some ways easier to deal with, I think, is the

2. Deliberate, Frontal-Attack Insult. Once, at a party some twenty years ago, I was talking to a friend about the geographic-origin statistics of U.S. families. I’d read somewhere recently that Latin America had just eclipsed all others, or something like that. Someone else I knew tapped me on the shoulder and said, “It’s Germany, Dan.” I said, “Well, this piece said–” The someone else interrupted: “As usual, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and in any case, what I just said is not an arguable statement–it is a statement of indisputable fact.” Whoa! This has remained in my memory (obviously) as a real standout, Jack Nicholson-worthy “You can’t handle the truth” moment. But its endurance has far more to do with its vividness than with any real grievance on my part. It seemed to me to take place so far out of conversational bounds as not to be a real foul. And most such attacks are like that. There is a natural, reflexive instinct to argue or fight back, but counting not even to ten but just three or four will usually show the futility of joining battle at such times. And you can always dine out on and write books about such moments later on.

Not so with fundamentally reprehensible statements. You literally cannot stand still for remarks that you feel are personally or socially outrageous–serious, vicious slurs against you or your family or close friends, racism, revolting and presumptuous salaciousness. One kind of heel deserves your criticism, the other is made to be turned on. If some greater essential good is served by suffering these moments in silence–survival, one’s living or well-being, the polity’s best interests, even the success of a crucial business meeting–they must be borne. But if at all possible, and for the sake of your own self-respect, don’t conversationally accommodate or compromise with those who so deeply offend your principles.

Not all conversational sore points are the result of direct or indirect insults. They often flare up also when the subjects of religion, politics, race, and sexuality arise and serious differences about these topics exist between or among the conversants. I’ll talk about religion more a little later on, but for now, I’ll say that at the start of a connection with someone else, it’s best for grown-ups to avoid these troubled waters if possible. Stay on the beach of noncontroversy at least for a while, when you can. For younger people–teenagers, college kids–this advice doesn’t hold. That time of life, when people are beginning to settle on their personalities, beliefs, and identities, is precisely the right time to throw this kind of conversational caution to the wind. You almost don’t have a choice about doing so, since youth entails or should entail open explorations of this kind of territory. And usually when clashes occur, no lasting or significant damage results from them. You “move on,” as they say, and make new friends–in another dorm, on another block, in another group–who are of liker or broader minds.

The springtime of adult life is the season not only for bold differences of opinion, but also for the marathon conversations they so often occasion. Courtship produces marathons. “We stayed awake talking for hours,” people will say, in one of those newspaper stories about a marriage, of a third or fourth date. And since youth and courtship generally go hand in hand, they double the chances for long talks. As do bars, parties, and cruises. And then, frequently, work and family and all those responsibilities that begin in dreams settle in, and the all-night or all-day or all-weekend conversations recede into the past, as they probably must and even should, since most of the formation of character that they assist so crucially has taken place. Sadly, too, people–at least American people–often feel uncomfortable when a conversation goes on for more than about an hour and a half, because they are so driven to get back to work or some other more practical-seeming occupation.

Back to sore points, and an example of significant damage from a political conversational mistake: I inherited a writer from an editor who had taken a job at another publishing house. I went to see the writer, to reassure her about our imprint’s support and my interest in her next project (a sincere interest) and, of course, I didn’t want her to leave us and follow her former editor. She lived in Washington, D.C., and my visit coincided with the height of the argument over America’s invasion of Iraq. I barely touched on my unhappiness about President Bush’s action, but it was enough, I learned later, to alienate the writer–who, as it turned out, was a good personal friend of Laura Bush. Now, it’s true that this was not an aim-less conversation, but even if it had been, it would have been a mistake to go out, however gingerly, on this thin ice, this narrow limb. (The writer stayed with us but chose another editor to work with, an editor known to be a genius of opacity.) By the way, Republican literary writers are in my experience as rare as ski bums in the Sahel.

Like family and religion, politics will ooze into a conversation on its own and in its own indirect way, without anyone having to start campaigning or deploring policies or divinities directly. And you will decide, silently, whether the differences between you are too great for friendship and a good talk to overcome. Most of us end up with birds of a feather anyway, especially when we find the plumage of others really objectionable. But it’s a true loss, I think, to fly only and always with your own flock. You can miss out on the company of really fine people, and you can fall into a tedious kind of intellectual and spiritual lockstep if you never step out of line. I’m a liberal verging on anarcho-syndicalism myself, if you hadn’t guessed, but I find the company of smart conservatives challenging and sometimes beneficially mind-bending.

But dilemmas do occur over divisions in belief and politics. Once, a friend suffered a miscarriage pretty far along in her pregnancy and was of course devastated. I did my best to console and sympathize with her, having lived through similar losses closer to home myself. She said she felt her daughter was “with her” anyway, as a sort of real person with a spiritual existence. “Don’t you think that’s really possible?” she said. I didn’t and don’t, though I didn’t doubt the reality of her psychological and emotional experience, of course. I desperately came up with, “Well, put it this way: I can’t say that I don’t believe it.”

In our country, particularly with the election of Barack Obama, race has finally begun to assume a more incidental rather than central role in our society’s conversation, as has sexual orientation. They still divide many among us, I realize–the vote against gay marriage in California a couple of years ago was by no means a negligible event. But those many grow fewer every day, it seems. The tolerance we’ve preached for so long we are beginning to practice with more regularity than ever before. And even the unreconstructed among us have a harder time finding safe conversational havens for their group hatreds. I would speculate that they are increasingly ashamed of themselves, and I know that their children share their prejudices far less automatically than used to be the case.

At a writer’s conference not long ago, after a reading by a novelist whose books often deal with bigotry and racial identity in America, a young woman in front of me, caramel of color, turned around and asked if I liked the reading. “Very much,” I said. “Me too,” she said, “but isn’t that race stuff getting a little old?” I asked her what she meant. “I guess my friends and I all have such mixed backgrounds that all we do is joke about it. My mother is from Suriname and my father is Finnish, and their parents are all mixed up racially, too. My friends and I all think it’s much more of a given than an issue. Sort of more of a joke than an issue.” An odd upshot of the beginning of the finally true melting of the melting pot is that even stereotypes can (within reason and with caution) be employed sometimes in civil conversation now, because they are less charged than they used to be. Gay people and straight people chuckle openly about gay people and straight people. I remember someone in my office telling a gay man, when he was saying that he didn’t think Julia Roberts was very attractive, “You’re gay, so you have to shut up.” They both laughed. Black people and white people talk about characteristic traits in black people and white people. The religious and irreligious can have some fun with their very fundamental differences. Stealing a bit of humor from Simon Rich, the author of two collections of funny pieces and a writer for Saturday Night Live, I facetiously wondered to a writer I know who believes in heaven and hell what would happen if a murderer whose soul was saved ran into his victim in paradise. She was a) stymied, and b) unoffended.

I know it seems odd, sacrilegious, and bathetic to bring up movies in the same breath with religion and politics and race and sexual orientation, but some people feel so passionate about films that conflicts in opinion about them can break a friendship. I think it’s because movies have such a visceral impact on their audience that we can feel personally insulted if someone disagrees with us about their merit. They live at the very core of modern people’s being. Pauline Kael, the famous movie critic with whom I worked for a few years at The New Yorker, once told me that if she and someone she knew disagreed about the quality of an important movie more than three times in any given year, she could not be that person’s friend. Extreme, but not completely nuts, maybe. Disagreements about movies, more than books and plays and television, can have a surprisingly negative impact on relationships. Many couples take such differences very much to heart.

By the way, I have read somewhere that the subject that couples argue about most is . . . no, not money; no, not in-laws; no, not child raising; no, not plans; but: temperature. Open vs. closed windows; AC vs. no AC; blanket vs. quilt; thermostat at sixty-eight vs. thermostat at seventy; fan on vs. fan off. That old electric blanket with two separate controls? Genius! Though how would it go if its inventor had his soul saved, went to heaven, and met one of the people his invention had electrocuted?

From the book A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation. Copyright (c) 2010 by Daniel Menaker. Reprinted by permission of Twelve Books/Hachette Book Group, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/advice/2010/02/02/daniel-menaker-on-insults-and-other-utterances-considered-objectionable/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/advice/2010/01/29/start-me-up-why-lists-can-make-all-the-difference-to-your-writing/ http://thefastertimes.com/advice/2010/01/29/start-me-up-why-lists-can-make-all-the-difference-to-your-writing/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:24:03 +0000 nancy rawlinson http://thefastertimes.com/advice/2010/01/29/start-me-up-why-lists-can-make-all-the-difference-to-your-writing/

Dear Nancy,

I find it really hard to get going with my writing in the mornings. I get up early in order to have a couple of hours to write before I have to leave for work, but then I usually waste at least an hour checking the news online, reading email, going through bills, and other things that can wait. Absolutely anything can distract me, and I don’t get up at 5 a.m. to go through my bills. I want to write! Any tips for making my mornings more productive?

Procrastinating in Pennsylvania

Dear Procrastinating,

You need a start-up list. This is a simple tool that gets you into your writing through a series of steps. My start-up list is typed and saved on my computer. I print out twenty or more copies at a time. When I sit down to write, I take out my list and go through the items one by one. It takes about ten minutes, tops. As I “accomplish” each task, I cross it off the list, which is satisfying. When I’m done, I have cleared away all my distractions and I’m “in” to my writing. Sounds too simple to be true? It is, in a way. It’s just a list. But it works.

Everyone’s start-up list will be slightly different, but they are likely to have the same basic features. Your list might also change over time, depending on how the work is going and your circumstances. I have a start-up list for when I’m at a writing residency that is different from my “at home” list. You’ll have to make your own, based on your own preferences and work habits, but I’ll share mine, so you can see what I am talking about.

The first thing on my list is: Make a cup of tea.

No, it’s not writing per se, but I know that if I sit down to write and I don’t have my cup of tea, the first thing I’ll think is, mmmmm, I could do with a cup of tea right about now, and I’ll jump up again to make it. Which is distracting. So let’s just get that one out of the way first, shall we?

Next is: Clear desk. I can’t focus if my desk is littered with paper. I don’t organize my desk – filing is whole separate task. But I do clear it, stack up all the paper, shelve the books, and keep out only what I need for that day. My start-up list is at the top, of course.

Next is: Check email.

Yes, I know – it’s a distraction. But if I don’t do it, it’s more of a distraction, and I do need to stay connected to my clients and students. So I check, see if there are any fires that need to be put out – usually there aren’t – and I’m done. Then this step is swiftly followed by:

Turn on Internet blocking software.

This, for me, is crucial. I use Freedom, which is for Macs, and I wouldn’t get much writing done without it (if you are a PC user, there are various software programs that can block your access for set periods of time – NetNanny is one of them.)

Once my Internet access is blocked I can’t fritter away hours on the New York Times website or play online scrabble, or compulsively check my email twenty more times. I’m blocked, and I know it’s time to get serious and plug into my work instead. I usually block myself for two hours, but the time scale is variable, of course, depending on your schedule and needs.

Next thing on my list: Decide what I want to accomplish in my writing and write it down.

Often, this necessitates another list – my writing “to do” list for the day. It might seem strange to have a list that leads to another list but if you haven’t realized it by now, I’m a firm believer in the focusing power of lists. For me, the very act of writing something down makes it clearer. Therefore, it’s more likely that I’ll do it.

It’s important that you don’t give yourself gargantuan, unachievable tasks at this stage, though. Make the list of what you want to do small and manageable. You can always add to it if you whip through everything in record time.

Next thing on my list: Open the last writing document that I was working on.

Followed by: Reread that document.

Followed by: Start work.

Did I already say that the list is supposed to be elementary? So simple that any fool could do it? That’s what makes it powerful. So yes, I do give myself the instruction to open the last document I was working on, because guess what? If I didn’t, I might go rooting around on my hard drive and decide to reread that college essay I wrote nine years ago, just…because. Because it’s not my work, and I’ll do anything to avoid the work. But click on the last writing document? I can do that. That’s achievable.

Ditto for re-reading. I need to ease myself in and remind myself of what my own writing sounds like. Inevitably, I’ll read a sentence that I immediately want to change. That’s OK. That’s good – see how I am tricking myself into the work?

By the time I have gotten to my final list item – start work – I’m primed and ready. I’ve got my tea, the desk is clear, I’m sitting in front of my computer, free from the Internet, already engaged in the writing, and I have a new set of tasks for the day. I’m set.

So, Procrastinating, this is the power of the start-up list. Make your own, or borrow or adapt mine (reproduced in its entirety below). Good luck.

The start-up list for procrastinating writers

1. Make cup of tea/coffee

2. Clear desk

3. Check email

4. Block internet for ___ hours/minutes

5. Decide what you want to accomplish in your writing that day and write it down

6. Open the last writing document you were working on

7. Reread that document

8. Start work

I’m worried about the state of my relationship.  Honestly, this is already one of my issues - at every little problem, I jump to worrying about the state of my relationship.  In retrospect, I always think, ”Oh.  I was just hungry,” or “I guess I was tired,” or even “Well, it happens.”  But at the time, I freak out and think that every little thing indicates that we’re just not compatible.  But what does it even mean to be compatible?  We get along really well.  He’s incredibly kind, understanding, loving, all that good stuff you want in a guy.  But I am always questioning our relationship, with every teeny fight or blip.  And we very rarely fight.  I feel like I’m just such a negative nancy.  I just imagine that relationships can never ever work, given most of the relationships I’ve ever seen have ended badly or continue and are going badly.  So I see it as inevitable that things will go sour, and I defensively propel it. Or at least, I think I defensively propel it.  But what if I don’t? What if we really are just not right, despite how great I think he is?  How do you know you’re not right for each other?

Gahhh,
Girlfriend Uncertain and Hurtin’

Dear GUH,

Everyone always says that nobody knows what goes on between two people except those two, and I think it’s true.  But then again, those two people usually don’t know what’s going on, either.  There’s nothing like a relationship to make you lose perspective.  So without knowing much about your relationship, the best I can do is offer you some concrete standpoints from which to make the call yourself.

Think about how you feel from day to day.  Do you worry about the relationship more than derive comfort and happiness from it?  If so, for how long has it been this way?  If it’s made you unhappy more often than not, consistently, thus far, then you have to either get out of there, or make some drastic changes.  And you have to tell him, right away, that you’re unhappy.  He’ll be hurt, but he’ll be glad to know.

As for your deeper doubts about whether relationships can work at all: to some extent, these are your own, and you should try to separate them from your opinions of his behavior and merit.  Also bear in mind that to some extent, everyone carries these doubts around.  About everything.  Maybe the most we can ask of a partner is that he or she inspires us to actively suspend them.

Conversely, maybe entertaining wide and unfounded doubts about the durability of your relationship is a way of dealing with your own mixed feelings about him.  The more loving, kind, and understanding he is, the harder it might be to admit that in spite of it all, you might not love him.  How you feel is a separate question than whether he deserves love.

People sometimes say that you should only break up with someone if being alone would be better than being with them.  If you ask me, that’s flawed logic.  Being alone sucks no matter what, but sometimes you have to be alone for a while in order to heal, forget a little, and with luck, find something better.  Being single is like purgatory: painful, but cleansing.  Rather than thinking about what it’d be like right after you broke up with him, I think you should consider what you’d do six months or even a year later, if you can imagine that far ahead.

Try to envision it.  You’re single and have a functional, independent life.  You like yourself.  You have more free time than you used to, which is nice.  But you’re a little lonely, and you’re looking around.  Do you look for someone like him, but without your shared history, or do you look for a completely different kind of personality?  Is there something you need, irrationally, perhaps, but deeply, which he isn’t providing you with?

If the answer is “no,” then I think you’re better off trying to work things out with this guy.  Your doubts are going to follow you no matter who you date, and people who’ll love you aren’t easy to come by.  But if he isn’t what you want, there’s nothing either of you can do about it.  Love isn’t fair sometimes.  The kindest thing to do is face your feelings, think it through, and then talk to him.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

I found your column and gee I like it!  I’m going to ask you a question, and you can totally choose to answer it, or not.  I really like yr writing!

I very rarely have “boyfriends” or “partners,” but I usually see a few people at once, and often I am only seeing one person at a time.  We very rarely progress to the exclusively together stage, (I usually want to sleep with more than one person at once,) but I find myself talking about them to other people.  What do I call them to other people in this case?  It seems weird to call them my ”friend,” “boyfriend” is incorrect, and “person I’m dating” is just plain cumbersome.  Two other similar things, how do I talk about other people I’ve dated/slept with/am sleeping with to someone I’m seeing, because I usually use “friend,” and that’s similarly weird.  Also, when outside of my immediate circle, if I call someone my “partner,” they immediately think I am seeing a woman, which is fine, but not accurate.  What do I do?

xoxo love
— Stuck on semantics

Dear SOS,

Arright, let’s try to sort this out.  You’ve kindly sugar-coated it (I mean it — being warm is everything to me), but you’ve actually sent me a tricky three-part problem.  What it comes down to is that sexually, you’re less conventional than the English language is; and while I’d be the last person to hold that against you, it’s no secret that nonconformity is a nuisance where communication is concerned.

As far as I can tell, you’re talking about these three situations:

1. describing a guy you’re incidentally and temporarily monogamous with to your friends;
2. describing one non-exclusive sexual/romantic partner to another; and
3. accurately describing your whole lifestyle to someone who’s more likely to assume that you’re a lesbian than to accept your non-monogamy.

I think the easiest solution for friends and strangers (1 and 3) would be to try to use the past tense, or near-future, as often as possible, and stick to describing specific situations.  For example, “I was on a date with Brad, and he kept asking to see my feet,” or, “Do you think it’d be a bad idea to crimp my hair before I go out with Barry tonight?”  And if you’re out with a guy you’re not sure about and run into someone you know, I usually just say “This is my date, Benjamin” — not as avoidant as “friend,” but with no implications for the future.  Ironically, a generation ago, monogamy wasn’t the norm among unmarried couples, so you can tell old people that “We’re not going steady yet.”  But that obviously won’t cover every situation.  I think you’re stuck with “This guy I’m seeing” for the rest of the time.

As for other people you’re involved with (2): since they already know you’re not monogamous (they do, right?), I’d stick with “friend,” in the interest of protecting their feelings.  There’s no point in rubbing it in, and it might make them feel less valued for their personalities, et cetera.  If they want to know, they’ll ask; but since the two relationships have nothing to do with each other, I think it’s best to keep them separate as much as possible.  It’s a myth that only women want to feel special — no matter how open-minded a guy is, nobody likes to feel replaceable.  Whatever you call them, for God’s sake, don’t mix up their names!

Have fun out there!

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

Ever since I was 14, I’ve been cursed with unusually long and heavy periods. The bleeding often lasts three weeks or longer, and I go through multiple boxes of tampons in a single cycle. Of course I’ve discussed this with my gynecologist, who has examined me thoroughly and assures me that nothing is wrong with me — this is just the way my body is built. Seasonique birth control pills (which purport to stop your period for three months at a time) helped a little for a while, but now they’ve stopped working altogether. I’m about to enter my fourth week of bleeding right now, and since my placebo week isn’t for another two weeks, it looks like I’ve got a ways to go.

This would be extremely annoying on its own, but to add insult to injury, it’s wreaking havoc with my sex life! I’m having a fling with the most fantastic guy: I am deeply in lust with him and just want to spend the rest of my life in bed with him. But our relationship has definitely not reached the period-sex stage yet (it’s really not far past the one-night-stand stage), so my uterus is basically holding me hostage right now, and I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t want to turn down his future advances without an explanation, and I’d rather not lie, but I also don’t want to gross him out or scare him off! What is the proper etiquette for this situation? Your advice is appreciated and anxiously anticipated.

Oh, and you’ll want a catchy nickname for my sign-off, won’t you? Put me down as “I’m This Close to Self-Hysterectomy.”

Dear Hyster(ectom)ical,

This might be the toughest question I’ve had to answer so far, because it’s essentially simple: you know what you want, your situation is unequivocal (you have at least a few weeks of bleeding left, no matter what you do), and the only mystery variable is the guy — whose opinion I can’t know anything about.

So I took the problem to two of my best friends immediately after getting your letter.  We met in an Polish vegetarian diner in sub-zero weather (okay, in Celsius, but whatever) and talked it to death for about half an hour — until Anna Pamela asked us to stop until she’d finished her red Borscht, and we all kind of lost it.  And I realized that you passed me the question because it’s tough and because answering questions is supposed to be my job, and that taking advantage of the generosity of my friends, who didn’t even sign up for this, wasn’t going to help.

Thus, regrettably, I’m wholly accountable for everything I’m about to write.  And it’s going to be embarrassing, so buckle up.

As I see it, where sex is concerned, even simple is complicated, and this situation is no different.  Your problem has a hidden variable, or rather, a hidden problem.  You’re “in lust” with this guy, not in love; and while on the whole we want to know the truth about the people we give our hearts to, we don’t always want to know as much about those whom we lust after.  For most straight women, being an asshole is a huge turnoff, regardless of a man’s looks and virility; and if you’ve been having a good time so far, frankly, maybe the less you know, the better.  Why ruin a good thing?  In your case, you can’t simply say, “You know how some women have a ‘flow’? Well, for me, when it rains, it pours,” without risking a bad reaction, which would expose him as an asshole.  And after that, even if he wanted to get together when, um, the tides are low, it would kind of wreck things, you know?  So you have everything to lose.

Nevertheless, this isn’t going to work if he can’t handle menstruation at all.  Fortunately, most men, even if they don’t really like it, know enough to pretend not to mind, because, after all, most women do it, and there’s not much men can do about it.  And for your purposes, for now, pretending is enough.  There’s still the occasional guy who can’t handle blood, but the bell curve compensates by giving us the occasional fetishist or enthusiast to make up for it.

This guy could be either.  So you have to find out.  Next time he propositions you, or vice-versa, put on a good hot record in a minor key, pour the wine or seven-up or Bailey’s, get yourselves all handsy and excited, and then say breathlessly, “I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I’m on my period.”  Don’t stop what you’re doing or look him in the eye.  At this point, he’ll say “Eww,” “Fine,” or “Great!”, and you’ll proceed accordingly.  You see?  You’re not forcing him to have period-sex, but it’s out of your hands now, and he doesn’t have to look like a jerk, because you’re not confronting him with anything unexpected.  If he goes for it, then after a few romps, he’s likely to notice that your period doesn’t seem to be ending, and at that point, you just toss your romp-tousled hair and say, “Oh, that? Mine lasts quite a bit longer than most women’s.  My doctor says it’s not uncommon.”

Even if it is uncommon, this is a very white kind of lie.  I worked in GYN long enough to know that no man really wants to know the whole truth about a woman’s anatomy, for the same reason we don’t want to know the truth about hot fling-guys’ personalities.  The approach I’m advising is really the social equivalent of a fancy medical euphemism.  (And while we’re on the subject of my GYN background, if it makes you feel any better, it could be a lot worse, and often is.  On the gynecological scale, this is an “interesting conundrum,” not a “problem.”)

By way of explanation, the reason I suggest waiting ’till you’re both worked up is that in my experience, it’s hard to talk about sex when you’re not having it, about to have it, or at least aroused.  It’s a different mode of thinking and it’s not a very logical one, and somehow it just never works to try to bring one world into the other.  Cary Tennis (an idol of mine) memorably advised a woman who’d been faking orgasms for years to just start yelling, during The Act, “OH!  OHHH!  I’M NOT COMING, BABY!  NEVER WAS!  STILL FEELS GOOD, THOUGH, KEEP GOING, PLEASE!”

This is a bit less dramatic, of course, but the principle is the same.  Once he’s already having bloody sex with you, more bloody sex can hardly seem like a problem.  The crucial thing is not to present it to him in a way that could shock him, or bring out unappealing parts of both of your personalities.  (Because if he’s a jerk about it, you’re probably not going to be feeling very friendly towards him, either.)  If possible, you want to cross that line, explore that territory, before he has a chance to blow everything out of proportion in his head.

Between you and me, I think you’re facing good odds.  If he’s “in lust” with you, I doubt he’ll be stopped by your period the first time, or the second, or the third; and before you know it, you’ll be having lots of wonderful bloody care-free sex.

Or he won’t, and you’ll lose him.  But honestly, overly inhibited guys don’t make the best flings anyway.  You can’t really lose.  Best of luck!

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

I’m writing to you with a really delicate problem. Over the past year I’ve been casually involved with a japanese girl — i had to stop seeing her though because i fell hard for this other girl… who happens to be korean.  I know I must seem like kind of a cliché - the young, white hipster who has a lot of asian girlfriends - but i’ve never considered myself particularly inclined towards the “yellow-fever.” but i really dread my ex-whatever-she-was meeting my new girlfriend — i don’t want to come off like one of those creepy fetishists, you know?  how should i deal with this situation?

Just a guy who likes girls

Dear Guy,

Honestly?  Don’t introduce them.  Not yet, anyway.  Keep them apart as long as you can.  I don’t know how hard that might be, logistically, but it sounds like you’ve succeeded thus far, so keep doing what you’re doing. After you break up with someone, you have no obligation to tell her who you’re dating or seeing or think is hot or what country you’re in or what your parents said or any of that.  Some of that stuff is nice, of course, but in this case, I think it’s more hurtful than anything.  

I know this sounds extreme, but I spent about ten hours this week talking about asian fetishes with half a dozen men and women, asian and otherwise, and even after all that talk, I can’t say almost anything concrete about fetishes or what causes them or whether a fetishist can change his nature or should be held responsible for what he does to the people he dates.  But I am absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure that being perceived as one of many objects of a race-specific fetish is hurtful, degrading, and virtually destroys any fond or personal feelings left in a relationship, to say nothing of love.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a fetishist.  ”You have to be somewhat self-aware to be a true fetishist,” a (smarter and more articulate) friend of mine argued.  In other words, if you’re a fetishist, you know it.  I happen to agree with her, and I think her comment gets at the heart of the problem of how to define fetishism.  Like Justice Stewart’s famous definition of hardcore porn — “I know it when I see it” — we all have an idea of what a fetishist is, even if it’s damn hard to articulate.  

So the best definition we can get will probably come from examples and proxies.  As someone whose minority status isn’t obvious (as I mentioned a few posts ago), I don’t have any firsthand experience to draw from, anyway, but I found the following hypothetical situations are roughly analogous. 

In real life, an ex-boyfriend of mine who’s now a good friend (think Jerry and Elaine), has, since our breakup, dated a number of women, all of whom have been roughly the same height and weight (a bit smaller than me) with dark brown hair and eyes, roundish faces, and olive-ish skin — like mine.  But I’d describe him as a guy with a preference, not a fetishist.  He’s in his longest-yet relationship now with another brunette, and I know, beyond a doubt, that he loves this woman.  The way he looks at her is proof enough to me.

But I imagine that if I had, say, a big birthmark on my shoulder, and somehow found out that all of his other girlfriends have had huge birthmarks, too, I’d be offended, question everything he ever professed to feel for me, and would warn every birthmarked girl I knew to stay away from him.  You know?  I myself don’t fully understand the distinction, but I think it has to do with the idea that if this aspect of my appearance was prerequisite for a relationship, then my personality would just be something to deal with and manage as best he could, so that he could get what he wanted — birthmark-access — as much as possible.  In other words, I’d feel that I wasn’t being treated, or valued, as an individual.

Which brings me to the second reason I don’t think you’re a fetishist.  You care what your ex thinks, even though you’ve broken up with her and have a new girlfriend whom you’re wild about.  That, to me, says that you valued her as a unique person, for her irreplaceable qualities.

But if she finds out about your new girlfriend, I guarantee that she’ll develop deep doubts about all of that.  And she’ll probably share those doubts with everyone you know, regardless of their accuracy.  And, more to the point, if she has any fond feelings at all towards you or your past relationship, it’ll feel like a knife to the heart.   If you don’t want to hurt her, you have to lie to her — because the lie tells the deeper truth: that you cared about her then, and still do.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

Dear Nancy,

I’m half way through the manuscript of my first book, and I’ve just finished a workshop in which I got some substantial feedback on my existing chapters. Now I don’t know what to do – should I go back and revise, or push forward with new pages?

Befuddled in Brooklyn.

Dear Befuddled,

I’m afraid there is no clear answer to this one. The best I can do is…it depends on the kind of revision that you are talking about. If the workshop has helped you to re-imagine your project, or given you some new, overarching structural ideas, and you want to bring that fresh vision to the page, by all means, dive in and revise. In this case, though, it isn’t so much revising as rethinking. Implementing that kind of change can reinvigorate your work and your energy for it. It can make space for new ideas, new possibilities.

If, on the other hand, you are talking about polishing sentences, adding in context, or taking care of any other more small-scale issues, revising might be a way of spinning your wheels and avoiding the more difficult production of new words.

Feedback can be very useful, but I tend to think that it’s a mistake to try and deal with every issues that gets flagged by your workshop readers. Better, often, to let the feedback sit a while and go back to it in a few weeks (or even months). Then the really important things will jump out at you and the minor, nit-picky stuff from that pedantic reader (every workshop has one) will fade into the background, where it belongs.

Getting caught up in minutia won’t help you when you are trying to birth a whole book. I’m a firm believer in the importance of beautiful sentences, don’t get me wrong. But when writing a book, you have to balance that consideration against big picture stuff – story arc and conflict, tension and pacing. And plot, of course. Once you get that big stuff down, polish away. Before that, you might be applying your mental energy to pages that are going to get radically altered anyway, down the line, once you have worked out the kinks in your story.

Good luck,

Nancy.

So one of my best friends, who is also an ex-coworker, V, dated another friend and ex-coworker, J, about a year ago. He broke up with her this past January and she was totally heart broken. He never gave a real reason, just said “you deserve better,” and it was really annoying. So it was pretty awks for a while because I would still hang out with him sometimes since we were friends, but she’d get really upset any time his name came up, so we decided I just wouldn’t tell her if I talked to him or saw him. It ended up not mattering much anyway because he and I don’t really talk much these days.

So last week I found out (by accident, because I saw something in my current coworker’s calendar) that he just got married!!! The girl is an ex of his, and I’m pretty sure she’s knocked up. When I first found out, I was so shocked and needed to tell someone, so I told one of V’s good friends that I’m also friends with. She ended up telling another close mutual friend. So now these girls want to get together with V and have a dinner or something where we sit her down and tell her the news. Do I really have to though?????

-Awks in the Office

Dear Workplace Shenanigans,

Matters of the heart and ovaries are always complicated, and perhaps especially in these tawdry days of mistletoe and Chanukah candle-lighting (nothing says romance like two hands on the shamash).

But like so much tinsel at a holiday hoe-down, there is a silvery lining here. First, most of us watched “LA Law” at a delicate age and thought, “Gawrsh, I can’t wait to be an adult and wear fancy suits and have sex with all of my colleagues,” only to discover that adulthood offers no promises of fancy suits. You happen to work in a very exciting office. This counts for something.

Second, it sounds like your friend V was spared. This chap clearly didn’t love her enough (there’s never a good reason for this), and chose to stop wasting her time. This is a good thing. It is far too easy to stay with someone because it seems like love or it should be love, only to discover years later that nope, uh-uh, it’s not love. Given all the boring decisions (casserole?) and terrifying scenarios (screaming children, ennui) that await any young couple, it’s best to make sure it’s love. Sure, perhaps this guy was a bit of a cad. Perhaps he didn’t do much to warn your friend of his waning feelings or express them properly. But really, the words one uses to break someone’s heart are rarely the issue. They’re just the lame souvenirs we get left with, to place on the crumbling mantelpiece above the ashes of our heart.

Naturally you feel squeamish about telling your friend that her ex got married. No one really likes breaking bad news. (Just think: if people actually enjoyed being harbingers of dread, then maybe Hitler would’ve realized he was losing the war sooner, and where would we be now? The Nazis knew it wasn’t fun, and so do you.) But wouldn’t it be so much more awkward if you were the root of her pain? Instead, you’re just a concerned friend. So it seems to me that V is fairly lucky: not only is she not married to someone who doesn’t love her (she does, indeed, deserve better), but also she has friends who care enough to break the news in a compassionate way, perhaps over dinner. And why not? Rare is the news that isn’t improved by a steaming bowl of lasagne and some whisky.

Good luck!

Emily

Need advice on your own awkward situation? Email your question to emilybobrow@thefastertimes.com

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/advice/2009/12/19/awkward-moments-advice-telling-a-friend-about-her-ex/feed/