….to write. Well, to work on fiction. I’ve done it sporadically over the years, but finally realized I had to do it like a job. So I went out and bought a new battery for my iBook, one that lasts almost four hours.

It works like this: I drop my son at school and go to a cafe. One morning it was Kean, the next Starbucks near UC-Irvine. I work on the revision of Starletta’s Kitchen for two hours and then I leave. I vow not to check email, although my original intention was to work at cafes that are not wireless. But now the world seems to be wireless and it’s difficult to find a place that isn’t. Maybe the beach, or a park. But I want to work at a table. Monday through Friday, unless something comes up that I have to take care of, this is what I plan to do.

At home it’s too difficult to not get distracted. And as Dennis Palumbo has said, email is death to writers.

***

Today is the first day of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA. I’m moderating a panel this a.m. on fiction and humor. So many great panels. I believe BookTV will be broadcasting some. Anyone going?

The ASJA conference in NYC last weekend was stellar. Great panels there, too. (They’re for sale at www.asja.org.)

***

I like what Melissa Bank said at the panel on Voice at the ASJA conference. She said she has a drawing of a rhinoceros being airlifted and it reminds her that writing is difficult.

What techniques do y’all use to get writing done?

He influenced so many writers. I love these Vonnegut quotes:

“Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.”

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

“People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.”

His books–Slaughterhouse-Five, Sirens of Titan, Player Piano and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater–affected me. I was in college, becoming a writer.

We should have memorial services for Vonnegut all over. Read his work aloud. Remember.

When I have a migraine, which seems to be more often lately, there’s little I want to do. Cooking is hard. I can read okay, but it’s hard to concentrate on writing most anything at all, except for e-mails. So I apologize for being remiss and not posting.

My librarian said she’s been to the ER three times with migraines. Mine have never been that bad, fortunately.

I also had a student who rarely made class this last session because of migraines. The best she could do was get to work. I feel for her.

Today I took Excedrin Extra Strength and the migraine is at bay. It’s there, lurking, like a parking meter cop, waiting to swoop down at the first chance it gets. I even said a prayer to St. Jude, the saint of lost causes.

I cannot think of one man who gets migraines. They seem to be a female thing.

What do you do for migraines?

In the New York Times last week, an essay by Ben Schott in which he talked about abusing books*. You know, turning down the corners, leaving them splayed open, marking them up.

I love it when readers of my book tell me their copy is all marked up. I don’t consider it abuse. I consider it love.

Although I did loan a friend a brand new book and it was returned to me, abused. Coffee stains, wrinkled. And it made me unhappy.

But I must admit to you here and now: I am a book abuser. An inadvertant abuser.

I left the book that you see on the table on the back patio last summer. I brought it out to Travis who was on the chair hammock and we never brought it back in. I figured others would look at it, namely Brian’s guitar students or their parents. It seemed, of all the books I own, the one book that should be available to the public, to kids.

Through the searing sun, through the rain, through the Santa Ana winds and the itinerant cats in the neighborhood, and who knows what else, the book has remained on the patio table. Sometimes it’s positioned in such a way that I’m sure someone has been looking at it, maybe even reading it.

I suppose I abused the book, but look how sturdy it is, for a mere paperback.

How are you with your books?

* If you go to the NYT, you probably won’t be able to access Schott’s essay unless you pay. I found it on this blog, unabridged.

I love it when a movie stands up to the book. The Namesake does this. I loved the book and I loved the movie. I read the book a few months ago and found it moving and wonderful. The movie was moving and wonderful, too. I’ve been to India a few times and have had many Indian friends, but even so, even if I’d never been there and had never been immersed in the India community, I think I would have found it all there and not felt that I was missing something. Same thing re: the book. If you haven’t read it, you won’t find you’re at a loss. (Although I would read the book after you see the movie to fill in details.)

I had that experience with Little Children. I loved the book but really didn’t like the movie very much at all–and especially didn’t like the narration.

In The Namesake, the only thing I thought was off a bit was why Ashok wants to name his and Ashima’s child Gogol, but that could be the trouble of my memory and not the movie.

This morning Travis and I came out to find this vignette, created by Lonnie the Leprechan (or Brian….)….