Stephanie Gayle

I've hit the point where I stop reading.
This happened during the last stretch of writing My Summer of Southern Discomfort. Rather unknowingly, I had stopped reading: fiction, non-fiction, magazines. I was in the zone and singularly focused on the goal of finishing the book.

Since I learned to read I have not gone more than a few days without reading (usually books, usually fiction). Until that is, the damn finish-the-book cycle kicks in.

Well, it's last stretch time for book #2, which means that until I finish the draft I am not going to read anything longer than a magazine article. On the one hand, it seems right to keep outside influences at bay, and on the other hand I practially drool everytime I walk past my local bookstore. Books! Sweet, forbidden books!

There's plenty of debate on whether writers read while writing or spurn reading alltogether. For me it seems to be that I read outside material until about the last six weeks. It's like some odd timer goes off inside my head. Stop reading, it tells me. Thankfully it doesn't go off earlier than six weeks. My reading addiction runs deep and detox, while good, also hurts.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This year, I had two Thanksgivings. One at my sister's house, and one at my house, and I didn't have to cook a turkey for either. Yippee! Though I did make the cardamom rolls and I knew they would be judged in the brutal spirit of honesty by my family. The verdict: "They taste great but look more like cinammon buns." Yeah, yeah, shove it in your mouth people.

Of course the buns nearly didn't make the 2 hour 20 minute drive to my sister's house. The very handsome boyfriend and I planned to eat them if we were in the car much longer. Bumper to bumper traffic + pouring rain = not happy fun times.

In the end, however, I ate two delicious Thanksgiving meals, enjoyed spending time with my family, boyfriend, and roomies, and managed not to kill the older brother when he pointed to my author photo and said, "That's the picture you chose? Why?" Brutal honesty indeed.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I've been gone a while, but staunch those tears, kids. I'm back! I jetted off to New York City for a few days where I lunched with both my editor and my agent, who are both charming, kind people. Really. I'm damn lucky. We talked about what we like to read, why I'm obsessed with lawyers, and a little bit about project #2.

While not working it, I saw my cousin Tom in the Broadway production of "The Little Dog Laughed." It was a great show with very sharp writing. I recommend it highly. Go see it. There's nudity! And laughter!

While not broadening my cultural horizons with theater I was shopping and eating. I got some holiday gifts bought (hurrah!) and I met up with friends I haven't seen in ages or since our last mutual friend's wedding (that's how these things work).

Overall, it was a faboo trip. It's always nice to return to Manhattan. And in a nice circular moment I passed the office building where I first worked in NYC post-college on my way to Harper Collins and all I could think was "Man, I am in such a better place now. Walking toward my publisher instead of toward a job I loathed."

Posted by Stephanie at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the other day I opened my mail to find William Morrow's Summer 2007 catalog. My book is on page 65. Awesome, I think. They are in way too deep to ever pull out now. (Yes, thoughts like these enter my mind. Books are like babies: until the little darlings are in your own hands, you cannot fully believe they will come to be).

Having seen a mock up of the catalog copy months ago, I did not read every word. So when I showed it to a friend and he said, "Bet you wouldn't mind having Anne Tyler's royalties" I thought he was non-sequitering. He wasn't. Turns out the first line compares me to Anne Tyler. Ha ha ha! That line was changed and I had not noticed.

Me, like Anne Tyler. Hey, I didn't write it. The good folks in catalog marketing did. And if you cannot trust someone in marketing, well, really people, what have we to believe in?

Posted by Stephanie at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was recently getting my (second) coffee of the day when I mentioned going home for Thanksgiving.
"To Conneticut?" Patty said.
"No, to New Hampshire," Erica said.
"You're both wrong," I told them. "I'm from Massachusetts."

This is not the first time my origins have cause confusion. So, to set the record straight, I am a Masshole. Born and bred. To get really specific: South Shore. Not Southie, people. Totally different.

I think the root cause of people's inclination to assign me to different backgrounds (Midwest? Canada!) is my lack of accent. Yes, I had one. Yes, I lost it. No, I don't remember when. But, if you get me drunk, super tired, or stick me on the South Shore long enough I do tend to start slurring my "r"s and then dropping them. Because, at heart, I'm a Masshole. A wicked Masshole.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our washing machine died Monday. So we're without the ability to do laundry until Saturday when the new machine arrives. This got me to thinking about household difficulties we've had in the past and how, on a scale of one to ten with ten being a total pain in the ass, this is probably a two.

Some past disasters we've survived have included:
1. Oil-emitting heater trouble (smelly black smoke rising from your cellar is scary)
2. Squirrel infestation (of course, they were nesting in the walls behind my bed so I could heard them racing around all hours)
3. Dying refrigerator (milk would spoil in two days)
4. Roomates with no sense of "clean" (when you burn a candle outside someone's bedroom in an attempt to diffuse odor, it's bad)
5. Very old wiring that used to result in blown fuses (some of it has been updated so this happens less often)

And because we live in an old house with uninsulated crawl spaces, the top story is very cold in winter and scorching in summer. Though the squirrels seemed to like it before they were removed. Soon it will be time to weatherproof the house with caulk and plastic sheeting which means no more open windows until April or May.

Yeah, just remembering the pre-new wiring days, when we had to rotate the use of space heaters so we didn't blow fuses makes me laugh in the face of a broken washing machine.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So November is National Novel Writing Month. Or, as I call it, "a month like any other." I think November is only National Novel Writing Month if you're not writing novels every month.

If you're not, however, doing as I do, you can check out what NaNoWriMo is all about here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

The goal is 50,000 words by November 30, technically a bit spare to be called a novel, but why quibble?
If I wrote 50,000 words a month I would have a lot more books done but probably a lot less else done (job, laundry, grocery shopping).

So good luck to the NaNoWriMo participants. After all, what's a month without clean socks?

Posted by Stephanie at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)