Jami Attenberg
Jami Attenberg
notebook morning thinking
What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.
respects
There's something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.
decline
Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.
Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.
anywhere near
I won't go anywhere near the new Times Square. It's seizure-inducing.
ate fat parents point themselves
I was fat because my parents were a little fat themselves at that point in their lives, and I ate what they ate.
I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter.
color hide
For years I'd thought my color was black: deep, dark, thoughtful, mysterious. Black, you can hide behind. But now I know it is red.
dozen drove forth
For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.
men talk women
I don't know much about any of the Hasidim because the men won't talk to me because I'm a woman, and the women won't talk to me because, while I am Jewish, I'm not Hasidic.
act morning wake
I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm still a woman.
countless graduate literary pitch published pursue seemed send writers
I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents.
biggest feed people resource twitter
My Twitter feed is probably my biggest resource of news. Other people scour the web so I do not have to, and I thank them for it.
journals online
Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.