Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I used to write in the evening.

And then I quit drinking.

And when I quit drinking and I sat down in the evening,

I thought, I don't know if I can do this,

because there should be booze on my table.

So I thought, well, I'll change the time of day that I write,

because I'm not used to having booze on my table at 10 o'clock

in the morning.

So I started writing in the morning.

And then eventually I was able to write in the morning

and at night as well.

So I usually get up, and I go straight to my desk.

And I start by writing in my diary.

And then I turn to whichever essay I've been working on.

I work from 10:00 till 1:30.

And then I go out and I pick garbage up off the roads

until 8 o'clock at night.

And then I sit down at my desk for another hour

and work some more.

And I have dinner.

Sometimes I go back to work after dinner, but usually not.

I know for myself, it's very important

to write every single day.

I meet a lot of young writers who say--

and I say, do you write every day?

And they say, no, but just-- you know,

I write when it strikes me.

I don't know.

I suppose that might work for some people.

I'm not really the one to say, but it would never

have worked for me, you know?

If you're-- so much happens by sitting at your desk when you

don't have an idea.

So many things can happen, but they're not

going to happen unless you're at your desk.

So you need to sit there, and not have the internet,

and see what happens.

You just have to do the work.

And that means not going to the party.

And it means people are really going to think you're a drag.

I mean a lot of people--

I can't tell you how many people have lectured me over the years

and said, well, you can come out to dinner just this once.

Or why can't you come to the party?

You're being horribly selfish by not doing this.

And everybody else is going to be there.

I've met so many people who say, well, I really want to write,

but I work all day.

So did I. You work all day, and then you come home

and you write.

If it means that much to you, you're

going to find the time to do it.

That's not-- that's never an excuse,

to say that you don't have the time.

And there are a lot of people out there

who are happy to give 10%.

But I don't know any of them who--

I don't know their names, because they don't have books.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So I thought I would read a few little diary entries here.

Some of them I went on to turn into stories and essays.

And others, I just have them in a file so that--

I feel like they all get a good response,

and they're all strong openers.

The thing is they're incidents.

They're vignettes.

They're not essays, right?

So November 13, 2015.

Spokane, Washington.

I was in a murderous temper yesterday.

Part of it was lack of sleep, part was general tour fatigue,

and part was left over from the night

before, when the producers in Olympia

stuck me in a sweltering black box from my book signing.

Adam was supposed to collect me in Spokane at around noon

but his flight from O'Hare to Denver was canceled,

so instead he sent a car service to pick me up.

The driver, a plump woman in her early 30's, met me

at the baggage claim, and when she asked how my flight was,

I knew that it was going to be a long ride.

It's not her fault, but I've had it with small talk.

The same lines day after day.

I just can't do it any more.

I never caught her name, this woman.

She wore a flat topped cap, and a hideous tan colored

dress that looked like she'd made it herself in the dark.

On her left shin was a tattoo to there

was maybe four inches tall and looked freshly done.

"What is that, exactly?"

I asked.

"Well, an anchor, obviously, surrounded by some scripture."

"Hmmm," I said.

She smiled.

"I see you didn't bring the sunshine with you!"

I gritted my teeth and was quiet until we

got into her car, a big SUV that smelled like a Yankee Candle

shop.

"Do you sew?"

I asked as we headed into town.

"Me?

Gosh no," she said.

"But that's a funny question."

I stayed at The Davenport.

"How's your day going?" the check-in clerk said.

"I've been here before," was how I answered.

"Well, welcome back.

I wish you'd brought us some sunshine!"

I moaned.

This morning at breakfast I was escorted to the table

by a beautiful young hostess.

"How are you?" she asked.

I said nothing.

"How are you?"

The third time she asked, I told her

that I was no longer answering that question.

"It"s just not important," I said.

She gave me the look a person does

when they work in the service industry

and need to tell someone, as subtly as possible,

that he or she is being an asshole.

I returned her look with one of my own

said, "Actually, you're the asshole."

She walked away and as I lowered my napkin to my lap

I noticed that my fly was down.

Of course, I thought.

Adam was originally going to drive me to the airport at 8:20

this morning, but instead he changed his flight,

so I took a car driven by the same woman I had yesterday.

"How was your stay?"

she asked.

"OK."

"How was the show?"

"Fine."

We were silent for a few minutes,

and then I apologized for being in a bad mood.

"I think I've been on tour too long," I told her.

"I just can't take the small talk anymore.

Here it is, not even 8:30 and I've already

been asked how I am six times."

She nodded.

"It's just a lazy question," I said.

"Why not ask, I don't know, 'Have you ever donated bone

marrow?'

If the person you ask is in a bad mood it'll still come back

to bite you I suppose.

I guess there's just no way to win."

"I see your point," the young woman said.

"I'm not intellectual like you, so maybe I

wouldn't put it that way, but I understand what you mean."

"I'm not an intellectual," I said.

"Far from it."

We were quiet again, and then I asked what she

planned to do for Thanksgiving.

"I'm thinking I'll get one of those kits," she said.

"The kind that has everything in them--

turkey and stuffing and so forth, and then in the day I'll

maybe play football."

"You play football?"

I asked.

"Just tag," she said.

"Our family does it every year.

I got boys."

She seemed so young then.

"How many?"

"Two," she said, "One seven, the other eight."

I asked their names and after she told me,

and after I had winced, she turned onto the road that

led to the Alaska Air terminal.

"My husband died nine months ago,

so the holidays, they're hard.

I'm not sure if we should do the same things we did last year

or try something different, you know?"

If she was savvy, she'd say this every time

she dropped someone off at the airport.

It's what I'd do--

claim my husband just died and rake in the tips--

but she wasn't like me.

She wasn't a snob or a grump, just a young widow

in an ugly dress who has two children

and is trying to put one foot in front of the other.

God, do I feel like an asshole.

November 26, 2013.

Emerald Isle, North Carolina.

Because I've accumulated so many miles,

they bumped me up on the flight from Atlanta to Raleigh.

I thought our plane would be on the small side,

but instead, perhaps owing to Thanksgiving,

and the great number of travelers, it was huge.

Usually first class and coach are

separated by only a curtain, but here there

was an entire galley between them.

I was seated on the very first row,

in front of a woman who looked to be in her early 60's and was

letting her hair go from dyed red to gray.

Shortly after settling in she started a conversation

with the fellow seated beside her.

That's how I learned that she lived in Costa Rica.

"It's account of my husband," she said.

"He's military, well, retired military though you never

really leave the Marine Corps do you?"

She started explaining how she went from North Carolina

to Central America but then the flight attendant

came to take a drink order from the guy beside me,

and I missed it.

Just as I was tuning back in, a man across the aisle

tried to open his overhead bin.

It was stuck for some reason, and he pounded on it,

saying to whoever would listen, "This is like Obamacare.

Broken."

Several of the passengers around me

laughed, and I noted their faces,

vowing that in the event of a crisis,

I would not help lead them to an emergency exit.

"You people are on your own," I thought,

knowing that if we did go down, it would probably

be one of them who'd save me.

Not that Republicans are braver or more

clear headed in times of crisis than Democrats.

Rather it's just my luck.

After taking off from Atlanta I pulled out

my Japanese notebook, pretending to study

but actually listening to the woman behind me,

who continued to talk throughout the entire flight.

"And of course the cost of living

is practically nothing compared to what

it is here in the States--

not that I don't miss anything."

I guess she was drinking just as steadily as she was talking.

Or maybe she'd gotten a head start during her layover.

She didn't sound drunk, exactly, but just shy of it.

Loud and adamant, as if the person

she was talking to wasn't listening correctly.

"I'm not saying I'll spend the rest of my life,

there that's not what I meant at all,

but what's the rush as long as we're having fun, right?"

It was dark by the time we landed in Raleigh.

And as we taxied to the gate, one of the flight attendants

made an announcement.

The "Remain Seated Until the 'Fasten Seat Belt' Sign Has

Been Turned Off" part was to be expected.

But then she added that we had some very special passengers

on board.

"Oh, no," I thought.

"Please don't embarrass me."

I was just wondering who the other important person might

be, when she said, "With us today is the outstanding soccer

team from Green Hope High School in Cary, North Carolina."

The woman behind me applauded loudly, cheering as she did so,

and when no one joined her she raised her voice shouting,

"You people are assholes.

I mean, what the hell, you can't even

clap for a bunch of teenagers?"

I'd meant to applaud but figured the team was back in coach.

They wouldn't have heard me one way or the other,

so what difference did it?

"Pathetic," the woman spat, sounding a little crazy now.

"Too wrapped up in your smart phones

and iPads to congratulate a team of high school athletes."

You couldn't say she hadn't nailed us.

Still I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing.

It's so funny to be called an asshole

by someone who doesn't know you, but then again knows you

so perfectly.

That particular diary entry, I read it

on stage a number of times, and I really

liked the way that it worked.

But the thing is that it was just an incident, right?

It's not an essay.

It's an incident.

It's a vignette, right?

And to stretch it out didn't make sense,

to take something that's a page and a half

and think, wow, if I stretch it into 12 pages,

like if I described the flight attendant,

and if I talk about the weather outside,

and if I talk more about the Japanese notebook that I have

and the words I was studying, I could stretch it out,

but that's not--

that did not feel like a story to me.

It was just a moment.

And I think what made it funny, I think,

was when the flight attendant said, "We have some very

special people onboard," my assumption that she was talking

about me.

And she had no idea who I was.

She was not-- she was talking about teenagers

is who she was talking about.

But I thought maybe I could use that as a springboard,

and so use that as a beginning of a story.

And so you couldn't say she hadn't nailed us.

Still I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing.

It's so funny to be called an asshole

by somebody who doesn't know you,

but then again knows you so perfectly.

"See that woman?"

I said to Hugh when he met me at the baggage

claim a few minutes later.

I told him what had happened on the plane,

and he folded his arms across his chest,

the way he always does before lecturing me.

"She was right, you know.

You should have applauded."

"We've been apart for two months," I reminded him.

"Would it kill you to take my side in this?"

He apologized, but after I'd wrestled

my bag off the carousel and we'd started toward the parking lot,

he added quietly, but not so quietly

that I couldn't hear him, "You really should have clapped."

From the airport we drove to my brother, Paul's.

There we met up with my sister, Gretchen,

who had a cast on her right forearm and held it aloft,

like someone perpetually being sworn in.

"It helps ease the pain," she explained.

So what that essay winds up being about

was we drive to the beach.

And we meet my sister Lisa there.

And my sister Lisa had just got the police report

on my sister Tiffany and learned that before taking

a fistful of pills, she'd put a bag

over her head, a plastic bag over her head,

to commit suicide.

So you wouldn't really know from the beginning of that essay

that that's where it's going to wind up,

but that's where it took me when I took the diary essay--

when I took the diary entry and added to it.

So you can surprise yourself that way.

The other examples that I read, the woman

who told me that her husband had committed suicide, that

could possibly be an essay about getting people wrong,

about how ashamed you feel after you've

sort of prejudged somebody and been less than polite to them.

I haven't figured out where to take that,

but I always pull that diary entry out every now and then,

and I think always with the hope that I would

know where to go from there.

And I think the trick is to write it over again,

not to copy the file, but to write every word of it

over again.

And then open yourself up and see where it might take you.

The danger often is that you get the laughs right out

of the gate, and then they kind of

peter out, because the funniest bit was your opening.

So you have a lot of work ahead of you

to kind of either keep it at that level

or come back to that level at some point,

because you don't want to feel like you're just running out

of gas, you know, like you started your essay really

strongly, and then you took your foot off the gas pedal.

And it just kind of coasts, and then it stops,

and everyone's just really relieved that it's over.