I keep a journal of my novel that is just about the novel–any ideas, questions, thoughts, lines, even just entries like “page 77 is still a problem!” or “return to page 13!” I make the entry, even if it’s just a few lines, every day of work on it as I close the day’s work, and I also put scraps in there, deleted sections and lines I want to save. If I’m working on an edit like I am now with a master copy, I include the page number from the master.

When I return to work the next day, I reread that entry first and I return to where I was and what I was thinking about the more quickly. This is in addition to the writing notes I keep on my phone.

The journal I call a “workjournal” and it is a MSWord doc, and each new entry is entered at the top of the first page, a method I learned from blogging actually, so that the most recent entry is visible immediately when I open the doc–the oldest entry is at the end. This is because a MSWord doc opens right to page 1 always, and this way I am not scrolling past old entries to get to the one I need to remind me of where I left off.

I also keep any outlines or structural thoughts here, I keep lists of themes, etc. It’s all in there. The one for The Queen of the Night is very long right now, almost the same length as the novel. Please, try it out. Tell me how it works for you.

*This is how Mike expresses affection.

“Silver Sparrow” is the story of a bigamist, his two wives, their daughters and his mother, narrated from the perspectives of the daughters, Chaurisse and Dana. The structure is deceptively simple — first telling one girl’s complete story, then the other’s — but the movement of time is complexly rendered, and the result is a stereoscope trained on America of the 1980s, specifically Atlanta’s black middle class, with roots in Marietta, Ga., in the 1950s. Those communities, and their values, are put in conversation, until what appears is not a simple she-said/she-said story of the grievances of girls forced to share a father but the story of a 14-year-old black girl’s pregnancy in 1958, the forced marriage that resulted and the three generations of shame and heartbreak that followed. Jones offers us a vision of how the problems of her characters belong to us all, in a way that is as much about the sisters as it is about America: who we are as a country and who we want to be.

“The Great Pulitzer Do-Over”, at the New York Times Magazine.

In preparation for this reading Maud and I shared drafts, a process that lead to us both uncovering what we were actually writing about. As Maud put it over on her blog, “Both of our essays are about family mysteries, conversations across generations”. The essay I’ll be reading from is something I’ve been working on for years off and on—it began as a garden diary of the sort every gardener is supposed to keep, back when I was growing roses in Brooklyn, and pretty soon I knew it was more than that, but only recently have I been able to finish it. Maud will read from an essay about a mystery in the life of her maternal grandfather that she decided to investigate that I, quite honestly, think is thrilling–and it is, in part, a testament to the power of research in writing about family, something not enough people do. Which is to say, you think you know about your family, but have you ever really checked out their story?

What I love about Maud as an essayist is that no matter the topic, whether it is personal or intellectual, she pursues it all with a trenchant honesty and self-regard, alongside scrupulous research, and a good portion of wit. If you don’t know Maud’s work, start with her self-titled blog, where she writes about her writing projects, books she is thinking about and her family’s histories. There’s a terrific interview with her here at Brad Listi’s Other People podcast series (note her beautiful voice).  She is at work on a novel, also, which is almost done. And if you perhaps somehow don’t know her Twitter feed, well, you’re missing out. So, don’t—follow her here. And then, if you’re in NYC this Tuesday, come find us.

And yes, now that I mention it, I’d be thrilled if someone nominated My Next Move.*

* Editor’s note: Thank you!

Is it easier to search the digital edition? Yes, for the one thing you are there to find. But to find only the thing you are looking for transforms the limits of your imagination into the literal borders of what you know, and this is never a good thing.

Me, at the New York Times Room For Debate today, debating the merits of the Encyclopaedia Britannica becoming a digital only creature.

It’s Jeremy Lin’s week, and we wrote about it. At Salon and the Classical.

Here’s her question about the post, and my response. She is, it should be said, young and ambitious, and incredibly nice.

“What do you think of it? Are soulless careerists a thing? Is essentializing people like that even a good idea? What is your advice for office-bound young people?”

Choire knows of what he speaks.

Is it divisive? I don’t think I’d say divisive,  and I think it’s sweet that you are asking me if they even exist—you’re so young! It’s adorable and terrifying. Anyway YES, they are definitely there. I call them people who fail upward. They mysteriously ruin the magazine/film/show/company and get hired at a better place for more money later. They miss their deadlines, their targets, then get the promotion you were hoping was going to come to you if you were just good and did your job from your corner, because surely everyone notices quiet quality, and then they get that promotion because they are not in the corner and actually no one notices quiet quality unless it is underlined for them.

And that’s where they can actually help. The thing is, the drama he speaks of is also a kind of PR, sadly—and a lot of people get sucked in, including bosses. But you can learn from them and let that be the first lesson—don’t be the insanely proficient office doormat hoping people notice you. Learn to take compliments gracefully and from your place in the corner doing all the work, watch how they fearlessly buttonhole people. And then make that part of the work, just a little. Don’t do it in the sad way—find your own way of doing it.

The big problem in those set-ups is always that if you’re doing your job and doing it well, it’s usually invisible. People would notice if you didn’t do it, because everything would go wrong, but then you’d only be blamed. The key is to find moments when your successes can be out in the open. Make your points in meetings, come prepared, smile but not too much, and be relaxed without being inappropriate. Never let anyone take credit for your ideas unless you agreed on it beforehand and even then, try not to agree to those things.

Here’s a different example of why I say this that may be illustrative: I often get much better students in my Fiction 1 class than in Fiction 2—the advanced class ends up too often being a siren call for people with only attitude who think they’re too good for Fiction 1, and Fiction 1 is full of super talented students who may think of themselves as beginners their whole lives. I don’t think of these soulless careerists as soulless careerists, I think of them as talentless and with no self-doubt, people who never hold themselves back. They used to frustrate me a lot, and they still do, but increasingly it is because they are never the one up at night worrying their manuscript is horrible. They get 7 hours and turn their crap in with a smile. Way too many young people are convinced talent is what they need to succeed, and it isn’t. Stamina is. And relentless self-belief can function in place of stamina, it is much like it.

A friend of mine and I, years ago, observing this, resolved to be at least as forward as they are. If it worked for them and they were a mess, we figured chances are it could work for us. Since then I’ve noticed I know many more talented unsuccessful people than the untalented successful, and so the formula I use is to have at least half the will to get myself out there as the least talented successful person I know.

In other words, use the annoying person in your office as meditation on what you do and don’t want to do and be.

As for telling people about the soulless careerist? Well… here’s the thing. I take Choire’s point, and I have done this–even just two weeks ago, I told a long story about a soulless careerist at lunch to an old friend, who’d asked about this person. But be careful: trashing them even if it is the truth can make you end up looking a lot like them–the way these people talk shit about others is part of their game. It makes them seem like they have game, to talk other people down. Their narratives, if you listen carefully, are always about their own proficiency more than they are about anyone’s failures.

You can also try a wince, a raised eyebrow, where you wait for the other person to fill it in, this can be much better and is also unquotable and even deniable, especially when you’re under 30 and need as few enemies as possible. This way you and whoever you’re talking to can laugh together conspiratorially and the knowledge is shared in eye conversations, which are unquotable, and cannot be forwarded years later in an email with a “FYI” to the person in question.

It would be nice if we could keep them out, but that fantasy underestimates the power of their lack of self-doubt and how much people fear them and do their bidding. Some day you’ll need something from them, and you won’t get it if what you said got back to them.

If you do trash them, be sure of the embargoes, and that the person you speak to is completely trustworthy or that the soulless careerist is in no position to hear about it. The only time I ever speak the truth about these people openly is when it may affect what I’m doing. And never put it in email. Don’t create something that might come find you when you don’t want it. Mostly just take a lesson from them on the power of what looks like self-esteem and go, and keep your eyes open.

It’s a busy time. First,  this Monday, February 6th, I’m reading from a new short story, just finished, unpublished, not even under submission yet. The occasion is the BOMB Magazine I <3 BOMB party, at the Powerhouse Arena bookstore in DUMBO, Monday, February 6th. I’ll be reading with Myla Goldberg, Robin Elizabeth Schaer and Tina Chang. We’re celebrating Valentine’s Day but also sending off the BOMB Magazine party master/web master, the excellent Paul Morris, who is joining the staff at PEN, the organization for writers.

I have a review of Daniel Clowes’ The Death Ray in the above winter issue, and as previously mentioned, an interview with Daniel at BOMB‘s site.

6 days after this, I will be speaking on a panel for Emily Books.

February 12th to be precise. The Like a Boss panel is at the Uncanny Valley on Long Island City as a part of the Emily Book Club event for Sigrid Nunez’s brilliant memoir of Susan Sontag, Sempre Susan, the book club choice for February. I’ll appear with Heidi Julavits, Will Schwalbe and Doree Shafrir. Hope to see you at either or both. If you don’t know about Emily Books, by the way, it is an online independent bookstore and book club both, by subscription. Check it out.

And, let me also announce that the paperback of the anthology Mentors, Muses and Monsters is out. If you haven’t read my memoir of studying with Annie Dillard, it’s in there, and also still here at the Morning News. Sigrid’s book about Sontag came from her essay for this anthology. I myself wrote an essay twice as large as the one that’s been published–we cut the second half, or what what I’d call the sequel to it, to make it fit for publication, for if I’d left it in, it would have been twice the size of the next largest essay. It’s not good to be that guy, but also, it seemed perhaps more esoteric. That section is about life after my study with Annie, when I struggled to make sense of what I’d learned, and put it all into practice. Reading Sigrid’s book has me thinking about it again, though. This may be something I’ll revise and send out later this year, or, it may be, well, not really interesting enough–it all takes place in my head, after all. And on the page.

Anyway, I’ll have more news soon–a lot is happening this month. In the meantime, I hope to see you out at either of these events.

Full Stop: 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring. There have also been massive protests in Greece, Spain, Britain, and most recently, the United States. Does literature have a responsibility to respond to popular upheaval?

Alexander Chee: Probably. Just not in the way any of us would expect. I think if it has any responsibility at all it is to defy the expectations of the current moment, to understand us in a way more deeply than is perhaps available to us now. But perhaps this question is about something else together, points to something that is more about writers and contemporary American fiction and the way it is both created and consumed?

I remember reading Mavis Gallant as a writing student to understand how to include the political lives and histories of my characters, because she did it so gracefully. I did it because I was being told writing about politics was to make something unwelcome, or unpleasant, and yet it was something I wanted to do. I had noticed her stories always included the politics of her characters just as a way to make them whole. It was a small but important moment in my life, both the realization of what was needed, and the lesson, but I do think it speaks to this thing we can almost see about contemporary American fiction as a whole.

Full Stop has updated the Partisan Review’s Questionnaire for American Writers from 1939, the Situation in American Writing questionnaire, and sent it to writers such as Marilynne Robinson, George Saunders, Porochista Khakpour, Darin Strauss, Roxane Gay, myself and many others. My response is here.

I’ve got a review of Daniel Clowes’ newly-reissued The Death Ray in the new issue of BOMB Magazine, and over on their site, an extensive, wide-ranging interview with him.

Clowes is, without question, one of the masters we have now, as a comics artist and graphic novelist. In discussing the new seriousness with which comics are treated, we have to begin with the seriousness artists like Clowes and Chris Ware and Los Bros Hernandez brought to comics starting back in the 80s and 90s and have kept alive until now, when they are enjoying a level of readership and respect I think most fanboys and fangirls never dreamed of back even 10 years ago.

Clowes and I spoke of everything from the origin of The Death Ray to his early days hanging out with Chris Ware to the idea of his comics as horror comics starring the self. The Death Ray is part of a trio of works from him to appear in the last year and a half, and completes his sense of his current body of work, he says in the interview–it was initially published as a comic in his Eightball series, and he is reissuing it to have it back in print, and as a bound book available to his new readership. These works, Mr. Wonderful, Wilson, and The Death Ray, together, give off a patchwork sense of a world in which all of them exist together, an alternate universe with an emotional realism that puts much of contemporary fiction to shame by contrast.

For more on Clowes, Tavi at Rookiemag has an interview with him that appeared yesterday. And for more on the contemporary comics scene, check out the excellent interview with Adrian Tomine, another favorite creator of mine, at The Rumpus.