book one

1.

She sometimes drinks a glass of wine.

Roberta ponders, thinks, talks to herself, ruminates. SHE SOMETIMES DRINKS A

GLASS OF WINE. Is that a good enough opening sentence for a novel that is 720 pages long?

She (Roberta, that is) is an aspiring writer. She participates in National Novel Writing Month.

Religiously. Each November since 2008. 2007, maybe. Obama was not even in office, he won,

while she was writing 2000 words per day.

She sometimes drinks a glass of wine. What kind of wine? Who is she? What is her

name? Her age? Is she an alcoholic or an on-and-off addict? Is an alcoholic the same as an

addict?

Roberta thinks about the subject matter? Alcoholism? The sentence seems to foreshadow

a story about the vices of drinking. A female who drinks. Betty Ford? Are all persons who drink

wine people who will end up in Betty Ford? Beer drinkers do not check into Betty Ford. They

just don’t.

Roberta thinks that the connotations would be different in the UK.

Place is everything, when you fashion a story. When you make up stuff. When you tell a

tall tale. Which is what fiction is, always. Not that non-fiction is that different.

This is a good year for non-fiction. 2017 was too. 2018 has a lot of new Trump books.

And we are not even two weeks into the new year.

1
 She sometimes drinks a glass of wine. Seven words. A sentence containing seven words.

SHE-SOMETIMES-DRINKS-A-GLASS-OF-WINE.

Roberta could go down to the coffee place. It is a Saturday, they will close at six or six

thirty. A latte. Something milky. Cappuccino. Frappuccino. Mocha. Mocha Misto. Decaf.

Nonfat. Soy milk, Almond.

Roberta does not really care. She just wants to get out of the house. Be part of something

bigger than her. Look at lights. Look at cars that drive by. Watch strangers. Make mental notes

of their head gear. Or lack thereof. Roberta talks to the baristas. They all know her. Usually they

guess what she wants. Must be a marketing trick. Something that head office asks them to do. So

that they get return biz.

It is getting dark outside. Well, it is grey, grey, blueish. Fifty-eight minutes after four in

the afternoon. She could just keep on typing and then drive to the other place on Forty-first. They

are open till eleven in the night. The coffee place next to it serves draft. It is a new thing in town.

Coffee places that are suddenly, out of nowhere, bars. Must be a west coast thing. In other places

this does not fly. Either alcoholic bevs or non-alcoholic ones.

Vancouver is funny that way.

Roberta thinks about her novel, her story. It should play in Scotland. Glasgow. She has

never been. Describing a place that you have never been. A toughie.

Writers do it all the time. Sci-fi writers. A galaxy far far away, that kind of stuff. You just

make it up, lie through your teeth.

2.

2
 She is in downtown. Roberta, that is. Not the fictional SHE from the wanna-be novel.

The hotel on Burrard. Sutton Place. The one next to the Y. Well, there is a grocery store. An

IGA. Before you reach the Y. A wine store, too. A food truck that sells Yapa-dogs.

Roberta sends out her novels to agents. They reject her novels. Once an editor, not an

agent, asked her for the manuscript. All 305 pages. He rejected them, in the end, but he asked for

the manuscript. That was ten years ago. The place was in Boston, well, technically, in

Cambridge. Yup, you guessed it, MIT. Well, obviously, it is either MIT or Harvard, if it is in

Cambridge. They usually publish non-fiction but there are the occasional fiction titles too. Quite

an honor, to be asked for the manuscript. Even if you are rejected in the end. Still a feather on

your hat.

She really should drink a glass of wine every now and then. Drink to that.

Fiction mixes with reality. And then they whisk you away.

3.

Lots of novels are like that. The writer and the protagonist in the story that the writer puts

down on paper, they merge. Nobody knows where the writer ends and the protagonist starts up.

Case in point, Seinfeld. A story about nothing. And you always know when to laugh because the

audience laughs. Filmed in front of a live audience. Or not.

4.

Roberta pretends that she is a famous author. That she goes on book tour. How tough can

it be?

5.

3
 She is on her way to New Orleans. It is a sudden thing, a last-minute choice. Kind of

started up by listening to these people on YouTube. A reading. From a book by a Southern

writer. The reading was in this big room. A church, a university auditorium. Something like that.

The young man behind the mic was wearing a grey suit and sporting a beard, more like a three-

day stubble. And a thick thick Southern accent. The two women who were the voices of the

characters in the story were nicely dressed, one in green. Something green and shiny.

Roberta has been to New Orleans before. Louisiana. For seven days or so. She had to

change planes in Fort Worth/ Dallas.

Last time, it was a family trip, this time around it is just her. She will watch her drinking,

even though New Orleans apparently is for livers. According to the T-shirt.

6.

New Orleans was fun. Short though. Just three days. Some jazz, some Beignets. No Mint

Julipe, though. She did a lot of reading. This is what she does these days. She either reads or

writes. It is a dull dull life. Very stationary. Always sitting, sitting somewhere. Well, at least she

sits on the stationary bike for thirty minutes per day and pedals. But still, still.

7.

She is sitting in this coffee house on Eighth. Outside the yellow cabs. Even Uber did not

do them in, cannot do them in. you know you are in NYC once the cabs are yellow. She has a

good look of the Breadstix Café. On the other side of the street. Everything looks still the same.

As if it is ten years ago. She is waiting for the clothes to spin around in the laundromat. That too

on the other side of the street.

4
8.

Her book is quite good. Gripping. Still one hundred pages to go. Reading and writing.

TV. Tea and coffee. Looking up stuff on Wikipedia.

9.

The woman and her glass of wine. Who really cares. There are more important stories to

tell.

10.

Political ones. Stories of power. Stories of horror.

11.

Roberta and her books. They never take a stand. They lack stuff. They are nonstories.

They suck.

12.

Roberta has another latte. She ponders if everything in her story has to be chronological.

All over the place is not a good characteristic of a book. When you tell a story, there should be a

beginning, a middle and an end. Her wine story is not like that. And at this point we just have the

main character, the SHE. We do not her hair colour, her hairdo. Her age. Nationality. Height.

Weight. It is a generic “she”. Of legal drinking age. Which is different in different countries the

world over. Let us just imagine that she is a law-abiding citizen of anycountry. She can be

between 16 and 116. Her first sentence does not even say when this all happens.

Ah, apparently, there is this place near Cork, where people kiss the Barney Stone in order

to get the gift of gab. There is an Irish pub in town that is called Barney Stone.

5
 Roberta went to art school. Painting, that kind of stuff. Just saying. Words are not that

malleable, it is the wrong material for her. Only 26 letters. What can you really form with that?

How creative can you be?

12 plus 1.

Roberta is a tad superstitious.

14.

One day she will be a famous author. Book tours, the like.

15.

She sometimes drinks a glass of wine.

So, as a writer you set the scene. And then you need action. Something must happen.

Even when they are waiting for Godot, something is happening. Two men on a stage. Talking.

The only action in this first sentence is the ingestion of some kind of fluid. This is not enough,

obviously. It is a nonstory. But it illustrates Roberta’s inability to fashion a story. The sheer

refusal to make up a story where there is nothing. At this point we have just one scene, the wine

drinker.

Maybe the story is more about Roberta, the impotent writer, the useless author. The failed

artiste. There is something about stagnation, about that one snapshot, that one pic. Something for

Instagram. Not for stories, not for Instagram stories but for the original app. The photo, the

snapshot.

16.

6
 So, what exactly is wine? Grape juice fermented. What is fermentation? Who drinks

wine? Women?

Roberta will not go further than this one sentence. She will pen 100 000 words describing

her inability to pen a novel. Her failure to do the task at hand.

In Stockholm apparently, there is a museum of failure. Or in Uppsala. The notion of

failure in art. Critical studies, cultural studies, art history. They all talk about failure. You only

learn from failure. From falling down and getting up again. Though here it is more about

stagnation. Standing still. Setting a scene and then staying there. Painting an image with words.

Some “she” that drinks a glass of wine. Sips. The fictional SHE.

17.

On the telly, that Bourdain guy in Africa.

18.

It is another day. So much fog. Fog fog fog. Time to take a walk. So much better than a

drive. The walk that does not seem to end. The coffee house and so many people. The Sunday

crowd. The Sunday crowd on the second Sunday in January. The coffee on the mantle. The

woman who comes in. moments moments. The people at the bus station. The religious people at

the Greek temple.

Is this what Roberta will write about? Is it enough? Is it action or is it stagnation?

So many cars who do not care about the fog. The fog is thicker in the sidestreets not here

on the main street. All the lights of the cars. Lunchtime here. the coffee place has these eggs

now. Two eggs per serving. Two egg halves. One with cheddar. One with red pepper. Blonde

7
coffees. Misto and flat. Misto americano. This is the place to be. She looks at people and tries to

make them stick so that she can remember what was going on once she is back at home in the

room with fog outside the door. Misto Americano. American mist. Different ways to have coffee

beans. It is not about the coffees, it is about a bunch of strangers. People are so busy that they

have to push buttons on their little machines while they are sitting in their bigger machines. The

woman in blond picks up her cup that she preordered. No waiting time. There is a woman with

ten plastic packs who meets up with the woman in the back. They both leave together only to

talk in the cold outside. Everybody has to be somewhere, everybody has a task. Roberta has to

write and read. Her book where a person named Frank is killed near Del Mar. Who is the

murderer? Later in the day, Columbo. At eight. It is one and twenty-four. The long slog back to

the home, by houses destitute, deserted. Bare tree stumps. Two silver trees, Christmassy in

January. A bird sculpture on one of them, in white or off-white

The wine drinking that has to be described because that is the sentence that sets the scene.

Being a writer is tough. It is a story that can go anywhere. Maybe we need robots. Outer space

elements. Sci-fi. A murder, a love scene. Something something. A car chase, explosives, sound

and action.

What kind of writer are you, are you? One that will be thin sometime in the future.

2048 words here, yay ah yay here.

19.

Roberta is living the dream. A new phase in her life. Her book will be published.

20.

8
 Book tour. It starts in the east and goes west. She will go to Manchester and to London.

Melbourne and Sydney. Auckland. Life is different once you are a published author here.

21.

So, this is Roberta’s life now. The life of a writer. She feels weird and slightly bored.

22.

It is 9:15. In the morning. She was in the Y already and in the mall. The coffee in the

mall. The same mallrats are in that place each and every morning. Well, they are human beings

and the mall rat term is derogatory. Mall persons, how about that?

It is actually 9:14 and on the telly it is Mike and Molly.

Roberta has a cold and fever. It is no fun here.

23.

She has 2200 words. Already.

24.

2205.

25.

The Roberta story has to be changed. It is better so. We change it all here. No Roberta, no

She who drinks wine. No Roberta the writer and no She the wine drinker. Let us just describe

stuff. The room with the laptop. The plants outside. The three chapters of War and Peace which

we started up to read online. Still a lot of reading to go. It is kind of boring, a gathering in St.

Petersburg and all of the characters mush into one. Reading as chore. Roberta reads a lot these

9
days in a world where nobody reads. She has fever. Not much but still. She has to sleep it out.

The house is way too cold for nurturing a cold. It is one and fifty-five in the afternoon on the

west coast. On the fifteenth of January. In 2018. A new year and words ah words here. 2356 of

‘em here.

26.

The diary of a writer.

27.

Her weight is pretty good. 190 lbs. About two weeks ago she stood at 197. Well, as long

as it is sliding down here.

28.

There is no writers block. Roberta looks through the different online offerings of a

writing program out of nyc. Writers block. If anything, she has to restrain herself. She is that

kind of writer. The writer with too many words and not too little here.

She had a cold and fever and now it is over, but a cough remains. She lost three pounds.

Yay.

29.

It is Friday. 2461 words. She is reading War and Peace. Quite a bore. Let us face it. But

she will chugger through. Who does not want to know what happened 200 years ago, 1805,

1806. Napoleon. The trailer on you tube is nice, a young Audrey Hepburn. Apparently, it was a

bust at the box office. We still have a lot to read thru here. On the telly, they talk about a possible

shutdown off the government down in the states here. At midnight we will know here.

10
30.

January 19, btw.

31.

Actually, we will know at nine west-coast-time here. On MSNBC there is this clock that

is counting down here. One can see the floor of the senate. And the votes are announced. Looks,

it will be a shutdown.

32.

Twenty-two minutes to midnite in DC.

33.

2599 words here.

34.

Tanya now lives in New Orleans. It is her new thing. She is still very new. It does not feel

like a place where she can put down roots.

She does not have a job here. Her only job is writing. She can do that anywhere. She goes

home very soon in the day. She lives with these other persons. Random roommates. People with

babies. People she can drink with. Vino. Cheap ones. Red, white. Sometimes Prosecco. Or Sekt.

All kinds of bubbles are fine by her.

She walks around the neighborhood during the day. There is a small very clean hotel in a

side street next to the house she is staying in.

11
 Sometimes she walks to the French quarter. Sometimes she has a beignet. There is

something about tis place. The touristiness. That state of non-belonging. You could be a tourist

anywhere. Amsterdam, Zurich. How to not be part of the local fabric. She eats too much and

drinks too much and talks too much and sleeps too much. The mainstay is the too much. The life

of the in-between. The jetlag, the nonreal. Vegas is like that. Any airport lounge is like that. You

live out of a suitcase. A small suitcase. You do not know how to use the washer or the dryer. The

one on the second floor. You turn your sweater inside out. You hope you do not smell. You read

a lot.

35.

Roberta ponders, so now she has a woman named Tanya, some accidental tourist in New

Orleans, in the Airbnb on General Nicholls Street. Tanya with two T’s.

36.

The wind on the upper deck of the Staten Island Ferry. Sonya. Her work at the

laundromat. Her New York career that is not. Don’t tell them how you found me, it never rains

in Southern California. What different does it make where your dreams are all broken. Don’t tell

them how you found me.

Dreams that are broken broken broken.

37.

Roberta in the coffeeshop in the corner of the grocery place. The foam on the cap. The

figures she sketched. The Sonya and the Tanya and there still will be more. Cap, short for

12
cappuccino. A man is doing a crossword puzzle. It is eleven in the morn. Saturday. The boredom

of the everyday here.

38.

Twelve and forty-seven. Hanging out in the room wit the TV. Seinfeld. The museum

movie, Night in the Museum, the first one. And once more, Seinfeld. A Saturday and tv. Two

chocolates, truffles. Pieces in a box. Writing reading. TV. The gym in the morn. Grey weather on

the outside. Roberta and Tanya and Sonya. Who is who? Tanya lives in Louisiana, yes? Sonya in

NYC. Roberta? Oregon, maybe? Oregon would be nice. Tillamook. Where exactly is that here?

39.

Wine, wine. Writer get wasted, that’s a given.

40.

It is the episode where George Costanza offers oranges to the Japanese TV executive.

41.

Maybe she should write about a hapless actor. It is a Tuesday still in January of 2018.

Hapless actors are interesting, mainly because Roberta does not know anything about them. How

can she blow it?

42.

Five thirty in the afternoon. Still busy with War and Peace.

43.

3140 words.

13
44.

WAR and PEACE- finite. It is eight and thirty-one on a Thursday in January. It took her

seven days to go through this. Whereas Sam in Cheers read it in five days. Two days more than

Sam. But still, hey. A fictionall character that beat her. Real tv-people, they are the best.

45.

Sam Malone. Yup, that was the name. Sam Malone.

46.

On the telly, Anderson Cooper. Nine and fifty-two in the evening. Thursday in January.

The last Thursday. She did not do much. Read five books and one of ‘em was War and Peace,

not neccesary one of the better ones, sorry, Lev.

47.

A Saturday in Jun, sorry, January. Rain, rain. A rainy January. Writing and reading. More

reading. The red book is finished. In a little less than one day. The one by the Australian guy.

And the long one too. the one by the Russian guy. Seven, no, eight books in January, though,

technically we started one of those books in December. December twenty or something.

Reading and writing here.

48.

Look Who’s Talking Too. Wow, that was so long ago. In the place in Danville. Thirty

years since then. Wow.

49.

14
 Where have the years gone? Nobody knows here.

50.

3351 words here.

51.

The Woman in the Window. A book by A. S. Finn. Or some other guy named Finn (last

name). A thriller in nyc. Published on January second this year. Neon in daylight. Another nyc

novel. Both are written by British guys and gals. And this last story author read, written by a guy

from down under. Also about nyc.

52.

On the telly, something about Lima. And about food.

5.

53.

Writing this is what we will do today. There is not enough gas in the tank to drive out to

the mall. So it is all about sitting here and being cooped up. Writing writing. In ur p jays. Or in

your underwear, your long johns and not the good ones. Woolen ones. Not silk ones. Apparently,

that is how writers used to do it in Russia. Not Tolstoy though ‘cause he was a count. Roberta

here read this about Tolstoy. Something about him and long johns. Apparently there are more

people who write and rolte about him than all of the words that he ever penned. The writer as

Rockstar.

54.

15
 All of the writing that she does here is borderline autobiographical. On the telly, skiing or

snowboarding. Skiing, yup, more like skiing. Garmisch Partenkirchen here.

55.

Later he could go out for a latt, with madeleines. Something like that, yup, why not here.

Her writing has to have more action. Not just a woman typing and pondering what to write

about. A whodunnit maybe? The plot thickens, yay. But how can you possibly outdo Columbo?

You cannot top perfection, sorry, sorry.

56.

And what kind of crime? Something with data-something. Spies. Mata Hari, James Bond.

Alcohol and debauchery. Everybody wants to be James Bond. The dreams of losers who are

serial killers in the making.

57.

Skiing. It cannot be live, it is nite now in Germany. You cannot watch live coverage at

two thirty-five pacific time here. The people who are so fit on the telly are now saufing beers in

apres-ski chalets here.

58.

695 sorry, 3965 words here. The masxing novel that will put her on the world map. That

will finally cement her place in the canon of world lit. That one that one that one here. Where

there’s a will…

59.

16
 3737.

60.

Watching O’Neill and Big Bang at the same time. Hi-brow and lo-brow. All together thru

the mircle of modern technology.

61.

3760 words here. We could still go down to the coffee place and have a drink and watch

the cars go by and then we can go back to the laptop and wax ah so poetically here.

62.

The Goldbergs on the telly.

63.

On the telly, Anthony Bourdain and people in a restaurant in Shanghai. It is six and

twelve or six and thirteen minutes on a Saturday in late January of 2018. Roberta types her

magnum opus. And they all are amazing novels. She reads a book named Nom de plume, well,

she is still in the introduction phase. The book was written in 2013. No, make that, 2011. The

book has been on the bookshelf here in the room with the green couch for ages. She bought it in

nyc, in this bookstore in Chelsea, off Ninth Avenue. It has really nice books, there are several

bookstores and an art store. Something like that, something of that kind. She has this book about

222 Dutch writers, that too she will delve into. Maybe even the sidewalk crack book, there are

still so many books on her bookshelf that she hs not even opened. There are books that she lost,

that must be somewhere in her place and that just got all lost, somewhere, in a nook, a cranny

here. Anthony Bourdain still, it is now six and twenty. Is Roberta a Nom de Plume, is there even

17
a contemporary woman named Roberta, can there even be? Is it not the quintessentlal alter ego

and does she still think of a glass of wine and does she put her fingers on the rim, around the rim,

ah, over the rim here?

Fingers with nailpoilsh and the rim of a wineglass, the moneyshot in an animation, the

one that says it all. It was part of a storyboard, long ago, in a class, when they were talking about

storyboards, critiquing, that kind of stuff. Animation has ruined her for fiction writing, it is either

roadrunner aesthetic or min eyeshot aesthetic, meaning either too much action or no action at all.

Ah to be a writer a writer here.

Six and twenty-five, curtains that are closed, the night that is outside over the city here.

4137 words, so many so many here.

The O’Neill play was filmed at the Chelsea television studio and the image looks so clear

so clear here. Somewhere near FIT, somewhere ah somewhere here.

64.

The coffee house in the morning. And then the laptop in the room with the green couch.

This is what writers do. While the rain is blanketing the city. At the laptop, at least two thousand

words per day. Real writers, they pen easily eight thousand per day. So the story goes. They are

all dead by now, but the saga lives on. The writers, those authors. The ten thousand words per

day crowd. The rain on the city is quiet now, waiting, only to start up again. It always rains in the

city. Nope, not true. Last year at this time it was all snow. That was when the protests were in the

city. The images on goggle photo say so. How did life happen when there was no Instagram?

18
 The coffee house is intresting. Even the going there is interesting. You have to swish in

by the big car and hope that the driver sees yer. They do, they usually do. They act like an

elephant in a chinastore, the kind of elephant that knows how to behave.

The coffee place and the young woman is a tad dishevelled though even in

dishevveledness she is much more together than everybody else. Must be the straight hair. must

be the youth. Sixty years less, forty years less. The uniform, the place to be. Headquarters told

me to be here, gave me this position. I give people coffee, all these creatures that do not know

how to brew a drink made out of coffee beans from countries far away. They can just open the

tab, drink from the tab because water here is filtered and fresh and does not have germs in it. But

we make sure that they come out and park and drink their bevs from us.

The street with the cars, most of them going downtown, but some going uptown too. The

rain that omes down. There is a gas station, there is a parking place. Author ponders if she can

write just about this place and make it into a novel. As good as War and Peace, as good as Tale

of Two Cities. Tale of two towns. The best of times, the worst of times. This is what she read

over the weekend. On Thursday it was the end of War and Peace. On Friday, it was The Rosie

Effect which was the sequel to The Rosie Project. Then it was Nom de Plum, a not so secret

history of pseudonyms. And now it is Tale of Two Cities here. A Tale of Two Cities, a novel

written by Charles Dickens in 1859. Two hundred years ago. 150, maybe. Those people are dead

now for a long time. And it is a historical roman, describing 1780. Anyhoo, Roberta here is

writing. O’Neill’s story, his play, it describes one day. Long Day’s Journey into the Night. She

watched part of the movie with Katherine Hepburn in it.

So we can describe all of the coffee house stories, what happens in a day. Ulysses is a

one-day story. But with the coffee house it is not like that. There are many coffee house stories,

19
except that there are 365, or 367 stories per year. Which all seem to say the same here. Roberta

who writes a book here. A story ah no story here. Just fingers that press down little squares in

order to maintain a book, in order to make a mark, in order to leave a trace of being in this world,

in January of 2018.

65.

The rain on the city, always coming down here and always coming down here. Later she

will go down to the airport, look at all those people leaving the city with all its rain here. Flying

to better places, farther away paces. With other languages, places where stuff is not written in

French and English at the same time. With the French sentences always being so much longer

than the English ones here.

66.

Novel 1- the story of Roberta. Yup, that is the title of her book here. Nothing is really

happening but that is fine, is fine here.

4861 words, yay ah yay here.

67.

The rain has started up again. Maybe it never stops, and it is there all the time, but its

intensity varies. And then you get used to its coming down, to all of the noise and you cannot

even hear it any more. The rain ah the rain here. A book about the rain here. She has one like

that, somewhere on the shelf, she bought it in Santa Monica last year here.

68.

20
 The rain that engulfs the city. That is what we write about. After the coffee place where

we observe the rain and the people that are engulfed by the city. After looking at the coffee map

on the wall. Where Africa is next to Europe instead of under it. Or maybe author here cannot

decipher the coffee map. The one about the three coffee regions of the world. Coffee does not

grow here but coffee is drunk here. People here come in while they are all warm in toques, in

striped ones. A blue and yellow one on the woman who comes in. A grey one on the person

behind the counter, the one who first got her order wrong here. This day will be at the typewriter,

this day will be full of so very new days. She will read, and she will write because that is what

writers do. They live in their peejays, they are that kind of creatures. She just has a mere 22

kilometers worth of gas in the tank, she has to stay in anyways. No reason to go out to the gym

next to the community college where she took American lit some three years ago and where she

learned how to be a reader. The stoy of Roberta, that is the name of novel 1 here, the first novel

of the year, the first novel that she will pen in 2018. She writes some five novels each year, ever

since 2008. Obsessively. They are more like journals, like diaries. Not novels in the technical

term. And not nonfiction either. Novels with problems here. Novels with problems here.

69.

On the telly, a show that is all National Enquirer, all tabloid news.

70.

The life of a writer, no glamour whatsoever.

All bookish, all bookish here.

71.

21
 Maybe there will gel out a story here, organically. While watching the episode of Friends

where Phoebe and Joey are supposed to find blind dates for each other and Joey just forgot and

just walks up to Mike and tells him that he is Phoebe’s date here. They now are in the restaurant

and Mike says Days of our Lives, that is why you look familiar.

72.

You set me up with a stranger.

73.

A novel that starts up on Februray one. ‘Bout a woman who types up a famous novel in

one sitting. While watching Friends and the one with Tulsa. Chandler and Tulsa and Monica

talking about it. Friends, they had better writers than this her novel. Maybe novels should be

written by teams. Writing as teamsports. This weekend, the superbowl. Patriots against Eagles.

Tom Brady. Seems as if there is more propaganda for the superbowl than there used to be. Just

saying here.

74.

There is something wrong with the S, it does not really work in the keyboard. Author

here taps it, but the machine does not register the S, one has to push down the button twice here.

This is what will skewer the novel here.

75.

She used to write ‘bout these two alter egos, writers in Itzehoe and Reykjavik. When

writing was a production. The story of writers. Stories of writers. Writing, something that works

22
when nothing else works here. Typing ah typing here. Everybody can do that. Let the words flow

together here and then count them. The li’l icon tells you how many words yu’ve got here.

And then there are all those booktours, the fighting with the papparazzi. Maybe it is good

that this is the road to nowehre here, at last for her here.

She could write about the life of a barista, what happens in baristaland. She came to that

idea while picking up a coffee. There is no research, she never worked as a barista. So she can

make it all up here, all pure fiction. The little note at the beginning of every book that this is pure

coincicdence if it is the same as something that happened in real life here.

She could go out to the big mall in the other city and then watch The Post, the one with

Meryl Streep. Fake news at its finest. Katheryn Graham, maybe that was the name of the

Washington Post editor. Or something else Graham. The last name must have been Graham here.

There is an ad for a cream to make your skin without wrinkles. Wrinkle go away here. People

who watch Friends must be the kind who are nostalgic for a wrinkle free existence here.

The rain is not coming down on the city anymore, it is a Thursday, February one, Pacific time

here.

She is reading this book about these magicians in nyc, it is nice and good. She finished

The Tale of Two Cities, not a very good book, so it seems. Dickens knew about one city,

London, and thus every person is very flat.

She started up The Buddenbrooks in German but stopped at chapter eight. Reading

German and then writing in English, it is kind of a kafafel here.

Friends and Phoebe here.

23
76.

5790 words here.

77.

Mike Hannigan, Ross Geller.

78.

The theme song, No one Told you Life would be this Way.

Nope, you end up typing up a story, a nonstory that nobody wants to publish here.

79.

So this is February second.

Friday. Writing a tad, reading a tad, sending out a manuscript to three different places.

One in Palo Alto, one in nyc, one in the UK. Westcoast, eastcoast, Europe. They can all reject it.

All of it. Which is how she named her file now. Words written in 2008. Ten years ago.

80.

And it is one and twenty-eight on Sunday, superbowl Sunday. Could be February 2018 or

something. Roberta went and saw the show at the VAG, Takashi Murakami, nothing special.

Very predictable and they did not even use the place as good as they did in the Brooklyn

museum some seven years or so ago. Seems the artist is getting lazy though it seems that others

do his work anywways, he just delegates a big group of cronies all over the world here.

Murakami Inc., that is how it is, and everybody knows here. It is a company like Toyota or Sony

though on a much smaller scale here. Slave labourers do the work, that is how art works these

24
days here. Roberta sticks to writing, at least, she has creative control here. Nobody reads what

she writes but she can write whatever she feels like here. 6030 words and she is writing another

book too, at the same time here. Two books at the same time, two novels in 2018. The other

book has more characters, more people. Author is reading this book called Travelers, it is kind of

good, a spy novel or something. She has read this other book about magic and this other one

called Stiltsville. The Magic book was good and well written, the Stiltsville book was one big

boring snoozefest. She read A Tale of Two Cities whih was totally confusing and sucked, she

read it online here. She read the book Nom de Plume which was really good. These are the books

of February of 2018 here, for now at least here.

81.

On the telly, this show named Phantom Gourmet which is really good, they talk about

different food items in different restaurants in New England. This bagel shop in Cambridge,

Massachussetts. Beard papa. Well, they have it here in every mall here. no biggie. Every mall in

the Lower Mainland has the cream puffs of Beard Papa. Whats up here with that?

82.

It is seven and nine in the eve. Superbowl, who knows? Author is ensconced in this

traveller book. She was in Metrotown and in the Starbucks next to her house. On the telly,

Aljazeera. 6243 words here, yay, ah, yay here.

83.

Nothing really works. It is some two days before Valentine’s Day. She was in this

brunchplace and then she went to Station Square to the place where they sell computers and

stuff.

25
 Now, it is sitting in front of the computer and hacking away at the amazing novella here.

Or maybe a novel. Roberta reads a lot these days, not so much writing. Which is not that good,

you hace to produce words if you want to make it. Not just consume words here. 6336, that is not

much to show for one month of writing. She started up other novels, all equally dumb. She

watches nyc fashion week a lot these days, it is online or on instagram stories. She ponders if she

should write about fashion. A book named fashinista or fashion 101. Everybody likes to read

about fashion. We all put on clothes anyways, so everybody can relate to the subject matter.

Here. It is a catch-all.

This is still tentatively called novel 1, because it is the first novel of the year 2018. The

first novel that Roberta writes. Novel 1 or the story of Roberta. Yup, it is official, the writer of

these words renamed herself into Roberta. A rechristening, though that word is kind of off here.

If you are a practicing buddhist, are you still rechristenniing yourself? If you live in China, are

you rechristening yourself?

84.

It is still light outside, nice.

85.

It is nine in the morning on a Monday that feels like Tuesday. Actually, it is a Tuesday.

That feels like a Monday. The Monday was a holiday, so the week really starts on a Tuesday. It

is the thirteenth too, so, waa, scaryishness. The Monday of this week. The coffee house and its

peoples. All of them who gather there. The three Chinese ladies, very expatty. A woman and her

working on a laptop and writing and different notes. Homework, dissertation, seriousness,

unkemptness. The one who is always there at this time, fiftyish, sixtyish, there is usually a bunch

26
of them, early retirees. Today there is just one here. The young man behind the counter with the

accent and the name that does not go with the accent. Serious, courteous, tattoos. The other one

who wears a toque and is slightly heavyset. And then there are others and the street outside. One

could describe the mood, the setting, because that is what writing profs make yo do. How to

document the place. How to enliven a feel of place. How to relive that.

The famous author and her coffee house. Except that she is not famous. The nonfamous

writer and the coffee house that she frequents. Nonfamous ones are the best, celebrity is only in

the way of art. Art and capitalism, art in late capitalism. Te oney that comes in for words here. In

a world that is all words, all talking. On the radio, on the telly. Books, books. Bookstagram,

bookslut. Books depicted on social media. Book as fetish. Books in the Strand and its lesser

companions, Powell’s and the one in Austin. Books, huh.

Bookstores, bookemporiums.

The fridge starts up its singings, Roberta has 6783 words here. February 13, here in 2018

here.

86.

Valentine at the gas station. Now there is a title 4 a book. Valentine @ the gas station.

The buying of chocolates, maybe even a choclate heart at the gas station. Love and consumerism.

Romance as product. The basic idea that love and romance is irrelevant. That what counts is gas

and machines. The pragmatic is more important than emotions, especially romantic notions.

Partners are people that can be susbstituted. What matters is food and shelter. Actually, quite a

good premise for Valentine’s day and actually a protest against contemporary mores. A critique.

A mirror. Usa this is where you lack. Who cares about romance, about Romeo and Juliet. Care

27
about what matters. Equality etcetera. A book, a book, Valentine at the gas station. Now

available in nonfiction here.

87.

10:45 in the AM, February 14, 2018, in 2018, wordcount stands at six nine three four-

6934 here. some more words and this goes up to 7000.

88.

She was in the mall and in the gym and in the coffee place in the morn at nine. Two hours she

wastes away because that is what writers do, they have ample amounts of time, apparently. Men

of letters and women of letters here. Soccermoms in tennis shoes. The writers of today here. and

soccer as something foreigny and tennis as demarking of priviledged leisure and all of it as a

characterizing of athletecism versus the life style of the mind, senators and heart attacks here.

89.

10:49, 7038, Vancouver in Canada, yup, not the one in Washington State next to the

border of Oregon here.

90.

Roberta moved to Iceland. To write a novel. It is her thing. The writing of a novel. Three

weeks and she will be finished. She will send it out and land a book deal. Well, first she will land

an agent. A bookscout. Agents will fight over her. They will auction off the manuscript. The

person who wins will be the one who will negotiate her international rights.

A photographer will take her pic for the book jacket.

She will go on tour. Do readings. Sign books. Her autograph. There are ways to do this.

28
She will deposit the cheque from the publisher in her account. The money she will make is

miniscule. As much as two cups of coffee. But she will break even. Everybody will know that

she wrote a book.

But at this point, it is Iceland. The sidestreet in Reykjavik. The BnB. The table at the

back in kofitar. The cappuccino. The people who speak Icelandic. The hip crowd. The young

crowd. The urban crowd in Iceland. People much younger than her. She writes, longhand. She

will walk thru the city. It is February and it is cold in Reykjavik. Though, lets face it, less cold

than in nyc. There is no wind, no iciness. No cold breeze. More a stillness in the breeze. Is there

a Gulf of Mexico stream? There used to be when she lived in Hamburg where it never ever gets

really that cold in winter. That was some fifty years ago. Times change.

Roberta is in Iceland to write a book. Today is February fourteenth. Valentine’s day.

Even here they have hearts in the shop windows. Somethings become universal, for no reason at

all. St. Patrick’s Day. Suddenly everybody is concerned with the luck of the Irish.

Roberta will not have wine. She has problems with alcohol, real grave problems. When

she has a drop, she starts acting infantile. Others can mask it, behave normally. Walk straight.

She on the other hand disolves into the ground. Spectacle. Alcohol as carte blanche to behave

like a moron.

Roberta the writer. Yauh, this better be good better be good here.

91.

She is not quite sure if she did not suddenly delete her words here. She is not so very

good with computers, with files. Roberta, she trained as an animator. And that did not work out

well, mainly because of technical reasons and not because of artistic reasons. Artistice,

29
everybody can do the artistic thing, everybody can do the artistic side. It is the technical know-

how that will move your art forward and nothing else here.

92.

Valentine in the gas station. Valentine and gas station, it is the perfect storyline, the

perfect narrative. The yin, the yang. Valentine, romance, euphoria and then the gas station, banal,

prosaic, everyday. High brow, and lo-brow. The melancholia, the romantic. The prefect poetry,

the poesie of life. Valentine in the gas station. Picking up chocolate in the gas station on

Valentine’s Day.

93.

The pursuit of the perfect Valentine.

The perfect Valentine’s Day.

94.

The romance of Valentine’s Day. The impossibility of perfection. The sheer

impossibility.

95.

She is still at this bloody book. The Hermione Hoby book.

96.

Forty more pages on a day in February.

97.

30
 7599 words. There is no story here. A woman on her laptop and on the telly the

Olympics. So much in one room. Stimuli. Books and the telly and the laptop, it is just like it used

to be some seventy years ago, the radio and you can choose what to listen to. Nothing has

changed, media is media. Whether it is radio or tv or something else. You can look at instagrams,

you can chat, kind of like ham radios of yesterday. It is cold here just as it was for Amundsen at

the pole, south or north. An expedition. You can stay indoors, be a home buddy. Though it is

definitely an acquired taste. Big lights and big city is better, she could still make it down to the

coffee place, they are open till eight and the other one is open till eleven. The market is open till

twelve and the gas station even longer, all day. The fast food places are open all day long and

they never ever close. Neon is on all day long here.

98.

Roberta inhales the coffee place. The literary coffee house. Apparently, there are coffee

houses that inspire great words. This one cold be one of ‘em.

She will go back to her laptop and write, type. But at this time, she watches people, and

then there is the map on the wall, an inanimate object to watch, a flat one. The man behind the

counter is the same who the day before gave her a look when he came in, a look that said,

customer, I know yer. They all know her. She always comes here, this is the place that she

frequents. This is where she has her first meal of the day and usually she takes a sandwich with

her, lunch. Predictability. Writers are like that, have to be like that. The structure that makes for a

certain amount of words. After that, there is reading, editing, sending out stuff to publishers and

agents. Later there will be booktours and readings and interviews on Charlie Rose. Well, he is

not anymore, so an interview with another place. And author photos, sitting for a portrait.

31
That is how it is, these are the realities of a writer’s life.

Roberta types and types and types here. She has 7984 words, it is February fifteen, it is

2018, it is thirty-eight minutes after ten thirty-nine, in the morn, on the westcoast of north

America here. Her name is Roberta and she is a writer.

99.

It is still February, it is snowy outside. The day before it was slush, but today in the night

the snow came down and is here to stay. But merely an inch or so, but still. A winterwonderland

or something here. It is a Sunday, February eighteen or something, the writer, our Roberta has

not much time here. 8080, gotta stop at this here, gotta stop.

100.

8:12- February 19. In 2018. A Monday. The computer refuses to light up and then

changes its mind. Smooth sailing. The coffee house just sparsely populated. People in school

clothes. Coldness, chilliness. Coffee with cream and a banana bread. She has to be careful when

driving out of her parking space, the windshield in the back is all ice and one does not see the

rear, rearcview impaired. The book afficinado gets back to read up on the last sixty, seventy

pages of the spy novel, the one that has too many killings, violent ones, too many to be called hi-

lit. It has a good language flow though, even if the author wants to be in movies. A commercial

consideration.

101.

8209.

102.

32
 Roberta. She can write this book, or she can go for a walk. The weather is nice, and the

sparklingness of the winterwonderland is haltingly exilharating. Or something like that. It is

different from other days, a slightly off world. A white one. Still the powder on the ground

before it melts. They asked her to move her car so to plant a tree. Maple. But seems later they

changed their minds and took the tree out again. The thin tree, more seedling than tree.

She could have a coffee, something with foam thereon. She finished THE ACCIDENT,

there are two more books she has not read. On the telly, 2 Broke Gals, this is the second time

they show this episode today.

It is chilly, bonechilling. Bonechilling, whatever that might mean here. 8244 words here.

8347.

103.

Roberta, Roberta. She writes, and it is February twenty. In 2018. It is eleven and forty-

one in the morning. She weighs 88, nope, 188 pounds. She has 8375 words here.

104.

It is three and forty-seven in the afternoon. She did not do much in the last four hours.

She sent out queries, pretty good ones. Creative ones. Creative ones might sell the book. But it is

exhausting, and she just fashioned five letters. In four hours. Five queries in four hours. She ate a

roll with quinoa in it, a quinoa wrap. Bread and beans and quinoa and a sharp, chipotle-like

sauce. And she had a part of a swiss roll, a slice. That is about one thousand calories. Given, that

her breakfast was four hundred what with coffee and a splash of thick cream and a slice of

banana bread with walnuts therein, given this fact, she has now 1500 calories in her body and

33
given that she really does not move much, this should be it for today here. Go, 125 lbs, well,

somwewhere in the future here.

105.

Roberta and no wine, no alcohol, no tipsiness. Serious writers drink only bourbon, neat.

106.

And then there are the writers who are abstinent and still manage to write the bestest stuff

here.

107.

Writers that she did not read, she will make a list. Vonnegut and Salinger, Buddenbrooks

and Les Miserables. Who has time to read it all? You either are an avid reader or you are an avid

writer. You either produce words or consume words. There is not time in one lifetime to do it all.

She has to work on plotting novel. There is this course in London which teaches you how to have

a very straight plot in five days. A plot like straight jacket. A tight one. That makes sure that you

are not just rambling. They have a picture of T. S. Elliot or more a medal with his name on it on

the website. Maybe the inscript of his house. If you fork over your money to us, you too will be

able to write like him, just as good as he did. Who exactly was T. S. Elliot. Thank god for

google. Wikipedia.

108.

8725 words here.

Of all the gin joints in all of the world, she walks into mine. Apparently, Casablanca it is.

The day before Roberta read the quote somewhere, where somewhere was using it, well, a

34
different version. And someone else wrote that that person is a movie buff. Now, she does not

quite remember where this was. Maybe in some review of a book.

109.

8791 words here. Seven fifty. The ad with the tv doctors of America, a new one, they are

all ah so funny here.

110.

8815.

111.

Bella sells zines. How is that as a subjectmatter? She could do that. Roberta, that is. The

world of art book fairs. There is a conference in LA from February 21 onwards, something about

art colleges. She should go on the website in order to do research.

112.

Not much reading went on today and not much writing either. There was the coffee house

in the morn and that was about it. Well, the gym too. Coffee house and gym. And research on the

world wide web. Nah, there has to be more structure or else you just live in procrastination land.

You slip off the world, off the compass. Off the place where words are smithed. She sent four

letters or five, that is all she did. Nicely formulated thingies that will be deleted by some lit

agent. Or not. Her letters were intriguing, smashing. Maybe they stuck. Maybe they sold her

amazing MS. MS is short 4 manuscript here.

113.

35
 The walk thru the snow. It is eleven and fifty-two and she is snowed in. Well, technically

not, because she went for a walk, an exhausting one. Her feet got wet, so she had to come home

and change. She could not take her car even though others seem to do quite nicely with driving.

The day before she got scared when driving up the hill. What if she will roll down into the main

street and into the oncoming traffic. The car made it though, just up to the side street where it got

stuck and had to be abandoned.

Snow, huh. It is Winter Olympics time, though quite at the end here. Roberta bought a

book, something about an old lady. Little old lady living dangerously or something like that.

They did not have Miss Portland or the other one, Wicked City. In the little bookstore on the side

street with the cafes. Two persons looked at her and talked about her in the cafe. Two old people.

They seem to know Roberta from somewhere, that is why they started to gossip. She does not

remember them, they are pretty old. Too old maybe. Parents of kids in baseball or hockey. But

they are at least ten years older. Or not. Seventy maybe. Seventy-two. Not that old, when you are

sixty-two going on seventy, that is nothing. Roberta walks by the wine store, she is newly sober

which is nice. Liquor passes her by. She is the writer who is utterly sober. Not even tipsy.

Brutally sober, brutally ascetic. Inhebriation is not for her, not her thing. There is no brake in her

world. Just the abyss.

Her book is about snow. Her new book, the one that will be part of the booktour. Snow,

that is what it is called. Twenty-hours in snow. Twenty-five. Ulysses, how many hours was that?

You are no James Joyce, that’s for sure. The greats of lit. She is reading Twain, one of his lesser

tomes. George Orwell always passes the test, Mark Twain not so much. The language is superb,

the ideas suck.

36
 She reads a lot these days. Always, always. More reading than writing. She might as well

watch Friends if entertainment is what she wants here.

The man next to her is working on his laptop. In the coffee house. He is very serious and

has a striped shirt. His dissertation. He gets up, a pause from the dissertation. He is young and

tall and Asian. Thirty or twenty-five. Twenty-one. Very young and very serious. A grad sdudent,

they all look alike. They have this grad student aura around them.

There is a woman who teaches another woman. The teacher is more serious than the

student. Worried. She has an Indian accent.

There are many people in the coffee house. The serious barista who always says hi and

who is very tall, seems kind of frazzled. He is an actor or something, he looks the part and he has

that kind of demeanor. The seriousness of an actor, though he will be an action coach, he is way

too serious for in front of the camera.

Outside so many people. It is a Saturday, not Sunday yet. Twenty-third of February in

2018. In Vancpuver, in Kerrisdale. Not her usual coffee place but it will do here. 9538 words,

write on write on write on here.

114.

I like to be a tourist, I write wherever I go. I travel to a place, stay there for two nights

and write up a novel, I have done this eleven times, so I have eleven books. It is the best thing for

a writer. You just make the new surroundings, the new environment write the book.

Nana is in this place in San Diego. Mainly in the hotel. It is technically not San Diego. It

is Del Mar. She has a glass of rose, but she thinks that the white would have been better, sweeter.

37
They have two kinds of rose and this one is the bitter one. There are many people here, it is a

Saturday afternoon, nah, evening. It is nice, a band is playing. Or maybe just a piano player, the

main act is the piano apparently. The guitar is just there, and the player comes and goes. They

are not a band, they are too well put together here.

Nana will write something that happens here in the hotel in Del Mar in November, after

Thanksgiving. A story of murder and intrigue. Spying. James Bond in Del Mar, betting on horses

here. This is more the lifestyle of the rich and famous than Bond, James Bond. This is way too

suburban, and the crowd is suburban. The man at the breakfast table has the Gotti aura, but the

other people here all look like house with three bedrooms and three car garages. Five bedrooms,

three bathrooms. You cannot write about generic lives now, can you? Bloomsbury does not live

here, not anymore and not anymore here. The beats, lost generation, it is all sanctified and sugary

by now here.

115.

And writers cannot be rebels, they are alive and there to tell the story. Sugarcoated

revolutioneries, the ones that are there to tell a story and embellish it so that it fits the party line

here. Whether it is leaning to the right or to the left here and in the end there is no difference

whatsoever here.

116.

THE LITTLE OLD LADY BEHAVING BADLY, that is the name of the book she got.

A yellow book, most of the picture on the cover is yellow. A yellow background and a grey old

woman. Greyness denoting age, oldness, yellow maybe denoting yellow prose, behaving badly,

38
something like that. Something for the National Enquirer, though wouldn’t that be purple?

Maybe yellow is just a little titillating. Not Sodom and Gomorrha full-fledged.

She had the éclair that she got in the place that has a silver samovar. It tastes too much

like bread and is not sweet enough. She would rather go out again, there is nothing going on in

here. She read thru parts of Innocents Abroad, she is now on page 79. A description of a

barbershop in Paris. Author here feels like she should read thru her own travel book, she is on

page 265 or page 236 or something like that. Stories ‘bout nyc, some ten years or so ago. She

always writes, and she should refer to herself as Nana or as Roberta. This is fiction and there is a

difference between fiction and autobiography as the woman online tells yer. Her name is Amy

Hungerford or something and she teaches at Yale and her lecture is online. She teaches yer about

novels and if you listen in then you too can pen the great American novel. Use her lecture as a

manual for penning the great American novel. After all, these are the people who will gage her

book, they are the ones who fork over the Pen Faulkner Award. There are national things, some

competitions are open for people with certain passports. That is not how German writing

functions but apparently it is the norm in Anglo-Saxon writing. You are what you are based on

your last name. not according to what it is you put on the page. Which is weird because in

literature it is all about shades and nuances, that is why one writer totally outdoes another one.

Not because of what he says but because of how he says it. And it is important if it is a he or a

she though writers are craftsmen and it is all about how they put a sentence together, wether they

use an apostrophe or whether they let go of it. A comma is what counts and nothing more. My

country for a semiciolon. Of all the gin joints… Roberta wonders if there are famous quotes like

that about writing. Writing is craft, nobody knows who wrote the script for Casablanca, but

everybody knows Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman here. It is not fair, the writers toil in

39
oblivion, in the Hollywood Hills and die in the gutter surrounded by empty liquorbottles. She

ponders if she should hve a straight drink, something neat, whiskey neat or vodka neat. Drinking

is what makes a writer, if you cannot hold your liquor you are nothing in literature land, you are

the equivalent of a knitter. A knitter as compared to Christo. You knit yarns for little old ladies,

who read books that go with their doilies and their lattes or even their dainty li’l teacups. They

do not know about suffragettes, about sister suffragettes, here, the femininity of writers, certain

writers here.

Of all the gin joints… George Clooney says it to Julia Roberts in Ocean Eleven- or was it

the other guy who said it?

Gin joints. The quote is more famous without the gin, it is quoted when referring to the

fact that a person runs into another one very out of nowhere, it is all about serendipity, but you

somehow can feel the whiff of Casablanca ‘bout it. Roberta did not know the quote, but she

somehow knows it was from Casblanca. You know it has something to do with old black and

white movies, you do not need to be a moviebuff to get the gist here.

Roberta will always be a writer mainly because she could not hold herself up in the world

of animation. Amnimation ate her up and spit her out just like it did to so many lost poor souls

before. There are a lot of people in the gutters of the Hollywood Hills here.

117.

This is what her book is about, struggling artists, struggling till they die.

118.

40
 Not a bildungsroman because then there is a quest and a goal, this on the other hand is the

road to nowhere. The nihilism of artistic endeavours, yup, that kind ah that kind here.

119.

The woman has never been to Iceland. But she follows this coffee house in Reykjavik,

follows it on Instagram. Likes images. It is the new way of travelling the world. Not exactly

armchair travelling. More insta-travelling. The whole day she was at home, well after the coffee

house sojourn that is her daily start of the day. The commute to and fro. She goes there each and

every day even though it seems silly. One can have coffee there and feel as if one sticks to a

routine. As if one is part of the work world. Or just part of the world outside of one’s own four

walls. A room of one’s own might be good at times, but she needs the illusion of being part of

the world. After that she can happily stay indoors all day long, do her work at the computer, her

indoorstudio. She telecommutes and does not feel shut in at all, but those first fifteen minutes at

the coffee house are kind of existential for her. Existential as in “we need to do this or else”. Not

existential as in Sartre etcetera. Who knows what ol’ Jean Paul was talking ‘bout? Nobody

knows and all those who claim to understand those guys is just showing off. Nihilism, qu’est-ce

que c’est?

120.

She has 10871 words here, she is halfway thru Innocents Abroad which is more like

Bigots Abroad. She plagiarized this, somebody said it on amazondotcom. On the review part,

which is where everybody who is anybody goes in order to see what kind of book this really is.

Look thru the one-star reviews and you will see where the faults of any masterpiece lie. How did

we roll before Steve Bezos? And by extension, yelp?

41
121.

February, 2018, the last day of the month, maybe. Some mere ten thousand words in two

months. She slacks off these days, and two days ago this lit agent wrote her, this is not for me as

answer to a query. But thanks for letting me read this. You are welcome.

122.

It is seven twenty-seven, a dark and rainy evening here. The telly is singing its songs,

relentlessly here.

123.

11.58. Two minutes to midnite. Watching Friends, reading Dylan Thomas. Listening

to a voice that is an orchestra in itself as one woman remarked.

124.

It is all about sitting inside of the four walls and writing up stuff while the rain comes

down on the city. She was in the coffee place, not many cars were there, it is still too soon here.

Match the second, rain, the last day of the week, the woman behind the counter with the slight

accent, something Nordic, something Dutch. A coffee, a wrap, a bananabread, slice of banana

bread. The seats are all empty, she sits at her favourite one, the one under the big worldmap.

She will go back home and read and write, one hundred pages of the book about travels is still

waiting to be read here. She has to type up stuff, she still is at 10 000 or so which is not much for

two months, she makes five times this in a quarter of the time come November. In ten days. Ten

days is how much in two months, long division, short division here? Actually, the wordcount

stands at 11209, all of these numbers, all of these numbers here. There is no plot, not yet ah not

42
yet here. If she had enough gas in the tank she would venture out into the mall but at this point

she has to stay put, a shut-in in her cubicle, in front of the laptop here. It is an office, a home

office, after all, she fixes up all of these words here, she is a writer, alas one that is nonpublished,

is not under contract with any of these publishing outlets. Which is fine, she is a free lancer, she

can do whatever she wants. She produces the wares and then peddles it. How does this work,

how does publishing work in the times of the great five here?

125.

March two in 2018, 7:55 in the morning, while the rain is coming down, down on the

rainy city. This weekend is oscar weekend, the year before she was in Santa Monica at this time

here.

127.

11375.

128.

All she did was reading, all thru the day. Not much writing. Reading instead. The rest

of Mark Twain’s book. After that, a dissertation about it. A critical one. Fifty pages of criticism.

You can say that with one gesture. Thumbs up or thumbs down.

129.

Kurt Vonnegut says that you should write reponsibly. Write in a way that you do not

waste the time of a total stranger. By total stranger he refers to the reader. Well, but how do you

know that the reader will like it or hate it? Everybody reacts differently.

130.

43
 Seinfeld on the telly. Seinfeld goes with everything. “I can’t believe she even has

sex”. Elaine enters, Jerry: “On the other hand...” Always funny.

131.

Kramer and the ribbon bullies. “You must wear the ribbon”.

132.

Make-up sex. I can never get the package open.

133.

Who do you think you are? Who, who does not wear the ribbon?

134.

Rain and storm in New Jersey. Power outages.

135.

Winds will be gusting, so says Mister G.

Ten and three minutes. Late in the evening. We are seeing this all over Queens.

Distress and storm.

136.

All of the day reading and writing.

137.

Fiction writing. She does not do much of this, but she reads thru what pople have to

say about writing and writers. Literary studies. That will not do. She has to write stuff that will

44
be eventually deciphered by others. Tough. How do we do that. Seinfeld and George sitting

together and trying to come up with stuff. Roberta is but one person who has to come up with

something readable, something that will not waste the time of a total stranger as Vonnegut posits

here. Tough ah so tough here.

138.

11671 words here. The non-novel and its words here. Tomorrow, the coffee house, the

stuff that anchors her day. The stuff that novels are made of. The coffee house world. The

literary café. Vienna it ain’t, Bloomsbury it ain’t. But, hey, the local Starbucks hss to do here.

The donutshoppe, the diner.

139.

A Vegas holiday. 79 bucks. She will write her masterpiece while the roulette tables

are rolling. Croupiers and booze. She knows exactly where she will stay. This place far away

from the strip. This hotel that is basically a lesser Vegas. The Vegas in the ‘burbs. The gary

décor. A lesser version of Vegas. Roberta will have cocktails and write now, edit later.

140.

Vegas stories. Fiction anchored in Vegas. A bildungsroman based in Vegas.

Something for the literati to chew on. Harold-Bloom-worthy stuff.

141.

Laundry day. The best day 4 laundry. The day screams laundry. Saturday, the weather

is amazing. The best day for laundry. She will listen in to the rest of the lecture which is online

and really fascinating. She heard the first half, she will catch the second half. This prof who

45
teaches at Brown and talks about the perspective of the narrator in a novel. These lit guys are

fascinating. They talk about how a novel is constructed. The element of spontaneity in

postmodern and modern art. Jazz, beat, the like. How were the political situations that made a

writer of Ulysses write Ulysses? What was the political climate that had a bearing on the way

that art was fashioned? What is the climate nowadays and what bearing does it have on what the

writer of these lines puts down i.e. yours truly?

The coffee house was like it always was though lots of people were there and talking

in Chinese, a meeting of elegant people, dressed up. Two weaks ago it was a group of Greek

people. Apparently, people meet up here after church. There is a Greek church and a Chinese

one.

Then it was the gym and the weight that stagnates, does not go up and does not go

down. On the radio in the car, talks about brain chemistry. Quarks and Quirks. Older brains,

younger brains, blood transfusions. Tres interessant.

12044 words on March third. March one was bookday, world book day. March 2 was

Dr. Seuss day.

Ah well ah well here.

142.

So, what did u do all day? Well, I read a good book and I write a good book.

On the telly, Rick Steves. Travel ah travel. Amsterdam Berlin Prague. Europe thru the

back door. Box set. Dvd. Author here has this one box set by him somewhere on her shelf.

46
Compelling art. The venus, the one that comes out of the shell. Practical Europe thru the back

door. Everything we ever produced.

It is Saturday, she can find this cooking show. On the telly. The day is nice, the sun is

shining. But somehow it is more fun to sit in here and type. You do something, you produce

stuff. Words that will be read or not read. Her amazing book, the great American novel here.

That one, yup, that one here. writing on minutiae, describing minutiae. The cappuccino in the

coffee house. The foam. Even better than a pic on yelp.

143.

Ampelmaennchen.

144.

12222.

145.

1:58, nope, 11:58 on March 4, 2018, of 2018. Sunday and she was at the gym already.

Weather grey but no rain. Grey but a lighter shade of grey. She is reading this Swedish crime

book which sucks, either it is the translation or the book itself, nothing really makes sense. She is

on page 54 or 64, and the whole thing is 500 pages long. She reads parts of this stuff she wrote

10 years ago, it really has a lot of problems. Wait ten years and you can see where it lacks, the

manuscript that is. But she might have seen those same glitches even ten years ago, you know

when something is off, is iffy. You hve to soldier on anyways, editing will make it better

eventually. The rewrite, though she does not want to rewrite this, it is better raw, with rough

edges. If it is too glib, it loses its charm. That is how writing rolls, how art rolls here. 12:03 on a

47
Sunday in 2018. The telly singing its songs, her weight stands at 188.8 here. That is what the

scales said in the Y.

146.

12426, 12416 here.

147.

The first novel of the new year, standing @ 12k.

148.

She could rewrite the stuff from ten years ago by letting a person named Antonia write

all that, so it becomes a new thing, a rewritten thing. Antonia telling all of it here. Same story,

just a change in perspective, all of it told thru the eyes of a person named Antonia. Antonia in

nyc in 2008.

149.

The nicest novel. Written while the day comes to an end. Well, this very part that is

here. On the telly, laugh tracks. Big Bang Theory. She reads this part that she wrote about Bryant

Park some ten years or so ago, a tad less than ten years. End of April of 2008 and now it is

beginning of March of 2018. Maybe that is a good plotline, the writer and her stabs at

bookwriting. After all, she is not the only one, the only aspiring author. They are all over, crawl

this planet. The non-published ones, the unpublishable ones. They live lives different from the

recognized ones. The hobbyists. The ones that take classes online at Gotham’s.

150.

48
 The Oscars are over. The day before. And the reading of the book written ten years

ago is over too. Roberta has to type up some stuff.

151.

Nine minutes after seven in the eve on March the fifth here.

152.

Four and seventeen on March the fifth. Make that March the sixth. Or maybe still

fifth. An afternoon on a Tuesday. Weather nice, author here was in downtown. All over

downtown. Thinking of writing a book called BOOKWOMAN. Or maybe all in lower case

letters. Bookwoman. Life of a writer, that kind of stuff.

Downtown was exhausting, interesting and exhausting, both at the same time. Gym,

coffee house. Pizza and icecream and chocolate. Too much food, though this is what she will do

in order to drop all of her extra pounds. Eat more, not less. Sushi with avocado and wasabi. And

that little smack of pickled ginger. Ice cream had too many nuts in it. The chocolate had ginger in

it. Was good, but the ginger went between her teeth. Ginger julienned so very finely. Tea in this

place in Yaletown. Her name was pronounced in a funny way. A new name. a totally morphed

new name. A new personality. A character in her book. The fictional woman. The fictional

bookwoman here.

There will be a movie in May with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin and Candice Bergen.

All of the oldies but goodies. The movie is called Book Club.

153.

49
 Walking thru downtown is fun but exhausting. It is like running a marathon. A four-

hour marathon. From eleven to three. Her knees hurt now.

154.

Roberta is tired.

155.

12888 words here.

156.

4:22 in the afternoon here, on March 6, 2018.

157.

The novel ah the novel here.

The daily trek to the writing studio.

158.

The woman who writes queries. How is that for a book title? Maybe it is the best

booktitle ever. Because it tackles the middleman. The gatekeeper. It is kind of an accusatory title,

it is implied that a good query makes or breaks the novel, the publishing. There is one person

who stands beteween the publisher and the author and that person plays politics. She will build a

career or destroy a crareer and the way he or she does it is totally random. Think of the agent for

Joey in Friends, Esther. That is the quintessential agent. And we have 13007 words here, yay, ah

yay here.

159.

50
 The woman who diets. How is that for a title of a book? The idea came to Roberta

while looking out the window in the community college and having a peppermint tea. Her diet

the day before did not work, she is exacytly 191 lbs, just like the day before. Today it is a

subway sandwich with meatballs and marinara sauce, and a chocolate truffel from Godiva,

peppermint tea and coffee with cream and a piece of banana bread, a slice. 1300 caloris in all. It

is one and thirty-one on March 7, 2018. She was in the gym, in the mall, in the coffee house.

Now she would like to watch Friends, but something is wrong with the tv. So, writing it is and

reading, still the book about Swedish crooks. When readin it, one feels like having meatballs

from Ikea. The book talks about Kalle Blomquist. Nostalgia, yay.

160.

13168.

161.

Eleven fourteen. Rain. Somebody liked a photo on Roberta’s Instagram profile.

Somebody in Kutzdown, Pennsylvania. Or Kutztown, Philadelphia. Is that where Keith Haring

was from? The person is a DJ. What work is there for a DJ? Weddings?

Ah, all those starving artists of the planet here.

She was in the coffee house though there was no parking space in the coffee house

near to her. She had to go to the nearby mall. The coffee in the market. Bought a toenail clipper

and then a frozen mac and cheese, the generic variante.

After that, the gym, where she found a space in the rain and it looked as if she picked

it up from under the nose of another car which was not her intent here. She cannot go to that

51
place again, now it is personal. The feuds of the Y. And who would even be a member of the Y?

A gym has to be exquisite, boutiquey in order to give you your elegant figure. The Y, that will

not cut it. She now weighs ten pounds more than when she joined the gym. Must be because of

the workaholic way that that place looks. In a gym like that, you gain ten pounds instead of

becoming chiseled. You move down and not up on the beauty ladder. The Y does not cater to

fashion models.

She will write some more. On Instagram, there is a story out of Iceland, this coffee

house in Iceland. There is a pic too. One day she will make it to Iceland. One day she will live in

Iceland. In Iceland everybody is a writer, they have the highest percentage of authors per capita.

In the world.

13455, on March 8, 2018. At 11:23 in the morn. Rain and greyness, outside of here.

Back to the Swedish book here, half of it is still waiting to be read here. She will write about the

mall. Subject matter mall, destination mall here.

162.

The question is, can one even write while sitting cooped up? Can one even read while

sitting in a room of one’s own? Reading in a coffee house is so much nicer. The coffee house has

to be a certain coffee house though. One where nobody knows you. Where you can be a fly on

the wall. That is the coffee house for writing and or reading. The mix between personal space

and public space here.

163.

They have this new kind of tea in the coffee house. She will go down and have one.

But it seems like too much of an undertaking, to put on warm clothes and go down there just to

52
taste a certain kind of beverage. We are better than that. How much of a foodie do you have to be

to venture out merely to get a whiff of some bev? Stay put, who cares how it tastes. Do other

stuff to keep yourself busy here. Write your amazing novel. Market your amazing novel. Be a

voice in lit land. Practice your craft. Work on leaving your mark within the pantheon. Inscribe

your voice. There are not enough female writers and this being international women’s day or

something, it seems to be our obligation to have one’s voice heard. Though her voice here is just

the voice of one writer among many. It is not the voice of a female writer, it is the voice of a

writer who happens to be a gal. The gender does no make the words. The language makes the

words, you pick and choose from contemporary lingo. 13785. On the telly, CNN, Trump as

always. Chief of staff John Kelly. It is all about this woman and yesterday the caption on

Anderson Cooper read: the president and the porn star. Come on, CNN, you are better than this.

Salacious stuff, really. What are yer, the National Enquirer? Ted Turner would not approve here.

164.

You cannot bring down a prez because of the bedroom, it did not work in Clinton’s

time, it does not work now. People could care less, actually that bus video totally backfired, it

might hacve even cost Hillary the election. Why does the fake media (haha) not notice that

nobody cares? They are all like this, the politicians. What is important, is the politics, nothing

else here. And there is no difference between American presidents, they all suck equally. Just

saying.

165.

13906. Wolf Blitzer now.

166.

53
 13911 words here. Two eleven in the pee em.

167.

She did not have the latte in the coffee house. It is about five bucks, has a lotta

calories. It is foam and sugar. It is more about drinking thru foam. There are rosebuds on it or

blossoms, or something. Something that tastes like spring or smells like spring. But it is rainy

and grey, not fragile and blossomlike. Not the grace of a ballet dancer. She might just as well

stay here and hone her craft as a writer. It is all about typing and hammering up the right words

into this machine here. 14017 words here, btw.

168.

Vignettes, 167 of ‘em.

169.

She is back to where she left 27 minutes ago. This is what happens when you type up

stuff in WORD, Microsoft Word, it takes you back to where you left off and it tells you when it

was that you interrupted your input to daydream, to go out and taste the tea with foam in the

coffee house, when you just surfed the web and came upon the twitter account by this writer who

complains about that the worst part of being a writer is that you have to read your own BS fifty

times. That is how it is, that is why it sucks to be a writer. The editing, and more so the self

editing. Apparently, William Sayoran was rejected 7000 times, yup, that sounds about right, that

is how writing rolls, nowadays. And if it holds true even for William Sayoran’s times, well, then,

god help us here.

170.

54
 Three and twenty, seems the rain has stopped. But it is a bad time now, everybody

who is anybody is on the road now.

171.

She sucks as a writer and she is not able to make up stories. She cannot commit to one

storyline here, that is where the problem lies. But it is the same in architecture, if you build the

building on Forty-second street for the New York Times, you cannot suddenly wander off to

build the parliament in Bangladesh. You are commiting to this one place. The same with writing,

you commit to one story and you hammer away on this one story until it is good enough. Good

enough is always good enough here. You know the story by the person who said Mrs. Robertson

with his dear in the headlight look. Art is like lying on a moving train, no, on a traintrack and the

train is coming, at one point you have to let go because of deadline, because of moving train,

because of cut-off. physically, temporarily. You have to be ok with the art peace because there is

no perfection and if you want something to exist in the world you have to throw it into the world

at large and let it exist there and have a life of its own. Gotta let go of them babies. Yeah.

172.

Drinking under the influence, writing under the influence, editing under the influence.

These days Barbara, nope wait, Roberta, she writes while being completely and dumbingly

sober. No whiskey anymore, no scotch, no hard liquor, no vodka et.al. Gotta write while being

under the influence of soberness. Works for Trump, the tweeter extraordinaire at five in the

morn, at three in the nite.

173.

55
 Whiskey paper apparently is a literary quarterly, and there are so many li’l mags. All

over the United States of America. But she cannot do that, you have to be organized to go the lit

rag route. It is not her. She types and stops once she hits 100 000, 100 k. that is the cut-off,

roughly 306 pages, double-spaced in times new roman, point size twelve. Then it is a book, you

package it and slap some kind of title on it here.

174.

She still is searching for this pic of the spines of books by Handke, everything is so

fleeting on the world wide web here, the net. Online everything and everything gets lost here.

Even pre snapchat and Instagram stories. Ideas are fleeting, moments, images, worlds, life, has

always been like this, will always be like this here.

175.

She could title this “reflections of a shut-in”.

176.

Reflections, what a dated term

177.

Real writers don’t reflect, they ponder. And real men, well, quiche...

178.

What is narrative theory and what is the history of the novel?

179.

56
 Eight twelve in the evening. Elaine Benes and Marla the virgin in the diner. The notes

of Seinfeld. Now George and Jerry in the apartement. The butler. And now, the Chinese

restaurant bike person whom Elaine ran over or something. Kramer. No, no I had green light,

you jay-walked.

180.

The bookwriter hard @ work. Ten and thirty-three, wait, ten and thirty-seven. On a

Friday, a Thursday. What exactly is it? Ten thirty-eight. She could watch Friends or some other

shitty rubbishy sitcom. How can you write that rubbish? so the woman said to George. If you

watch Seinfeld you know what that means. Maybe, prerequisite reading for this her novel is

Seinfeld. Only conoisseurs of the show should apply here.

181.

The Bachelor, pix eleven talks about The Bachelor as if everybody watches it. Hey, it

is no Seinfeld here.

182.

Tamsen Fadal talks about Ari, apparently a bachelor on the show or one that was

voted off the island, the island of bachelors.

183.

Now they talk about the Sopranos and about the history of handbags.

184.

57
 14826 words here, write, type until this ends up @ 15000. 15000 for the year of 2018.

The new novel, the first novel of the year. We have to write no matter what. Editing can wait, the

polish of the work here.

185.

Roberta and her book. She reads these days and she writes these days. She watches

what is on on the idiot box. She goes to the mall, goes to the gym. The coffee house, especially

the one on Arbutus. They know her there, know what she will order. The illusion of feeling part

of a community. The place where they all know your name, Cheers, you know the song at the

beginning.

186.

14942. Now they talk about the person who paid too much for Uber. They talked

about him before, it is a follow-up.

187.

FIT and the history of handbags.

Pockets to purses. And the FIT exhibits are always great because they are free. Free

for all, all thru the week. Not like MoMa where you have to go on certain days, usually on

Fridays in order for it to be free.

188.

15014, we are there, yay.

189.

58
 Novelwriting at one forty-four in the nite. Ah, this better be good. On the telly it is

Last Man Standing. Watched interviews online, with Jason Alexander and Sofia Loren and the

guy who played Frasier’s bro. the stuffy one. David Hyde Pierce. Read stuff about William

Sayoran. Read an article by Strawberry Sayoran. Now knows that the book by Marshall mc

Luhan was titled something with massage as a play on his message quote. Stuff like this, in

between Instagram and we now know that the nyc subway map was designed by some guy

named Massimo something. A name that starts with a V. Vignello, Ven something. His wife was

a designer too. And now laughtracks on the telly. 15139 words here.

190.

A writer at the typing machine. March 9, 2018. Time: 10:19 AM. Weather nice and

sunny, non-drizzly. Author had her coffee though there was no free parking spot in front of the

coffee house. It was nine in the morn and she had to look for alternative parking spots. Well,

technically, one spot. The big street had anti-parking signs that she could not decipher. In the

end, she ended up in the sidestreet, next to the bike, the black one, that is always chained

opposite of the high school. A walk to the coffee place, by the gas station. The short gas station

attendant, about her age.

The coffee, the talk with the woman about which column are the prices for the short

drinks. The tea drinks. No ice though. Well, who would have ice in this weather?

The seat is a table that is usually filled at this time of the day. But it is still the time

when the last commuters come into this place and pick up their drinks that they order inside of

the car. And the morning crowd is streaming in, the regulars who socialize here and all hang

together in their li’l cliques. The two sisters, one of them walking funny.

59
 After coffee, the gym. She could go home and type up her master piece, or she could

go to the Y. Hardly any parking. A lot of music and people moving to orders. Even in the very

small place, where there should not be such a big crowd of people. Author’s weight is a tad less

than the day before but is higher when she gets down later. The scales in this place are

unreliable, there is no way around it.

Later on, it is back to the seat in front of the typing machine here.

The story, the non-story. 7000 rejections and finally one person bites. Ne’er give up.

191.

15460. In two months. It is now mid-March or something, well, a third of March

already.

Roberta and her work. She reads a lot these days and that is what makes for good

writing. So one prof says, but there are no rules here.

15506. Hanging out around writers, the competition.

Teaching writing, as if one can teach that. You just have to practice here. Hang out in

dirty gin joints and talk about all of the gin joints of all of the world. In black and in white. The

blue star donuts site has a beautiful short movie, one with music that is reminiscent of the

Pasadena music she heard a long time ago. Very retro in black and white with a sagey, sepia tint.

The kind of film that makes you write good music, makes yer author amazing words. If you just

watch that, you too can write fantastic stuff.

60
 Snow in nyc, a north’eater. North’easter. The name of the storm. No Irene, no Sandy.

A nor’easter. All over Jersey and all over the Hamptons. Long Island in white. You wish to be

there, but you are here in sunnyland.

192.

15653.

193.

The Instagram stories of kaffitar and the eth. How can you save those? You look at a

screen and you see these mini thingies. The eth has something about urban gardening, a

symposium, a conference, a place where people talk about stuff into microphones. Somewhere in

the building on the Raemi strasse. Zurich, on the other side of the world.

And then there is the coffee in Iceland. The documenting of the two streams that gluck

into the papercup out of the barista machine that is big and clunky and shiny and silvery. A

woman who drinks coffee again and again, in a loop, vine. You look at images from Iceland and

Switzerland. As if you are there but in reality, you are here and are typing up your masterpiece

that somebody will read or not here. 64 pages already here. Somebody said that, please submit

your stuff non-doublespaced, because we use this program that makes it all whacky if it is

doublespaced. Maybe it was some obscure little literature magazine. They buy short stories and

poems or essays or interviews, they do not publish stuff in bookform. We here just produce

booklength volumes. Over the last ten years. A shut-in who writes. You have to be stagnating in

one place in order to write all of this up. The wordcount ah the wordcount here.

15880. The interview with Sofia Loren. The nite b4. The talk about that infamous pic.

61
 15894.

194.

Outside green sunny flecks on the bushes, the tress. Ten and forty-seven. So this was

the day, so far, coffee and gym and a-writing, a-typing here. Elevn in the morn and the workday

is done here. Now it is editing, reading thru what you have wordsmithed the day before. This guy

outta Cornell is right, this is all a tad too much. You have to revise, you have to read thru ur own

bullshit again and again here.

195.

Until you get it all right, well, at the very least digestable here. In accordance with the

grammar rules of the day here.

15999.

196.

16001.

197.

The time stands at fifty-one minutes after ten, Pacific time, westcoast time here.

198.

On a day like this. The day before the time changes, is either turned to an earlier time

or to a later time and nobody really knows how this works with daylight saving. Author here,

Roberta that is, she was in the coffee place and in the gym and in the mall. Somebody called in

the morning and after that one could not go to sleep anymore. She was in the bookstore in the

62
mall and there was a shelf full of two for ones, or maybe two for fifteen bucks and they had this

book that she reads but not exactly this one, but another one of the sequence. Nowadays that is

how its done, books are with sequels. The same characters in different locales. Just like

Columbo, different episodes. Just like Seinfeld or Friends or Married, different episodes of the

same kind. Is this literature? Serial lit? What do the purients say about that? The ones that teach.

The scholars. Apparently even in sitcoms there are differences, some tackle topical stuff,

mention what is on the news that particular day, that time. Soon it will be dated if you go back

and watch it in ten years.

Anyhoo, the sun is shining, the mall was full of people. When New York is

happening, where New York is happening. New York in the mall here, in Burnaby, British

Columbia. The radio station is annoying on the car radio, they always talk about places where

everyone is poorer. That is their spiel, talk about misery and thus make the person in the car who

drives to and fro from work feel superior. There are people worse off. That seems to be the

mission of this particular radio station. It is kind of like a gospel station. Roberta prefers hard

rock stations or French chanson stations, anything is better than this hogwash here.

The weight in the gym is no good, she just sits on the stationary for one and a half minutes. Ah,

sue me, so I do not exercise here.

199.

Two hundred sections over three months and we call this a novel here. Potato, potahto,

it is all in a name, all in categorizations of something. This is called a novel, not poetry, not

fictional nonfiction, all of these weird genres that do not make any sense. How can you even

categorize the written word here? Down with categorizations. Scholars should rethink, have to

63
rethink how they categorize all of these volumes that are spat out by machines and bound into li’l

parcels here to be put on shelves and in backpockets of soldiers and people who climb Mount

Everest.

She still did not have one of those pink tea drinks that are propagated by this coffee

house chain outta Seattle here. The one that is taking over the world, the one that was targeted by

the BDS movement and who said that we are not paying people to shoot Palestinians, we are an a

political place here. BDS, what does that even mean? Boycott and divest, the problem of course

is that whatever you do, you might pay somebody who makes guns and provides waring

fractions with those. Unless you live under a rock…, so goes the argument of people who say

that movements like BDS are ineffectual.

200.

One six five six nine, 16569. 11:27 AM on the west coast of north America, March ten

in 2018.

Her writing, ah her writings here. Musings, whatev.

201.

The radio woman asks the bookwriterwoman about stuff. The bookwriterwoman says

that she always reads, mainly in order to inform her writings. I read and I write and I like to look

at what the competition does, what the literary marketplace is all about at this time in our lives

here. I read everything and anything but mostly English stuff, stuff in the English language.

Sometimes, French and German, hardly ever Farsi, German being the most read in a language

other thatn English. The first parts of Buddenbrooks, because, hey, it is Thomas Mann’s

masterpiece, his magnum opus. Tonio Kroeger and Death in Venice, she remembers those. She

64
read stuff by Erich Maria Remarque, a long time ago. There is something in Venice too, as far as

she can remember. There is this story with Clerfayt, she definitely remembers that. Literature, ah

literature. It mushes together with songs and with movies. After a while you do not even

remember which is which.

The radio woman asks her questions and she answers while pondering other stuff, her

mind wanders. She spits out automatic answers, on auto-pilot. Always sound like a deep thinker,

whatever that is. A guy? The patriarchy is alive and well, change of the guard is not happening in

these places here. Progress happens elsewhere, I guess.

202.

The radio woman asks: “what do you mean by this?” and she reads her a passage.

How would I remember what I meant at that time. It is all there, open to interpretation here.

Snarky answers will not cut it, will they?

Maybe with a smile charming, like Redford to Larry King. Nonaccusatory tone, silent,

quiet.

203.

16873.

204.

It is now August of 2020. Roberta moved to nyc. She subletted this little apartment on

the third floor opposite the PS something that caters to the future artists of America. The place is

nice, in this street off Eighth. She will stay here until October which is when the original owner

will come back from Europe, from Sweden.

65
 Until then she will work on her writings. She takes a course with the school of Visual

Arts and it will start up in September, end of September, that is. September twenty-nine or

October first. Animation and it is apparently not near the buildings in Chelsea but somewhere

near where the administrative buildings are. Further away. On 23rd.

She will concentrate on writing, moreso than animation. The SVA course is merely

continuing ed and it costs some five hundred bucks.

The writing is what she will do, mostly. There are writing studios in town, this very

nice one near Union Square. But that is not what she wants to do, she just wants to roam the city

and sit around coffee houses and do her writings. Longhand. And sometimes with a computer,

when the weather is nice enough to take a laptop without a cover out into te street. Though the

weather in nyc is really unpredictable, there suddenly is a drenching monsoon and the floodgates

open onto the city.

She goes a lot to Penn Station, it is actually up to Penn Station from where she lives

here in this city. It is the hustle and bustle that attracts her to nyc, the city makes her write her

songs, her stories. You just have to shout up and let your mind wander.

Sometimes she takes citybike.

Mostly near the meatpacking, on the sidewalks when there is nobody there.

205.

She has not drunk a drop in ages. Recovering alcoholic, yup, that would be her.

Drinking moderately, maybe she will do that. If it is possible, let’s see here.

206.

66
 Roberta watches TV while she writes. Big Bang. And laughtracks. She still has some

fifteen pages left of the book about the little old lady. Fifteen here

207.

17232. Words. Should writing be chronological? How do novels usually do it? One

could take a writing course and figure it out. There are no rules in art making. The literary arts.

The retelling of a story. A tall tale. Fiction is basically a tall tale. The telling of a story. You can

do whatever you want. You can hop around. Thru time, thru places. Thru different locales. You

can have more than one point of view. You are not just restricted to a person named Roberta.

There can be a Robert too. Roberta and Robert. Not exactly exciting stuff here. Roberta is not a

great narrator. She is stifled. A stifled narrator. She paints and draws. But writing? Hmm. An

acquired taste.

Two and forty-five. She had a potato that she cooked and then she drizzled vinegar thereon. A

quinoa wrap and a banana bread and a potato. 1300 calories already. This has to go till morning,

has to hold her without food until then. The calorie deficit is what makes the pounds shrink

away. It never works. We are doomed here to live in roly poly land. Might as well. It works like

a facelift, no wrinkles, a lesser amount of wrinkles here. Something like this, something of that

kind here.

She should go downtown, observe and look around. There are stories happening

around her. The poker faces on the tram do not give anything away here.

208.

The subway in nyc. It is better than the train here in town. More on the exotic side.

Here she knows everything. It is so predictable. But in nyc, everything is strange and foreign and

67
new and out of the ordinary. The big apple. The place where you go to leave your shoes behind.

Sinatra sang about that.

209.

17529.

210.

These vagabond shoes are longing to stray, that is how it goes. This is how writing is

these days, you can google everything. And you can look at black and white images of nyc. How

did Tolstoy do it, Pushkin? No google. Samuel Becket and Godot? Thomas Mann. All guys, you

know. The greats are men. No girls apply. Sorry. That is how it is, this is how it is. There are

hardly any gals among the greats.

211.

Is her writing American? Canadian, British, Welsh, Irish, Kiwi, Down Underish?

She uses words that she choses from the English lingo, for the most part here. No Russian, no

Suaheli. Italian? French? The déjà vu effect?

She reads about this prof at Harvard who does interesting stuff. Profs, they all do

interesting stuff, it comes with the territory.

Anyhoo, he does two presentations this year and they are both in departments or

conferences of American Studies. But he teaches English at Harvard and that is what he does.

His research interest is the contemporary novel, the novel written in English, not necessarily one

that is written by a card holding Ameerican. No U-S-A, U-S-A, USA, it is not a sports team.

Literature that is. When she thinks of the USA yell, it always reminds her of Woody Harrelson

68
on Cheers who is talking in the bar about a love interest of his girlfriend or wife, and how he

talks about why she would possibly choose him, a lowly bartender over some foreign

intellectual. And then he says something like “I will tell you who would do that”. USA USA US

A. it is very funny because you know Kelly’s family (I think her name is Kelly) is this

blueblooded old Bostonian with tons of money and he is a hick from nowhere. Something like

that, something of that kind here. Roberta’s writing is full of holes, you never really know what

the story is and decidedly so here. Writing is about communication or it is about what you leave

out, what you do not say here.

212.

Roberta does research these days. About novels. She listens to a lecture on You Tube.

By a man who talks about novels, who wrote about novels and who was a very eminent

contributor to the Norton anthology. Maybe he was the creator of the anthology. He talks about

the novel Tom Jones.

Roberta listens to others too. mostly on You Tube or on Vimeo. What is a novel? The

rise of the novel, before the novel. Or before novels. Literary research is interesting. There is this

book about the author’s portrait, by this one means the picture that is in the bookjacket or on the

back cover. Then there is this prof at Harvard who does research on bookcovers. So, it is not

only what exactly is a novel but how is it marketed? How is it advertised? Nom de plumes. Why

does a man named Clemens call himself Mark Twain?

This was all before nanowrimo. But in nanowrimo it says that if you think it is a

novel, then it is a novel. If you as the writer classify this particular long form of writing as novel,

then it is a novel. It is not nonfiction here, there is a woman named Roberta who is the

69
protagonist even though the reader does of course suspect that she is a stand-in for the writer, but

isn’t every piece of writing basically an autobiography? Even an essay, even a scientific essay is

the result of one person’s choice of words. Well, if there is just one author and if it is not a

collaboration of different authors. And how much is Tom Wolfe’s oeuvre really his own? Did

not Maxwell Perkins have a colossal input if one would believe the historical portrayal in the

movie Genius? And even in the book that precedes the movie.

Roberta writes here in 2018, because the 2010 roberta is purely fictional and made-up,

this one is a little more next to reality here. It is exactly five here on the westcoast, five west

coast time. What time is it now in Rekjavik?

There is this kind of research that chooses to gather meta data about when novels

started to meander around thru time and space. This one research group at the University of

Pennsylvania is pretty interesting according to its Instagram feed. Where was life before

Instagram? Or even Instagram stories?

213.

Later on, she will go out to the coffee house. Maybe even now. There is a Kinder

Morgan protest in Burnaby, there is lots of things going on in the real world here. But pink tea

sounds more fun here.

Pink with rose pedals thereon, the milky stuff. Or a cookie from Butter, the effeminate

bakery with flowers et.al. The Liberty store on Mackenzie here.

214.

70
 Nobody will get her connotations, nobody, ah, nobody here. For whom do we really

write here? Questions, ah, questions here.

215.

Bookwriting, huh. Maybe a novel is really a story with a beginning and an end,

something like what you see on the stage. A play in three acts. The way that it is defined in the

lexicon. If there still are lexicas. Lexicons, lexica. The bastardized plural of lexicon. Anyway, the

definition of what constitutes a novel. Scholars all disagree.

Outside it is getting dark, we are just at the cusp here. Instagram stories are all set in

different timezones, the ones in Zurich and Hamburg are nite stories at this point here. The

kafitar feed out of Reykjavik exists in daylight savings time land. Maybe, maybe, yup.

216.

Roberta is typing away, she has zero alcohol these days. No glass of wine anymore

like in the beginning of the book here. A more grown upped Roberta, an evolved one. Not the

one who was all drunk on Bourbon Street, remember that one here? What a disgrace, ah, what a

disgrace. Bourbon Street full of puddles of puke, nah, not good here.

217.

New Orleans is for livers.

218.

Six and twenty-nine, March 10, 2018. 18544 words here. The words clept on us here.

219.

71
 Crept.

220.

An experimental novel, we might as well sell it like that here.

221.

Seven and fifty-three. She stumbled upon this Instagram site which is basically an

amalgamation of images that are really artsy. There are lots of people who use Instagram as their

own gallery. Of images of photos. You do not go to a museum anymore, the museums, the

galleries are online. People put in their time to create stuff without remuneration, sans

compensation. And some of them are extremely good. This magazine out of the UK named

address outs them together, all of those Instagram accounts that are just basically very artsy.

New, everchanging artforms. You do not need to live in nyc anymore in order to start an art

career, all you need is a laptop. Anywhere on this planet, on Robinson Crusoe’s island. Go 4 it.

222.

Novelwriting at ten thirty in the nite while not even knowing what a novel is. What

constitutes a novel?

On the telly, the CNN series The Sixties. One minute later, ten and thirty-one.

Roberta will write some and read some here.

Fifteen pages and the book about the old lady is over.

223.

Ten thirty-two. Dean Martin on the telly.

72
25, 225.

Ten thirty-three. This is not a novel. Not in the true sense of the word. An anti-novel.

Who would read that?

225.

18781 words.

226.

Daylitesavings. Three and thirty-five when it should be two and thirty-five. Magic

227.

Somehow it feels as if you gained an hour and not that you lost an hour. It says twelve thirty, but

you know that it is not that late in real life, in reality, it is only elven thirty and much earlier and

not that late yet. You feel that you are more rested because it is so much sooner in the day, not

that late that you feel exhausted, you still have the extra umpfh of energy left in your body and

thus can make it and withstand the rigour of the day because that extra spot of energy left in your

body, the reserves lingering from sleep in the nite. Author should rite a book about daylight

savings, that is how Ro here rolls. Ro as short for Roberta here. Coffee house in the morn, a new

woman behind the counter, very young and very serious, not jaded yet wit the job. still in mode

of apprenticeship, in mode of learning a new cash register, a new interface, buttons to push. The

man with the accent tells her what to do, he looks over her shoulder. They both are people with

accents, one Dutch, one Japanese. Or something like that. The man has tattoos which do not go

with his polite demeanor. His name does not go with his accent either. The young woman is a

schoolgirl, with a knitted sweater.

73
 There are people here from the church, and not that many here. A man and a small

child with ribbons in her hair.

The gym is nice, too, 198.8, sorry, 189.8. The thinness that we want, sprinkles of

thinness. The weather is glaringly too nice, blossoms. You can now purchase the blossom tea

drink in the coffee house but still it does not feel too appealing, the milky fluid stuff that is

foamy here and overpriced. Five bucks for what is basically foam, beaten non-fat milk, beaten

skim milk.

Page eighty is finished here, one oh six or seven, 19127 words. On the car radio a

woman from a broken home talked about her broken home.

Sun shines, sun shines. Aljazeera talks about other people’s misery, because that is

what they always do here. CBC and Aljazeera, that is their spiel and there are racial overtones.

The people with the misery always have to be nonwhites or else. The whites in misery are in

misery because there were deficiencies in their behavior. What to make of all this?

The way that media companies market themselves to the consumer. What they think

will sell in a competitive media lansdscape. Who is the target audience here? Rich people.

228.

The weather is so happy and sunny. On the telly a man with a thick, thick beard and

an English accent and he is talking about acting and that kind of stuff. He talks slowly and a

woman in blond and blue asks him questions but now she talks to the amers seems that she is the

one who m.c.s everything here. and now something called forensic architecture whatever that is

apparently it is a discipline that is evolving here.

74
20.

229.

230.

Roberta writes away and flips words against the machine here. Forensic architecture

still. We listen to this and look at the monitor of the telly and we hammer away at the greatest

novel that has ever been. Roberta who was at the gym and now has finished the book on the

couch in the other room, the white one with flowers. The book was about Swedish people, the

league of pensioners, the third one in a trilogy. The latest senior citizen book, fifteen pages and a

happy ending. She now started up this new book which happens in nyc and a woman who moved

out of her apartment and into another one because her husband cheated. Both apartments are near

to each other Christopher Street et. al. Prince, Gramercy, you know the names. The village

SoHo. Nothing about Chelsea or the meatpacking. No Penn Station, no FIT. The locales are just

sprinkled in, it is all about the story and the writing is very good. There is a speakeasy from the

roaring twenties, something about ghosts maybe. The book is not hi-lit, then again. what is these

days? Nonfiction is where it is at. Creative nonfiction, whatever that is here.

Roberta the tyist in her peejays, a black turtleneck and a grey harempants like thingie

that now sports holes and that you cannot wear outside to go down to the coffee house and

finally have the milky foamy blossomy tea, that is there just for a short time here.

231.

19567 words here.

232.

75
 Helsinki. Roberta now sits in this coffee house in Helsinki. Cappuccino. Italia in

Finland. Why not?

233.

Ah, have a runeberg torte or torten. Google it, looks yum.

234.

Roberta and Helsinki. What does she do there? Has coffee, apparently. Hangs out in

pastry shops. Does poetry. What can be more poetic than coffee in Helsinki here?

235.

Who needs a story when you can have runeberg torten?

236.

19640.

237.

Five thirty-three. Big Bang Theory. She read thru this book Wicked City. Reading and

writing, how boring. The outside world awaits.

238.

The writing was about Finland, her google search history reminds her of this. When

writing, you should not be too framentingish.

239.

76
 Five and fifty-one and now it is five and fifty-two. In the PM. On Monday after

daylite savings. Trying to lose weight. Had not that much. Coffee and a piece of cake in the

morning, just like every day. Coffee and muffin, that kind of stuff. Bananabread. Coffee and

muffin is filling. Dinner is a piece of bread and an orange. In between, I grazed while being in

the big mall in Burnaby, about three hundred calories worth of grazing. A piece here and a piece

there. Now I am reading up on gastric balloons and on GI-index. Still a tad whoozy since

yesterday when my stomach acted up.

240.

19295 words. I walked enough in the mall, so exercise we did here.

241.

Glycemic index, here I come.

242.

She could be on the rice diet. There used to be this rice diet out of Duke University.

Roberta read the book about it, it is a very old diet. 1960, 1955, 1950. There is some rice left

over in the fridge and a little milk. Maybe that will constitute dinner. It is 2:22 in the afternoon in

March. The weather is misty, murky. In Boston it is all snow, as one could see on the news. And

now it is Two and a Half Men, Charlie and Mia. Alan and all of those laugh tracks here.

243.

19911. The wordcount in mid March. The amazing book. Roberta is reading this book,

Wicked City. Readin writing watching tv, coffee in the coffee house while all the kids from the

local hi-skool are streaming in. Eleven thirty, lunch in the coffeehouse. There are older people

77
too, but they are in the minority. Either the very young or the very old. Pensioners, and people at

the cusp of their work life. Writing is different, you produce words and then you market them

and usually they get rejected even though you polish the stuff again and again here. It is a

thankless profession, being a poet here. In north America, they have all of these master programs

and they are pretty good. Helpful. The Gotham Writing workshops. In nyc. How to become

published here?

By now she has 20045 words and we are shooting for 100 000 words because that is

how many words there are in your usual novel. There is a storyline or there is none. Pick your

choice here. Use grammatically correct words, construct rightish sentences. Is a choice

something you pick? The language is off which is fine at times when it is poetic. It is either

poetic or misconstrued here. On the telly an ad for a medication that is against stroke, if you take

it, it will make sure that you will not get a stroke. The person on the telly does not really look

like a person who will get a stroke, he exercises and bikes and wears a helmet. The only thing is

that he is a pensioner. An old guy. Old but sprite apparently here. Commented [na1]:

244.

Writing, huh. She will go on MFA sites for Creative Writing. Checking out the

competition here. The other potential Pulitzer Prize winners here. What a boring cottage industry

here.

245.

In the morn there was a woman on the elevator. From Nanaimo. Short elevator

conversation. They say women get to know each other in a matter of seconds and men are the

complete opposite, they do not let on whatever it is they do for a living. Weird, huh.

78
246.

Laughtracks on the telly, Rose talking to Charlie here.

49, 249.

It is two and thirty-six, the time when ppl watch soaps. Soaps are not really Roberta’s

thing, she always misplaces the characters. Sitcoms are easier to follow here.

248.

Bookwriting at six and forty-nine in the afternoon. Listening to this is where we used

to live, a song by the Barenaked Ladies. The old apartment, and the movie that goes with it.

Nowadays we do not have any channel with music videos anymore thus these are all old movies.

Online stuff here. On the telly, Modern Family. The day is still afternoon whereas it used to be

evei at this time of the day here. Daylight Savings Time, everything changed at two at midnite.

249.

Writing about inconsequential stuff, describing the mundane. The lack of a story, ah,

no story, no story here. March of 2018.

250.

Later on, she could still go out, pick up something from the grocery store on forty-first

here. The coffee place is open till eight, the other one is open till eleven. The mall will close at

seven, in six minutes here. This is what we write anbout, the nonstory that meanders forward.

The everyday, the book that Roberta is reading. Consuming literature and producing literarture.

The process of writing creative non-fiction whatever that may be here. The typing up of a text,

the pushing down of squares on a keyboard here. White letters on black here.

79
251.

The description of places she has never been. Tall lies in bookform. It is stuff that

people do, they get a three-year degree to do that. Pay three hundred thousand bucks, are in debt

a life time. A weird profession and why would anybody vie for that? Like acting, the call for an

audience that claps or does not clap and either way it is a strange way to make a living here. To

buy a gallon of milk that was paid for with the words that you produced here. Actually, she once

got paid one dollar, one whole dollar for a book that she made. Well, it is a small fee but still.

Somebody paid for her writing. Yay ah yay here. and it is not even proven that those words are

good enough, it is just the object that is bought with the hope that those words are good enough

here. No editor, no publishing company. Just the printed word here. Gutenberg, what did you do

here? what did you start here.

252.

On the telly. Two broke gals and laughtracks. Three and seventeen in the afternoon

here. March fourteen. The weight is standing @ 188.3 which is great. Maybe it is 189.3 but

hopefully it is 188.3. She has to write it down when weighing herself in the Y downtown.

Exercise is good too, she had enough, since seven in the morn till leven. Well, more or less.

From mall to mall to coffee house to chocolate house to gym, that kind of stuff. The main

objective is to stick to the diet. Not too little food and not too much. Just the exact right amount

that makes you stick to weightloss. No lightheadedness, though she had that on Monday and on

Tuesday, even Sunday. She was sick and that is why and how she lost it. That is not the way it

should go, it has to be very calibrated, the weightloss, doing certain things at certain times of the

day. A regimen adhered to. Well, with small changes here. Small variations, visible variations.

80
Mindfull variations, whatever those might be. Calibrated variations maybe. So basically, you

should know what you are doing or else you will never lose weight without death. The goal is to

let go of sixty pounds without incurring physical longlasting harm here. No hairloss, no fainting.

No problems with the eyes. No brain damage here. Just sleekness so that the BMI is ay-okay.

Ah, that BMI here. 0922, 20922 words btw.

253.

Some more words, fast. She is watching tv, she is reading Wicked City, not Wicked

Village, she browses diverse Instagram accounts, and this is how the life of a writer is

happening, a little bit of everything. Just keep moving and in the end it will be ay-ohkay, fruitful,

or a shoot in the dark. You take your pic here. Fourteen words more and this will be ay ohkay.

All with the overuse of the cheesy ayohkay here. 21004, yay ah yay here.

254.

There are these two books, one is called Amsterdam and the other is the island at the

center of the world, that she really wants to read. Otherwise, it is five oh nine.

255.

Seven fifty pee em. Seven fifty-one.

In the eve.

256.

21055 words. It is not much but it still is something. Typed up words that can count as

a novel. The story of the days of somebody named Roberta. The minutae of writing up a journal

here.

81
257.

Technically this has to be in chapters. Later on, she will go into this and partition the

text into chapters. Should be doable, yup, doable here. She is still tugging away at, well, what do

you know, she forgot the end of the sentence mid-sentence here because there came a

conversation up and she lost the flow of the word, nobody will ever know what it is that she is

tugging away at.

258.

21167 words here.

259.

Go back to where you left off 29 minutes ago. So the interface tells yer.

260.

Eight and twenty-eight in the evening here.

261.

Nine fifty-four on March 15, 2018. The weight is better, something with a seven after

the eight after another eight. 187. Pounds. Or something like this. Roberta was about to hug the

women in the gym. 187. She has not been at this point in ages. Bought a salad at the grocery

store outta Austin. Yup, that one. Have to stick to this. Have to achieve 120 or better yet, 119.

Have your eye on the ball. Be skinny, run a marathon. Or at least move around without knee

pain. Without palpitations. Be healthy. You know, that kind of stuff here. The sun outside is

shining. Ah, nice here.

262.

82
 Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated and supervised fashion. So

Wikipedia. Maybe it said mode instead of fashion. Fashion and diet in the same sentence, it

sounds too flimsy. It is all in the wording. Regulated. Supervised. Who supervises? An

authority? What if you have to be your own authority? The ruler and the ruled are the same. No

outside authority, you can leave it and let go. The best ruler is when your body aches and you

cannot hold stuff down. Your body tells you that it is too much, you are in no capacity to

swallow anything more or you will become violently sick. Which is how this particular diet here

started up, she was just sick and that is how she wound up having no appetite whatsoever. The

body refused the intake of food. She had these weird beans that caused it. But now she is back to

her healthey appetite again, so now it is all about will power. The will power that will make her

lose her weight and reach her ideal dream goal of 199 sorry 119 pounds. How difficult can it be?

We have will power and discipline to the yin yang, doable ah doable here.

263.

The day b4 St. Patrick’s Day. One and twenty in the afternoon. Roberta was in

different malls and in different cities. The library of the university out in the burbs. Magazines

about book publishing. New York Review, London Review of Books. Nice. She had a piece of

pizza. Tea. She weighs 177.7 pounds. Well, 187.7. but still, still. It is going down silently,

solemnly.

264.

21579.

265.

The crime story on the telly. Who did it?

83
266.

It is later in the day. Two minutes to four. In two minutes Big Bang will start up.

Roberta can go to the place with the telly, the room next to the kitchen and listen to the

laughtracks that adorn Sheldon’s words. Well, adorn is the wrong word but maybe we can use it

here in this context. There are ways to write the right words and apparently there are the wrong

ways. Peope who use the right words, those are published writers. And thn there are the ones

who get rejected. Those are the ones who use the wrong words. Or maybe there is just one big

conspiracy in the book publishing world to let in certain words and to make sure that other words

are supressed. The words that describe the mall. They are not poetic enough. The words that

describe a trip to Walmart. Nah. Suburbia does not exist in words, Paris in prewar times, that is

what exists in literature. Still. One could ask, which war but who really cares. The literati are

holding a tight grip on what is going on in the world.

Women should not apply and if they do they are supposed to write sentimental stuff.

Whatever that might constitute. One person’s sentimentality is another person’s, well,

nonsentimentaly. A riff on one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And not a very good

riff.

So maybe we just suck at writing. Could it be? Dare I say? Nah. Keep on writing and

submitting, in the end someone will take you on. What is it with Saroyan and 7000 submissions?

There is a story like that, in the end somebody will give in, if only by accident. And once you

have the foot in the door, it is all easy peasy from thereon. Downhill, uphill. Something like that,

something of that kind here. 21901 words here. One day she will watch this movie by Scorsese

on the 50 year old document which is a movie about the New York Book Review. But not now,

now, we gotta laugh here.

84
267.

Just sitting put here and looking at pics on Instagram and liking random pics like the one

with Marilyn Monroe and books and the caption hello I didn’t see you there which must be from

a movie, a filmscene or something. On another note, there is a bookfestival in Austin going on,

we should go there. Austin just rocks here and the good thing is that Roberta knows her way

around Austin.

And btw, something is wrong with the writing software. Ah all of these machines here,

all of these machines here.

22030 words and stop and spellcheck spellcheck here.

268.

Five forty-eight. Still light outside, after all this is after the advent of daylight savings.

Whatever that means and it is obviously utterly confusing. It is near dusk but still six in the

evening. Longer days apparently or something like that. Would it be dark now or would it be

brighter if this was not daylight savings? This change of time is just plainly confusing here. How

does it work, how does it work. She listened to this interview or moreso she watched it. An

interview on you tube. Two writers talking to each other. Funny sometimes.

269.

An editor who wrote a book. Roberta prefers to write, she never trie editing. She just

edits her own stuff and this particular novel is just typed in, editing has to wait, will wait.

Usually she edits as she goes but now she is doing it differently for this piece, is playing it up,

changing the parameters. You sometimes have to do things differently in order to have a more

85
interesting life. It is adventurous in a very safe way. Without falling down. The adventurousness

of old people. Doing things very slightly differently here.

22229 words here. The novel ah the novel here.

270.

Twelve forty-four in the AM. St. Patrick’s Day has begun apparently. The book is

finished and it was quite a disappointment. Tomorrow maybe Zadie Smith’s book or the Rain

book or the Art School book. On the telly, the Goldbergs here. 22280 words here.

271.

Nine seventeen in the morn on St. Patrick’s Day. Coffee, gym, market. Everything in the same

routine. You know where you have to be each minute. The routine and nothing new. The weight

definitely not good, 188.2 or 188.4. this weighing machine in the gym can never make up its

mind, it sucks. We have to pay extra to use a machine that is totally unreliable. Other scales are

not like that, they make up their minds. This is your weight and it is the same every time you step

on moi. Not this one, this one is a joke, no way around it here.

272.

Nine twenty, outside somebody mows the lawn whih means that Roberta has to draw the

curtains while it is such a nice day. She will just type this up and then venture out again, join the

living. Do stuff, that kind of stuff. Just sitting in here to write up words, too boring too boring.

The life of the writer inside the studio, at the workbench, fussing over all of these words here.

Fragments of the language, in this kind the English one. Put them together at random and hope

for the best here. No story, nah, none as of yet. Just a big selfie here, the description of the gneric

86
writer, the anywriter. But there has to be a reader too, a discerning one. A well-read on. One that

knows this work called Tistan Shave or something. She forgets the name of the book, it was

mentioned in this book about the teetotalers that she just finished. Prohibition era, that one. Not

the book but the literary work, it was mentioned and it is a very old book, 200 years or so here.

Anyhoo, the morning is fresh, the gym was full, the freshness of the day was, well, just nice here.

22591 here, words ah words here.

273.

Ten and forty-eight in the AM. Not even noon yet, not even eleven yet. Another trip to

the outside here, food in Whole Foods. Something that should constitute lunch but is more

breakfast. Not brunch, 507 grams of food and it costs five bucks Canadian. Fish and salad and all

of those sesame seeds that are annoying and linger in your teeth. Spinach and an egg. Diety food

and we have to lose weight here somehow or another. The taking of public transport down to this

food place here. The calibration of what you eat and/or what you do not eat here. Outside

somebody mows the lawn, which is why we leave this place here in the first place on a Saturday

morn. She could still have another egg here, yup, why not, why not? Protein overload apparently

here. Next to her this book that she will start up, Zadie Smith, Feel Free. Better be good and

better be good here.

274.

22760 words here. Ten fifty-five, St. Patrick’s Day in 2018. The writer and her book, the

first novel of the year here.

275.

87
 TV, everything changing all the time on the screen. Sports announcers, whatever they are

talking about, all excited, all dressed up in suits and ties. The seriousness of the world of

sportsannouncing here.

Three different men talking about guys running after one ball.

276.

Eleven oh six. Saturday in March. 28, 22835 words here, Roberta and her writing. She

should venture out, not in reality, but make it all up here. Coffee shops the world over. The

descript of public houses where people drink and sit and people watch in order to waste their

time.

277.

Lovestories are the thing we should describe here, because apparently that is the subject

matter of most writers the world over here. She feels like a cookie, but maybe that should be just

a theoretical pursuit here, she gained about one pound since yesterday and we cannot have that

here.

280.

Six thirty-one in the afternoon on a Saturday in March. Checking in with this journal. A

mere journal entry. Just read thru an essay of this new book, the opinions of Zadie Smith on

Brexit and on facebook. Essays she wrote. An acceptance speech for a lit prize. An allotment of

essays. The one about facebook is mostly about the movie, about the facebook founder, the

social network and it is thus slightly dated. That movie was eons ago and to read it now is weird,

a movie critique of a movie that came out some three, four years ago, so dated ah so dated here.

88
It got its prizes already, was news a long time ago. Ancient news. To read about stuff that was on

the news years ago seems ah so dated. And now it is actually a show about the Kennedys,

Something on CNN. And now somebody talking in Arabic on Aljazeera. Roberta should still

walk thru the neighbourhood, should move her body about, put foot in front of foot, it is still

light outside here.

278.

2309, 23109 words here. The new novel, the new words put together here.

279.

Writers these days, they all have websites. All with author portrait, author pic. With big

smile, teeth at the viewer. This book that will come out in three days. Roberta is not that kind of

writer as of yet. She just types in oblivion but still she does it every day. It is narcotic, meditive,

the words that are typed up, one letter at a time here. You could not do this when there were

typewriters, you can do this with laptops here.

280.

San Paddy’s Day, the woman talks about it, in front of a map of Snohomish County,

Spokane. She talks about the weather in Washington State. Her dress is more olive green, shiny, Commented [na2]:

she talks about closer to spring, the weather ah the weather. The spring equinox here.

281.

Chicken noodle soup, a pesto spring minestrone, that is what she talks about. A walk thru

the neighborhood, it has to be.

282.

89
 There is something to be said about a walk around the neighbourhood. And then the

coming in to the house while this show is going on, while music is playing. You still try to

describe the walk, the people you saw, one male, one female, the white dog. The dusk outside

that is not quite there but that still managed to taint the world grey. It is that time of the year, the

grass, the lawns around all look grey, charcoal. The green is not out yet or is supposed to come

out and there is fertilizer on the ground and nicely tended, one can see the fork spores inside of

the earth patches. The houses are nice, there are wired thingies there on the balconees. There is

this house that is going up, it was not there some time ago here. Roberta hardly walks around the

neighbourhood, but the freshness of the weather does her good. She is not able to walk as good

as she used to, her knees, though she hopes it will all get better once she weighs less. There is

this man who is very overweight, who lives down the street, he walks off his weight together

with his so very small dog. Well, he is not here now, he is a morning walker. The pounds that do

us in in this city. That attack our bodies, our inner organs. Two E’s, Vanna White, the turnstile

roars. Vanna White and letters. People who clap and clap here, and a woman saying, yelling, T.

tee.

283.

Still the rest of daylite, here, she does not remember the name of the game show host and

does not remember the name of the show. So, this is pre-Altzheimer’s, it will only go downhill

from here. Sliding into the abyss. Here. better to pick up the Zadie Smith book here and read ah

read here. Though it seems that all of this reading makes her slightly disorientated here.

284.

90
 Sixty-three thousand bucks, that is what she won. Everybody claps. That much money

when you know how to guess the right letters. It is an art that not everybody possesses here.

285.

This is Jeopardy. One of them has won two hundred thousand already, the champion, the

returning, with a beard and glasses, darkrimmed here. I am Alex Trebec.

286.

Words with trans in them. Outside, the light is off, not dark yet but not light either.

Roberta types and reads the book by Zadie smith, essays and now she is reading her account of

her talk with Jay-Z, in a diner on Mulberry Street. Ah, SoHo, SoHo. This is what she does, this

Zadie woman, lives in nyc, teaches at Columbia, interviews rappers in SoHo. Seems, New York

is a village, a small place, the only dfference with our villages is that the names are famous, but

who really cares here. Now the woman on Jeopardy is talking about funny stuff here. Now a man

in red or orange, at the border of red and orange. Seth Wilson is our champion, quiz you.

Napoleon for six hundred. Bayonette.

287.

Seven forty. In the evening. Alex Trebec asks questions. This is what we do, we write

and listen in to Jeopardy. Bliss here. She should go for a walk, she will wait until the next day,

she now just has to write her magnum opus here. Roberta, Roberta here. St. Paddy’s Day.

Doesn’t concern me here, does not have any bearing on this day of today here. At the typewriter,

at the typewriter here. An ad for yoghurt, how about driving out and picking up one in the fridge

in the market. Well, that would be weird, just gotta stay put in here and write and read and watch

what is on the telly and wait for the nite to set in here. A day in the gym and on the telly and stuff

91
like this here. Nothing special, these are the days of a writer. The sameness, the sameness. That

is how books, novels are penned here. Books that nobody will read though, but we can wish and

hope for the best here.

23973 here. All of these words here, all of these words here. So near to 24000 but not

quite there yet. Six more words here. Two. 23999. 24000.

288.

177 pounds. Wait. 187 pounds, but still. The seven is what counts. Going down three

pounds. Roberta has not been at this weight since, well, what seems like eternity. So now it is all

about going down. No booze, no sugar. Well, sugar is fine but very portion controlled. Not the

whole raspberry donut with the powder sugar, half of it, a quarter of it. She was in the airport and

did exactly that at timmys in the basement of that place. The basement part of the airport, where

people come from overseas, mainly from the states. At least that is where she expects travelers

fom the states. Where she herself comes from the states. Seems, she has not been outside of this

continent for the last ten years. Well, that is not quite true, but Europe she has not been in, South

America is technically part of this continent, so yeah, she just hung out around the American

continent, south or north that is. Roberta and the different tings in her life. A literary agent

rejected her stuff, on a Sunday morning though, which is kind of a weird time to reject stuff. You

send rejections during business hours now, don’t yer? Agenting books should be like that, not at

all times of the day here. once she sent stuff out during a holiday ana non-workday and the agent

was pissed. Seems, some think that they should not be disturbed and others could care less.

Seems, that some see what they do as a profession of many and others see it as something they

can do whenever they feel like. This just says stuff about how agents look at what they do. It

92
does not say anything about her words here. Whether they are good enough or way too sucky

here.

24303 words here. 11:23. Before noon on a Sunday. March 20, 2018. Apparently, that is

the date.

289.

Correction, the date is March eighteen. A day so very grey here. It was nicer before and

now it is drizzly, all of rain. Rain on the windshield. The sky is a-crying. Rainy city. Something

like that here. There are places sunnier than this here. On the telly, talks about politics. Trump

sucks according to this channel. If you change the channel it will be all lauding. Life in Trump’s

times are like that, the tv channels are taking sides based on their rating profile. Who are our

consumers, we will cater to them. Definitely no objective reporting whatsoever here.

290.

24422 words here. The story of Roberta. What do we really know about Roberta? That

she is a writer who is struggling. A struggling artist. Selling one’s words is tough. Who will read

this? Who will publish it and market it? Is it good enough is it bad enough. The publication is so

random. To find an agent. At least in the old times the publisher and the agent were the same. No

middle man. Well, that is not true, Maxwell Perkins ws an agent. No wait, he was an editor and

he worked for Scribner. So, no middle man. When did this agenting even start? When the market

was flooded with would-be-authors? When there were more woman writers? When they

suddenly came out of the woodworks. Writing is ninety percent male. That holds not true

anymore. But there are just certain kind of writers that are female. People who write femaly

stuff. Stuff that goes with pastry and tea with a slice of lemon. Not the hardcore stuff, the manly

93
stuff. Something like that. There is female writing and male writing. Muscular writing, dainty

writing. It is not good and nobody will win if it stays like this. Roberta ponders, the main thing is

to keep on writing. If she could stomach it, she would get an MFA in Creative Writing. But she

is not that kind of person, she is not even sure that one could teach writing. One cannot, you just

have to write and submit and eventually somebody somewhere will take her writing on here.

Something like that, ah, something of that kind here.

291.

24695.

292.

Eleven forty-nine. Eleven fifty.

293.

Eleven fifty-five.

294.

24705. Words.

295.

Eleven fifty-six.

296.

Three minutes to noon. This is what Roberta writes about. Not enough for a plot. A

woman who types and counts her words here. The process of writing morphs into being the plot.

94
This was not possible before Microsoft Word. Before the li’l wordcount icon. Longhand does not

give you the exact number of words here.

297.

Of all the professions on this planet, who would vie for writing novels? Stories that are

not packing enough. In the times of tv and movies, who really has time to read a book? The

movie killed the book. Something like that, something of that kind.

298.

12:00 PM. Noon. on a Sunday. CNN and Robert Muller.

299.

Constitutionl crisis. 24827. Tweets. Showing the tweets on the monitor. A man and a

woman are talking to each other about something political. One is a reporter who asks the other

person. So one is the expert on something. The other one just asks questions.

300.

Babyspinch, that will be lunch. Though it might be too much for the system, one might

get a tummy ache if one is not used to that kind of influx of veggies onto the digestive system.

Anyhoo, she is cooking spinach, 182 grams here. Or 152 grams. Maybe eating it raw would have

been better, with tofu here. Writing should not be about the food that you are cooking for lunch

and the staus of if you are even cooking anything. There has to be a plot, some kind of plot.

People talking to each other, people interacting, smushing against each other. Having different

ideas about the world. Coming up against each other. There should be a crisis and the

overcoming of a crisis. People boxing and one person winning. War and peace after that and then

95
war again. This is what literature should be about. Or not. You cannot just describe stasis, you

have to describe movement, motion, resolution. Thesis antithesis synthesis. On the telly, they are

talking about the Russian election and Vladimir Putin here.

301.

25046 words here. Half of what she usually produces in eight days in November. It took

her near to three months to produce this here. So this is how novelwriting works, you can expand

the time or shorten the time. You can write twenty novels per year, or one novel in twenty years.

It does not say anything about the quality of your words here.

302.

Writing as profession. Such a weird profession here. A cottage industry, you have to be

able to sit still and type here.

303.

Twelve and twenty-three here.

304.

One and thirty-six in the afternoon on a Sunday. She had spinach for lunch. Cooked

spinach. Forty calories. Roberta ponders, there has to be more in a book than just the

documentation of what the author eats at what time of the day. A food journal, that will not cut it.

A food diary. There has to be action or some kind thereof. Real writers roll like that. They sit

thru three years of a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing until they can write like that. But

the persons who teach them are not persons who did study creative writing, they just fashioned a

96
story and published it in bookform. They are the authors of New York and London. Persons who

have secured a publishing contract, somehow. The selected few apparently here.

305.

25275.

306.

And the writings go on. Two and twenty-nine. CNN is on doing its thing. The day lingers

sadly and silently. Well, actually, it is not, it is lingering strongly, marching strongly. As much as

a Sunday has the propensity to do, as much as it has the strength to do so.

Later on in the day, she will venture out in order to see people, see what is going on

outside of her four walls here. Downtown, walking by, reworking Petula Clark here. The sea of

people, real people, not the voices on CNN with their strong opinions, the I know where the way

is, where it goes to, downtown is different, more ambivalent. Everybody walks with a purpose,

sure, but today something is amiss, because the office buildings are sleepy, sleeping. Shoppers,

and tourists and people between the workdays, those are the ones that people the city.

Ambivalent peple, not persons on a mission. I might get a handbag or look at the prices of

handbags that are just as good or just as bad as stuff from H and M. Something like that,

something of that kind here. The weather is fine, not rainy enough and not sunny enough. The

right weather for going downtown, for streaming into downtown. There is Yaletown, Gastown.

Vancouver and its different parts. Its different places. All cities are like that, certain people in

certain parts. Cities are the same everywhere, you do not need to fly in order to see that. The no-

travelstory, the stacationbook here.

97
 A writer just needs a functioning laptop and she has this amazing magnum opus if she

just finds the time and the passion to produce here. 25557, what a nice number. Our Roberta is

happy happy here.

307.

Now something technical. How will she do this, she now has 309 chapters, that will not

work. 309 chapters in 95 pages. That is way too non-traditional. There are usually three acts.

Book one and book two and book three. Thesis antithesis synthesis.

She cannot do it in 905 flimsy little chapters and if we are shooting for 300 pages this

will be easily smush up to 900 or 905, do the math. We have 300 or so chapters on page 100 ergo

900 on page 300. Writing is all about math apparently. The form ah the form here.

Maybe she should venture out, if not downtown than at least the coffee house and a

cappuccino or something. Something with foam and milk. A piece of pastry. Her usual thing

though is coffee in the morning and tea after that, a tad caffeine is enough for the day. Wake up

with caffeine, the caffeine shot and after that simmer down with herbal tea. No more whiskey,

even though she is a writer. Not every novelist lives on whiskey, that is pure humbug. Hard

liquor and hard stories, a myth I tell yer a muth here. The real writers do not do alcohol. Or do

they? Is that why her stuff here gets always rejected? The no alcohol when writing policy. You

have to be wasted to go for this, tipsy writers are the best I tell yer. Or maybe the reason why

writers drink is bcause their profession is so effimeminate. That is why they need brandy, yeah.

Real men and quiche? Now how does that play into this here?

Well, how big is the percentage of males in writers? There are differeing opinions, but I

would declare, easily, that this is basically a male profession. All the greats are men, still. Well,

98
at least the dead ones. The gals are coming, but ever so slowly. They are just catching up, but the

true greats, they are guys. If there are women, they are writing about little women. Not about war

and peace.

Ah, we should really teach literature studies. Instead of penning stuff that others should

analyze in the class room eventually here. Produce the wares ah produce the wares here. Edit

your stuff somehow and somewhere here.

In the end, she will chapter the whole novel at random, page 100-cut, page 200-cut, page

300-cut. That will do, should do here.

308.

Maybe this is the part where there should be a book two, it is kind of confusing because

apparently she started out with putting chapters into this and she might go back in and do it

differently. No chapters, just two “books”, wait, three “books”, each roughly 100 pages long.

There has to be symmetry not asymmetry. It is not a haircut you know, one haicut in the sixties,

the end of the sixties. Something that goes with an Andre Coureges dress, something by Mary

Quant.

book two

309.

3:11. Three and eleven in the afternoon here. A slow day. Slow sundayafternoon. CNN

still declaring stuff in the other room. Roberta typing and this stands @ 36090 words here. She

ponders, after editing all of these numbers here will be wrong, fictional. Maybe that is where the

99
fictionality of this text lies here. She read this essay MFA or NYC, interesting stuff. Yup, that is

how life rolls here, rolls these days here.

310.

She was at the mall and at the airport and in this place next to the Canada Line station, in

the coffee place next to all of those hi-rises. That is where she got the spinach here.

311.

26177 words.

312.

Three seventeen.

313.

What are debut novels? Better novels or lesser ones? Stuff written by youngens, hardly

outta hi-skool? Publishers prefer to print stuff by goodlooking people with modelfeatures

because that is how this world rolls here. What can you do? The preoccupation with beauty and

youth and health. Everybody runs after that, eternal youth, eternal beauty, eternal life. And we

will all die, all die. Life’s a bitch and then you die here. Life on this planet in a nutshell.

The writer of these words in a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon reading an essay by Zadie

Smith about two comedians, black ones and then there is her piece about Joni Mitchell. Both are

well-written, and it makes you wonder about White Teeth and The Autograph Man. Some people

are better in writing essays and Norman Mailer seems to be one of them. Zadie Smith seems to

belong to that category too. but what does Roberta know, she is no literati, she just reads stuff

online here and that is how it is here.

100
314.

Still on page 98, not even 100. Five forty-two, a walk in the nice weather. Still two hours

till Columbo. The tv-show that bookends her week. The one show that matters, when you know

who done it, and that is how it should be. The simpler the story the better. Here you know from

the onset who is the killer and who is the sleuth. The raincoat, the crumpled one, that car, the

nursery song that is whistled.

26437, each MFA program tells yer to write and write and write here. In the end, it will

all fall in place. Read, read, and write here.

Zadie Smith is of the opinion that you have to read novels to write novels. Or something

like that. After all, she teaches at Columbia and there must be something to it. Her husband is a

poet and a novelist, too. his novel was really good, though the best novel ever is George Orwell’s

Let the Aspidistra Fly. That is how it is, how it is here.

315.

Five and forty-eight here. In the afternoon here. A Sunday and the weather is still bright,

light outside here. 26550 words here. No story yet ah no story yet here.

316.

A debut novel- what does that even mean? No novel can really be a debut, every writer

has written before in order to be able to write a novel. A debut. Fifteen years of writing precede

any debut. Fifteen years of trying ah trying. The fight against the language until it looks as if it

comes easy. Just like the dance of a primaballerina here.

317.

101
 Six and twenty-four in the afternoon. Outside it is getting golden in the distance. At this

point you have to have the light on when you are using your laptop. Roberta fills in the rest of

her allotment, she surfs the net, she types and she has the Zadie Smith book lying in the corner,

together with her glasses and her wallet. She does it all, reads and writes and surfs the web, well,

she reads thru stuff about MFA programs and reads thru comical accounts of MFA syllabi.

People who make fun of certain syllabi or rewrite them or just make them up like a syllabus by

Walt Whitman. Let me teach you how to write. Satirical accounts, sometimes downright funny

and at other times lacking here.

Roberta is sitting at the kitchen table and this one is way too high and not onducive to

good writing. In the room with the telly it goes much better, the height of the small table is lower

and thus better. Here it is six and thirty-one, we have some 26805 words here. The day is the day

after St. Patrick’s.

318.

In the coffee house it was a cheese Danish and a herbal tea and the barista sasked her

which herbal peppermint tea she wnts because apparently they have two kinds. She went for the

one that said Jade on the package. On the telly, it is once more the commercial for San Diego, it

always is on these days. Come to San Diego.

319.

26881. That is how much we have here after three months. The novel that is lagging

along here.

320.

102
 So top of page 100. Well, more like bottom of page one hundred here. Two and a Half

Men on the telly, laughtracks, inevitable ones here.

321.

Greyness outside, no more orange glimmer. Trees against the sky.

322.

Seems, there are lots of advice videos on you tube about how to write. Advice to young

writers. To aspiring ones. To others by writers who are established. But how do you get

established in the first space? Somebody takes you on for no clear reason. Just like somebody

rejects your writing for no clear reason. It is basically the luck of the draw. That is how you get

the foot in the door or get it smashed into your face. Your writing should be good, well, good

enough. Nominative and accusative, something like that. Subject object. Some verb. Commas.

Full stops, that kind of thing. Usually all in the same language and if you put some French in

make suere it is something bastardized anglicized. Or you could just write it all in French.

This is not funny and does not make sense. Roberta is at that time of the day when she is out of

words. She woke up at seven and it is now seven forty-five. She is awake for twelve hours and

some, and she hardly slept the nite before. Everything is mushing together and there is this weird

smell of Clorox because somebody used it in the kitchen. She feels like barfing. Ten more

minutes and it is Columbo time. The end of the week, the beginning of the week. 27163 words.

She could eat something, she feels sick. A cheese Danish, some spinach. Not enough here, no

wonder she is nauseated. Sick in order to lose weight. The weight is not good for the body, the

process of dieting is equally bad for the body. There is no right answer. We will all die, so much

is clear. And until then, how do you live a healthy life? Who knows. The medical estavblishment

103
has no answers. Slow and steady? Nah. Bring down fifty kilos in an instance. Fifty pounds?

Roberta feels sick, ah, sick here. Seven and fifty-one here. 27263 words here. In March of 2018.

A Sunday, not the last one of the month, though. There still will be more Sundays till

aprilshowers will roll in here.

323.

I love the Drake. Yup, it is Seinfeld time again. The second one after the one with the

doubledip. Ten and thirty-three leaning into thirty-four. There was a documentary about the

Kennedys which seemed very gussied up, they left out very obvious facts, facts that are common

knowledge. Then it was Columbo, nice, as always. And now Seinfeld time. Got to love the

Drake. A little bit later it will turn into hate the Drake.

Ten and thirty-six and 2737 words here. The end of Sunday. Rummaging around amazon

dot com reviews and googling stuff, yup, stuff. Life wasted googling. And then documenting

what you just googled which is basically trivia. And some facts tossed in for good measure.

324.

27413 words here.

325.

So this is actually a bad book and that is why it is rejected. Well, could be, but nah. Say it

ain’t so here.

It is now eleven and thirty-four here. Rules of Engagement. Eleven thirty-five here.

27455 here.

326.

104
 12:01 AM. Yay. A new day. On the telly: Mom. March nineteen it is. Year, still: 2018.

Wordcount stands @ 21457 here. Her writing ah her writing. Doesn’t go anywhere. The rejected

writer, the utterly rejected one. Should have stuck to visual art. Not changed positions. It doesn’t

work. But it is fun, the typing. Easy. Under the fingernails everything stays clean and neat.

Misery of unsuccessfulness. Maybe failure becomes her. Melancholia. The romance of failure.

Nah, what am I? Weird, nah, not that weird. But it is part of the beast, what can you do. Just keep

on writing, finally, somebody will take yer on. Walter Saroyan or whatever his name was here.

7000 submissions, so the legend goes here. Try try try again.

327.

William Saroyan it is here.

328.

12:20 AM.

329.

The place on the weightmeasuring device. What a glorious number. 187, which seems

more like 177. 187, that is ten pounds less than New Orleans. Just three months ago. And it feels

great. This lind of weight, the lesser weight. It feels as if she lost much less than three pounds, so

much more. Breathing better, feeling elated, sleeping better, everything better. As if she lost one

hundred. And it is a mere three pounds. Because we hovered on 180 for what seems an eternity.

Ever since January. The other seven came off before, it was more 184 or 185 that went up and

then came rolling back here. Weight is always in flux. Apparently here. the differing increments

of weight and the way that her body feels. Not exactly what Roberta should write about in a

book. More a journal. A logbook of the position of the weightdistribution in the body. Well, not

105
the distribution but the number, the total. Distribution is different. The novel of the BMI. The

weight of the nation, the exact weight of each individual in the nation. Any nation. The world

population here. yup, that could be the subject matter of this her amazing novel, the magnum

opus concerning weight and weight fluctuation. The quest for the consistent weight here.

Anyhoo, we have 27811 words here, it is 8:41 AM, March 19, 2018. Writing writing writing

here. A little later Roberta will read more of the Zadie Smith book here.

330.

In the morn, it was coffee in the coffee house. The woman behind the counter, smilingly

asking questions, she always ducks, contorts her body. She resembles the other barista and she

too mentions that she looks at Roberta and thinks it is another lady. Seems that we all look alike

here in the coffee shop, customers and baristas alike. There is this young customer, he too looks

like another customer. Long hair in a manbun though, he is much happier than the other one who

hates everybody. The coffee house has its customers, they are always the same, they have their

coffee here in this place each and every morn. The same with the mall, the same with the ym. All

of those little subsets of community, people you do not know, strangers that are in the same

places at the same time. This is how cities work the world over, apparently. People like

buildings, moving around. Motioning around in between concrete and flowers here.

Romantic waxing about the world, ah, this better be good thai better be good here.

331.

28021 words here.

332.

106
 Write your novel. Push in all of those li’l odds and ends. Make sure you are at the laptop

each and every day. Type away. This is how the advice usually goes. Basically, just do it. A nike

commercial for writers. The physicality of being here. Writers studio. Quantity begets quality.

Okeedok, we are here and typing away but it is basically like treading water. Sorry. Maybe

travelling would help. Seeing different places. Even walking or moving around the city you live

in here. Different burbs. They all look alike but who cares here. Each street has different houses.

Different cars that are parked there. So, yeah.

On the telly, there was Two Broke Gals and then Mike and Molly. Episodes she has seen

before. But what the heck here.

333.

Now King of Queens.

334.

Four forty-seven in the afternoon. Writing parts of the novel that she is working on here.

Roberta writes moreso in the way that she leaves the typewriter merely to get to again and sketch

parts of her day into it, again and again here. This is how it should be done, the constant working

on, like hammering away at a sculpture but the problem is that this is not seething that has a

blueprint, it is more a look at the process of fashioning this itself. Weird, ah, strange here.

She could go down to the coffee house and have a latte and look at the people who are coming

back from their office works in downtown, in offices in hi-rises. Women who have coffee after a

regular day at home. Suburbia and downtown, all meeting up with coffee and latte. Construction

workers, hardhat people. Plumbers, doctors, nurses. The woman from the gas station. All of ‘em

getting coffee and having something before the night sets in here.

107
335.

Maybe she shoud just sit put and venture out the next day here. On the telly a show with

laughtracks, no Lennard, and the Wolowitz person says something to Bernadette here.

336.

Watching parts of the clock, the art installation. On YouTube. Nice.

337.

Five and eleven.

338.

28731 words.

339.

Sitting in here and reading and writing whereas one should venture out and walk around

in the fresh air. Roberta is a tad too lazy to do this and it might not be good for her writing. The

reading of the book by the writer of NW and White Teeth, it is basically an amalgamation of

texts and the ones that she is reading now are exhibition essays, Zadie’s writing about visual art

installations. Nothing special and kind of boring, something that seems to be outside of her

capacity, a stranger looking onto a world that she does not really know how to describe. She does

not use the real perfect language, she herself says that she is a novelist first and foremost here.

340.

Roberta has to go out but she’d rather still type because there is this want, this wish to

fashion as many words as possible. After all, this is merely the first novel of the year, and there

108
are still so many others which should be penned. The task is immense, and it is all about finding

and fashioning characters out of nothing, the stuff that Roberta is so at ease when drawing with

pen. But typing in a figure into the keyboard monitor contraption, that seems to be more

haunting, much more difficult, in short, daunting.

On the telly, there is stuff about this man named Muller and the Russia investigation and

Trump and nobody really knows what the heck is going on here.

Outside the night is near, the sense of the night, the greyness of the day. That time of the

day, even though this was a perfectly sunny day. The last day of winter all with blossoms and

brightness. In Boston it is more about Nor’Easter at least that is what is said on the news out of

Boston here. Spring not yet, not quite over there. The eastcoast ah the westcoast here.

Later on, she could go out to the coffee house but maybe she will wait till tomorrow,

when spring has sprung here. The person named Roberta, the shunned novelist, the one that

amasses her rejection slips here. Nowadays they are all virtual, somebody somewhere in nyc

writes her a note, a formletter or a personalized no thank you. At one point somebody will break

and publish her words, eventually ah eventually here.

341.

There are MFA programs for aspiring writers. Lots of them. Tons of ‘em. But she will

not go into one of them. Because what will happen after? She will be exactly at the same place

that she is at now. Having to write and to submit. She can do that now, it is her routine anyways.

The coffee house, the gym, the typewriter. Three places, three spaces that she has to inhibit. Her

kind of office space. The loneliness of the writer in front of the laptop. It is what it it is. There

can be drinking spurts, wine whiskey, but in the end it is writing again, typing again. Editing,

109
commas apostrophies and nothing more. The realities of her work, a job that has to be done.

Words that have to be delivered to the monitor here and that may or may not exist out there in

the world here. But they have to be produced. Just like an architect produces plans for buildings

that may or may not be standing, existing in the real world. A man with a plan.

342.

Roberta is typing and typing here. Seven thirty-four on the eve before the equinox here.

On the telly, a man with glasses talking and answering to something that Don Lemon asks him

here. The man is weird and not the usual person that comes on CNN. No tie and no suit. He does

no have no hair and is very young. He is speaking from London in the UK and is very animated.

He is wearing dark brimmed glasses here. And a t-shirt and some kind of army jacket with an

open collar here.

343.

29046 words here. The book that has now near to 30 000 words.

344.

Cambridge analytical guy. A whistleblower maybe.

345.

Seven forty and 30 000 words of a novel that will eventually constitute the magnum opus

of her writerly, her literary career. The one that goes with green tea, herbal tea and chamomile

tea here. And dainty chinawear.

346.

110
 187 pounds. That is what she weighed in the morning. Hopefully all her sitting inside and

typing will not make it to be more the next day, she has to stay at this weight and go down and

feel better than here.

347.

Seven forty-six. Another man without hair on the telly. These are all young guys who

seem to like to cut up all their hair. When they put the razor to their beard they just go on their

scalps too. Why live with the little hair that is left to them here.

348.

This is CNN. One could watch Seinfeld instead because who really cares about politics

here. Roberta and her book, her amazing novel. Mid March and more like end March. Three

months and thirty thousand words. One hundred thousand is the goal. Ten thousand per month. A

pretty slow writing speed. Not the feverish pace when it is November, national novel writing

month. A lot of reading, mainly of novels, though, now it is all nonfiction, and after this book

Feel Free by Zadie Smith it will be the book called Rain that Roberta bought in Santa Monica a

year ago and still has not tackled yet, not started yet. And then, it is on to the reading of Art

School, a book that she might have bought some eight or nine years ago and still has not started.

She has this book with articles from The Onion, that too should be read. A Naomi Klein book. A

book by Marshall Mcluhan. Lots of nonfiction books. A marx engels reader. A book about soils,

though that is definitely not hers. A children’s book, the one about the crack in the sidewalk.

Books ah books ah books here.

A lady in red who seems to be on the side of Trump.

349.

111
 Don Lemon and the woman in red, more like red-orange. A sleeveless dress and a big

girly smile.

350.

29430 words here. The best novel ever. That is what is written here. Tomorrow in the

morning it will be down to the coffee house and then the gym. That is the life of a writer, any

writer here.

351.

Eight ten. The Russian conspiracy. Live CNN.

352.

Should one be outside or inside when the equinox is happening? It will be nine and

fourteen, so in roughly one hour from now here.

353.

The woman who writes. All day long, she motioned thru the city, the airport, different

places, different coffee shops, different markets. And by market, she thinks of super markets.

One woman that she went to school with worked there. So this is what happens with you when

you go to art school, you work in a grocery store, sort toothpaste and cheese. And that is if you

are lucky. Something is wrong with the way that they teach art in the art school, well, it was

pretty obvious. They are not into making artists, that is not the business they are in. Not the

Pritzker winners of tomorrow, not the Man Booker Prize winners, not the Nobel laureates in

literature. It is not their thing. There are other places that will do that, who have that written on

their flag.

112
 It is twenty-three minutes after two in the afternoon, her weight is good, still standing at

187. Here. Though it was 187 in the morning and later on, it was 187.3. The different scales

maybe or the food that is eaten later on in the day. That counts for 0.3 pounds. Which is 150

grams and the equivalent of two Mars bars. Maybe three?

The main thing is to not stay near to the kitchen too much. She will cook later on, rice

and green stuff and fish. Something to celebrate the equinox, obviously here.

Today was city day and gym day, and going places with car and train, all day long here.

Now it is sitting inside and typing up the masterpiece time, the magnum opus, ah, that one, that

one here.

Roberta and her writings. She should fly to other places, to Iceland, to Ireland. That is

where the best books are written, the best books in the English language, that is. Roberta is not

quite sure if that is true, maybe she should move to Rotterdam, then again she does not know

Dutch and Amsterdam seems to be better, more conducive to the right words here. With their

weed dens and those other dens too. Amsterdam rocks, she will move there, if only in her

dreams. It is the city that will make her write all of the right words, she has this book, that has

222 writers in it, 222 Dutch writers. It is a photo book, a small one, and all of the photographs in

it are potraits of Dutch contemporary writers. It is called scriveners or scribemners or something

like that, it is a book of portaits of scribes. The bookstores in Amsterdam are very interesting,

there are lots of them, very small ones, and each bookshop has its own theme. The books that it

concentrates on. So if you want to have a book about bikes you go to the bookstore that has all

the bikebooks. If you are interested in the middle east conflict, you go to the store that

concentrates on having those kind of books in stock. If you are interested in bees, you go to the

beebook store. And so forth.

113
 Roberta does not really have what it takes to be a writer, mainly because she does not

describe the interaction of protagonist and antagonist. She just describes what she sees and thus

there are not enough different versions of worldview in her book. She just writes about herself

and the lens thru which she sees the world. All books are autobiographical but somehow you

have to hise the writer in the writing somehow. They say that the first novel is more

autobiographical than say the tenth novel. Roberta does not know if that is true and if there even

exist data.

If she had time and money she would be participating in a master program in creative

writing, but Roberta is way too cheap for that. It is not med school after all. Writing a novel, you

can figure it out by yourself. You learn by doing, by penning at least one thousand words per

day. Suddenly it will all fall into place. The outlier theory, the idea if you put ten thousand hours

into learning how to do something it will all fall into place and you suddenly morph into an

expert here. It is a kind of iffy idea, it has lots of problems, life is not that straightforward here.

But we can try here, ah, try here.

She has 30237 words here, it is now beginning of spring in 2018. March twenty, this

year, the equinox is on March twenty in these regions here. Must be different in New Zealand

here, in Auckland.

354.

On the telly, a woman in blue and her name is July something. There are bombings in

Austin, packages that explode. Five bombings this month. Two persons are dead. They talk about

Cambridge Analytica. This is the news.

114
 Roberta has been to Austin, she loved it. It was great, Keep Austin Weird. They have the

first Whole Foods store, apparently it started in 1980 or 81 and the person who started it is as old

as Roberta here. Roberta was at the store, impressive. They had some workout thing on the roof

too. not only good and healthy food but movement too. And then there was this amazing

bookstore, this one like Powell’s in Portland or Strand in nyc, near Union Square. Big bookstores

that are not like box stores but like small bookstores, except that they are larger and bigger. They

have lectures too and booksignings. Bookstores ah bokstores here.

355.

On the telly, a British show. Coronation Street. Maybe. Given the accent. Men talking

together in the pub. Slice of life. Soaps are always complicated. You never know what is going

on. Sitcoms on the other hand, you can just spring right in here.

She cooked fish and herb-rice, well, something like that. Roberta and cooking. It is

interesting.

Later on, she will go out again, in half an hour or so. At this time, she has to stay in in

order to watch everything that is on the flame here. Everything has to be just so and then she can

leave here. Make sure that nothing burns. Keep an eye on the cooking. Baking is easier, you just

plop the food in and take it out at a certain time here.

Now it is a funny show, and we do not really know what is going on. The Rick Mercer

show. The north American wilderness. Sorry, Ontario. Dalhousie University. Banga time but

Rick calls it Bongra instead of Bangra. Weird. Here it is called Bangra, not Bongra. Eastcoast/

westcoast here.

115
 It is quite agood workout, Bungra. With an a. u. they are making a video now. Rick is

taking over. It is like somebody who does not know ballet is suddenly becoming the big cahoona.

He is running the show. He is wearing a ski hat. With a bommel. Says Nunavut on it. Will do. A

turban it ain’t. They are making a you tube video. Ok, so he is the director. Now he too is

wearing something like a turban. And a lot of other people have joined. Your middle of the road

blond Bangra dancers, and lots of ‘em are old too. Aren’t you supposed to be young and fit to cut

it?

356.

Now it is about Irish coffee. Shame Us or Seamus.

357.

A car commercial, a truck.

358.

Look at the food, so that nothing burns here.

359.

30742 here. four and ten. Still March ten, still 2018 here.

360.

Now it is about skiing. Ski lessons. The bunnyhill here.

361.

Where is it snowing still at this time of the year. It is spring, the first day. But one can

still ski apparently though you have to travel to the pists.

116
362.

This is in Ontario though it is colder than here.

363.

Now it is a funny show. Canada is smooth, so Trump. And the funnyman said well, next

to you sir, everybody is smooth. Ah, funny.

364.

Four and forty-five here. Near to evening time here. we still could go out, should go out.

The afternoon run. Well, we are not there yet, no running, no marathons as of yet. Can hardly

walk from the couch to the fridge. But, hey, at least there is no way but up, it cannot really get

worse from here. What about three hundred pounds? Nah, we have too much trouble here

lugging 187 pounds around here. If you are not young anymore, every extra pound feels so much

more difficult here.

365.

Now it is about Doug Ford. Rob Ford’s bro.

366.

Outside still sunniness, highlights on the greenery. Roberta is halfwaty through her book,

the one by Zadie Smith here. Feel Free, that is what it is called. It is not a novel, it is a non-novel,

a collection of essays. Ah, whatev. Stuff in the New York Book Review, the New Yorker, stuff

in books, you know, opinion pieces at the beginnings of books which are usually laudatory

pieces.

367.

117
 A woman has started to knit scarves for cats or as her mother calls it rock bottom. The

knitting of the scarves is a business. This is part of the comical stuff on tv and now they satirize

the Ford bro here.

368.

31013 words here. Four and fifty-four here. March twenty here.

369.

Summer here and deep winter in nyc, yup, that’s right, winter on the second day of

spring. 3000 flights grounded, and the snow is falling down all over nyc here. The fourth

nor’easter, Toby it is named.

Here it is spring, though a little less than in the morn, more on the grey side. The weight

is at 186.2 pounds, very happy here.

12:58, and 31127 words here. Metrotown and downtown and now back here at home.

The writing of the magnum opus. She was at home at ten, three hours outside is more than

enough. From seven to ten, then watching Matlock and the Diagnosis series. Now Friends which

is finishing up here. Gotta stick to the diet though she actually had all the food already, the

portion for the day, 1300 calories here. Reading and writing and then in the end it will be the

most amazing novel here.

Now Mike and Molly here.

370.

31220 words here.

One pm.

118
371.

Seven twenty-eight in the pee em. A day that is over. Reading, mostly. Watching

whatever is on the telly. Reruns of Two and a Half Men. Charlie Sheen’s facial expression. The

kid’s smirky words. Berta. The mother. And then reading through the book, Zadie Smith’s ideas

about her novels pondering if to use first person singular or the third person and whatever are the

implications. Her book reviews which are all funny because if you did not read the books you

have no clue what the f. is going on there. Shots into futility here. It is not like amazon.com

reviews where you know what is going on because you read the book. This on the other hand is

like yelp reviews of restaurants in places you never ever will be too, fictional places in your mind

because you are not there, have not seem the real thing and the café might even be closed and

you will not be able to go to it, a dead restaurant, a reality that you have not seen and will not see

here.

Anyhoo, all realities are multifold, technically speaking you just see your own reality, the

pace that you chose, the path that you are on, the turning right at the corner of the street, this is

the way, but there are eight billion other ways to exist here on this hurling planet here.

On the telly, the news outta nyc, the pix eleven news. There is snow now in Newark and

in New York City, snow all over the land, in the streets, in the nooks and crannys over there

here. There are Instagram pics and movies you can look at, on the newschannel site, nice here.

The insta world that is here.

31517 words here, on March the twenty-first in 2018. Snapshots of a novel, of the life,

this life of hers. Zadie Smith wrote about how to construct a novel, but this is just one writer’s

view here and one has to let go or one will copy exactly what she does and not in a good way.

119
Just write, that is what she does here. Nanowrimo is so much better, you do not have to go to

Cambridge, it is novelwriting for the masses here. Just write just write ah just write here. She

weighs some 186.2 pounds which is great but today she just lugged in ten minutes on the

stationary bike here.

Page 117, the writing ah the writing here. It is getting dark outside of the window, it is

actually dark, the nite ah the nite here. Seven and forty-two here, so near to eight when you have

to choose whether to watch a Seinfeld rerun or Anderson Cooper three something here.

Roberta, ah, Roberta, chronicling her days on this planet, meticulously. She is on the train

from Burnaby, from Metrotown. Well, not now at this minute, but she was on it in the morn,

with all of those people who were coming out of the burbs to go to work in the city here.

372.

31736 words here.

Now the dow jones, Wall Street, numbers on the telly here.

The vice of the writer, that is what Zadie Smith talked about. About Philip Roth and

Portnoy. At the Newark Library. Some two years or so ago here. She wrote about her own books,

but Roberta never ever read On Beauty or The Autograph Man or the other book. NW, she read

and Swing Time and we can still read the rest but there are other writers that we should explore

here. Though her next book that she will tackle has to be this Rain book that she bought in Santa

Monica here. And Art School, bought a ton of years ago here. Or maybe a novel, because

nonfiction is getting to her here. Too much, too much here. Let us read some story here. Online

even, yup, why not here.

120
373.

Eight twenty here. No, nine and twenty. Twenty-one, actually. On the telly, CNN. 31880

words here. Still reading thru Zadie’s book. Though basically being at the end. She talks about

that Ove guy, the Swedish or Norwegian writer, Knaussgaar, maybe. He now lives in SoHo or

maybe he does not. Jeffrey Toobin talking on the telly. 31936 here. The book is so near to 20000,

no, 32000, all of these numbers, the round ones morph into each other, smush into each other.

The storyless ness. The antinovel here. And the talk about that kind of state in the book by Zadie

Smith. The problem with Roberta’s book, the liability seems to be an asset in other persons’

books here. Nothing new under the sun here.

32005 words here. At nine and tenty-five here.

374.

Listening is the new reading, so an ad, a commercial for audible. Is that really so, is

listening the new reading, or just an alternative version of reading? One of many ways to

stomach a text.

375.

320051, sorry, 32051 here.

376.

The rain coming down on Ventura County. The news out of LA. Burbank, Hollywood,

San Luis Obispo. Mudslides, voluntary evacuations.

121
 In here, rain too. first thing in the morn, the coffee house. A coffee with cream. Pike

Place with a shot of cream. A piece of banana bread, though not the whole one. The gym, later

on here.

377.

32114 words @ seven and thirty-six on March three. Rain rain rain.

378.

Some reading still maybe or some writing or going out to the gym here. This is the bad

time of the day because this is rush hour, maybe one should just wait until everything calms

down, and offices and schools have their people and the leisure crowd is venturing out here.

379.

Snow in nyc, apparently, it depends on watching the news and which news you watch.

East coast or westcoast here.

380.

One eighty-six point six. 186.6. Four tenth of a pound more than the day b4. 200 grams.

Three Mars bars and then some. More than the day b4. The gym and a person who was walking

funny. Apparently, everybody walks like this in this gym whereas the one in downtown is

frequented by fashionmodels. Everything depends on the gym you frequent. Which gym. What

exactly is pilates? Stretches?

381.

Eight forty-one in the ay em here.

122
 Back from the gym, it is way to rainy to be out and about here. Inside day ah inside day

here. Could be worse, snow in nyc.

Somebody came from telus and wanted to change the box. It was a mistake on their part,

a misunderstanding. So first he came in from the rain and then he left. Usually one should not let

some person in even if he looks reliable. Ah, what can you do here. Don’t open your door to

strangers, rule numero uno.

On the telly, they talk about Mark Zuckerberg and his apologizing for the data leak.

Mozilla CEO, she says that they will not advertise with facebook for the time being or something

and mozilla firefox is basically google here.

On the radio on the way from the gym it was all about Prince Harry and his future wife

and prenups. There are usually three news stories and they are rehashed all day long here.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK, the woman on the news is talking about him.

And it is now nine and six minutes on a rainy rainy day on the west coast here, the wet

coast as it is called, as they say, that kind of thing here.

382.

Cold coffee. and a little piece of the banana bread which is way too sweat. In this weather

one just has to hang out around coffee houses and when it is this wet, you better sit all honkered

up and write about coffee houses and imagine the world of coffee houses. Fiction that becomes

reality here. This is what writing chops are made of. A house somewhere in the distance, silence,

desolution and then the words come like magic and form up the story of intrigue and love and

lust and that kind of stuff.

123
 The writer had too much cold coffee and now the tummy ache that came out of nowhere

is killing her. Note to self: No cold coffee ever, the cream and the coffee melt together into a

concoction that does yer in here. What with egg, boiled one, nothing goes with nothing here. The

mall would be nice, people, the illusion of socializing. Staying put inside, not the ideal place to

fashion up a story here.

383.

Nine and twenty-seven, 32660 words here. Typing up the magnum opus, the one book

that will stand bound on bookshelves the world over. There has to be a story, any kind of story

here. Some story ah some story here.

384.

When is a story dull? There definitely is a difference, some stories put yer to sleep here.

385.

The office with the laptop. Journalists they usually sit in offices with trench coats and

cigarettes and hats and said trenchcoats, all black and white and they talk into weird phones and

cover the news, whatever that is. Their typewriters are noisy and prewar or postwar something.

Something from the fifties here. That is what makes a story, a newsworthy one here.

386.

Muscular stories, what are they? Not the stories that tackle pilates or yoga or dainty tea

cups. Roberta is losing it, it seems to be that kind of day here.

387.

23808, confusion sets in here.

124
388.

The telly and something about a dealership, a car dealership and snowtires. Factory

required maintenance is written on the monitor in red. Apparently this is an expose about

dealerships or something going wrong with the mechanic which reminds any Seinfeld buff of the

storyline where the mechanic steals Jerry’s Saab here.

389.

32866 words here.

390.

Dumb, I’ve got taken in. Undercover journalism.

391.

So near to eleven. Still rainy or at least drab and grey. The book is finished, which is nice.

The Feel Free book, which was just a bunch of essays about diverse things and not a novel. But

still the happiness of finishing this up, the feel of accomplishment, 455 pages and sitting thru it.

So now there is the rest of the day and it is only eleven in the morn here, on a Thursday, a rainy

one. We can work on this, the magnum opus and maybe that is what it is here.

392.

She wrote, but for some reason the machine did not work. The words were good,

eloquent, philosophical and we cannot recreate them now, they are lost forever here. Something

about the quality of the writing, the hammering out of a sculpture out of a piece of stone and the

state of writing a novel being exactly like that, the analogy ah the analogy of it. Writing a text

and hammering out a sculpture out of a block of stone, there are similarities, yup, there are. And

125
then there was something about writing a book and looking at the amazon.com reviews, the good

ones and the bad ones and how they are equally worthwile because nothing is perfect and there

are always liabilities, always pros and cons. In the same piece. The good comes with the bad

here. Anyhoo, it is eleven and ten here, the day is still grey and drizzly outside of this room here.

393.

33131, a movie on the telly, everyone is wearing a Stetson. A horse farm, something

somewhere in Texas or OK-city here.

394.

The show is called Heartland and it is a Canadian show here. It had that kind of feel

anyways, faux-westernish here. Maybe something at the Calgary Stampede here. Alberta. A

place where Stetsons are worn far away from the wild wild west.

395.

And now, King of Queens and laugh tracks here.

396.

Roberta in the rain. Sounds nice, a nice sentence. Alliteration, that kind of stuff here.

397.

Looking thru MFA programs, yay.

398.

In The Daily Beast there is this series HOW I WRITE. One can read thru it but somehow

it does not help because they are different at doing what Roberta does. Collectively. For starters

126
all the persons that are interviewed are published writers and so is the person who does the

interviews. It is a club, a clube of elite-writers. The ones that are published, who can look at their

books in bound form, objects with their words therein. The books have spines, and the writer can

touch the paine and let her hand flutter along the spine of the book. This is different from what

Roberta does here who watches this episode of Friends, this rerun episode at twelve thirty in the

afternoon, well, actually it is the end of the episode here. Outside it is still dreary, though the rain

might have stopped. It might have stopped, or it might still be coming down here. Either way it

does not matter, Roberta is writing, and nobody interviews her about her writing habits which

might be good, and she can do what she likes even though it is a futile endeavor and failure is

part of the game here. Her writing is like that and there is nothing one can do here. One of the

interviewees sits in a room wwith a window to the outside with greenery which is exactly how

Roberta does it here. A room with a window to greenery, more a glassdoor, and one in the

kitchen, so one room removed to be precise. But it is like that, walls and curtains and the

greenery outside. Apparently, this writer in the UK does it like this too.

Roberta was reading this article about book tours in The Atlantic here. By this writer who

just published a book. Somehow that seems like a weird coincidence. Is somebody mining her

search history. Seems that is how it is, whatever you do online is somehow mined somewhere.

But who cares, don’t do anything online that is top secret here. Behave politely anyways here.

399.

Twelve thirty-five and Roberta is typing up her magnum opus here. Friends and Rachel

and Phoebe and this man who asks Rachel to tell Phoebe not to sing anymore because he says

that she is so bad that he wants to put his fingers into his eyes in order not to have to listen to her

singing anymore. And now it is Joey and the other guy, and they are with this baby which is

127
Ross’s son, maybe, Ben, and there are these two girls who are talking to both of them because of

the baby and then they leave the baby on the bus. You know the episode, don’t you? This is how

we write, we watch Friends and Seinfeld and Mike and Molly and 2 Broke Girls and all of that

kind of stuff and we write whatever comes to mind. The telly tells yer how to do this and what to

write about here.

400.

And now the doctor who always plays a doctor, on Seinfeld and on Friends and on King

of Queens, he is Carrie’s boss. You know the one here.

401.

Now they are on the bus. Joey and Chandler and the lady who played in Caroline in the

City, though now it is another lady here. Where is your baby? And they are running after the bus,

hey… hey.

Yes, this is how we write, we look out at the rain and we look up at the telly and that is

how writing seems to be done here. And we count all of the words here and document that. For

instance, now this is standing @ 33846 words here and it is forty-four minutes after noon here in

March of 2018. Later on, after editing, the wordcount will be different, obviously, and thus the

number of words at this particular point in the text will not hold true anymore here.

402.

33891 here.

403.

Now Phoebe is outside of coffee house, outside of Central Perk here.

128
404.

And Rachel is introducing Stephanie Schiffer the singer. And Phoebe heckles from

outside here.

405.

He is here. we are both the father. Now there are two babies in the police station and they

do not know which one is Ben. Ducks or heads. Or clowns. On the babyclothes. Neither Joey nor

Chandler knows which one is the baby, the son of Ross here.

And now a commercial for cottage cheese and a lady with a purple sweater. Which she

has on her nose, she is holding it up or something. The turtle neck, the big smushy turtleneck.

Tough to describe what you see, to translate the visual into words here.

34014 words here.

Just call me angel… the Stefanie woman is singing and playing the guitar here. Rachel is

outside with Phoebe here.

406.

Outside the garbage truck is there for seconds and leaves here.

407.

1000 words and then we can stop and be happy that we have some thirty-five thousand

words here. In March of 2018. A third of some novel, some bestselling novel, one that they will

talk about in an English lit class sometime in the future in a pretty class somewhere in the

northeast, a room on a leafy northeastern campus here. Or maybe, in a class in midtown

Manhattan, Hunter College or something. NYU.

129
408.

34129 words here. This article about book tours is pretty good, it says that booktours are

a thing of the past. No more readings nowadays here. Roberta actually did three readings already,

some eight years ago. No publishing of her books, but readings, that came about, just so here.

409.

And everybody clapped at the readings. Two were more successful than the other one.

410.

Writing as performance art.

411.

Maybe one has to have a glass of hard liquor when reading. Performative boozing. This

German writer and translator, Harry Rowohlt used to do it like that, apparently here.

412.

Bookwriting bookpublishing, quite a world, quite a world here. Literature, yup, that kind

of stuff here. Words as art, so next to poetry here.

Trying to survive in the times of film and Instagram stories here.

413.

34266. Well, what do you know. It is Mike and Moll time already here. Mike seems to

call Molly Moll or maybe not here. It sounded lke that here.

414.

130
 34297 here. One oh two here.

415.

“slightly bookish” is a good enough title for Roberta’s novel. The title seems to say it all.

One does not even need to elaborate, it goes without saying that this is a piece of literary fiction.

Slightly bookish, yup, why not? All lower case. A poetic title. Something like that, ah, something

of that kind here. On the telly, Mike and Molly and laugh tracks, enthusiastic ones here.

Outside, it is still green and dreary, both at the same time. Later on, Roberta will have to

venture out, after all being a shut-in is not that good for writing a masterpiece here. And besides,

there are all of these slices of American cheese in the fridge, some big pack from either Costco

or Superstore and this big bag of potatoes. But we have to stay slim here or become slim here,

extra thin here. She had about seven nuts, nine, maybe, almonds, two dates. A little bit of milk,

the fatty kind here. A quinoa wrap and banana loaf slice, so apparently we have some 1300

calories already here. or one thousand here. We have to make it till midnite and thus we will be

thin ah thin, thin, thin here. Writing and losing weight, that should go hand in hand. How to diet

while penning that magnum opus here. Not staying inside of the fridge, get your head out of the

fridge. The literary masterpiece has to go hand in hand with ascetic behavior. Losing weight

while writing things and reading things here. It has to work, it has to work here. And now it is

Two and a Half Men here. Vanessa does vanneyes. Van eyes. Van Nys. Alan and Charlie and the

kid here.

416.

Tea is good for writing. Authors and herbal tea. We are that kind of writers here, not the

whiskey chugging kind but the herbal tea drinking kind. In china cups with saucers here. Dainty

131
poetic writers. Herbal tea chugging kind, yup, why not why not here. The persona of the auteur.

Roberta peruses MFA sites, MFAs of Creative Writing. There is a wide variety of writers,

apparently. The hard-drinking ones and the ones that live on green leafy campuses. All kinds of

writers and all kinds of novels here. Writers of non-novels, a novel like the one that Roberta

writes here and that never ever starts up. The one that stays ambivalent and basically non-

existant. Where there is no anatagonist whatsoever and the protagonist lives in her peejays, all

shut-in, all out of words. The poet, the writer, the novelist as pathetic figure. The person who

types while the rain is coming down on the city here.

Well, at least we have some 35 000 words here, not quite yet and not quite yet here. The

day of writing and penning and typing, penning up a masterpiece here. And after that the

meteoric ascent into literary stardom here.

When you have to leave the country and live in Reykjavik in order to be far away from

the groupies here. The persona of the writer, yup, that one, ah, that one here.

417.

SOMEHOW BOOKISH, was that the name of this novel? No, slightly bookish. Kind of

weird though, it seems to be a riff of the show “blackish” and that is why it will not work. It is

too obvious, it sounds too easy, too contrived. It loses the luster of ingenuity because it sounds

just like the name of said sitcom.

418.

On the telly, the show with that woman who did not want anything to come between her

and her Calvins, the one who always talks about Lazyboy. The beautiful one, whatever her name

132
is here. The one who was on Sally Jessie Raphael and who had post something depression and

who had a run-in with Tom Cruise. What’s her name, what is her name here?

419.

Two and thirteen here. Not many words until she will have all the words that are enough

for today here.

420.

A commercial for eau de parfum, Chanel. Somewhere walking in Paris while being

young and look somehow like Winona Ryder and have short hair and kohl around the eyes here.

In the back apartments of Paris or something here. 35010 here, btw. By the way here.

421.

So near to four in the afternoon here. Reading up on, well, stuff. Literary stuff, lit

magazines, online ones. Some have something to do with MFA pograms, well, they all have

somehow something to do with lit programs. The one at Duke. There is lots of stuff online, stuff

about books and about the lit world. Reviews. On both sides of the pond. Actually, in Tazmania,

too, everything down under. People the world over write. Some are very pissed off with what

they do, and one person said something, and I paraphrase, p… off, my audience of zero. The idea

that what you write will not be read, ever and there is nothing that you can do. There are literary

magazines online, there are different novels which are, well, experimental, somehow existing at

the borderline of writing and image and photo. Everybody does something, concrete poetry is not

dead, there are newer versions of that, novels, non-novels, all the stuff that somehow exists on

the fringes.

133
422.

35185 words here. On the telly, it is the usual, Two Broke Gals and laugh tracks here.

And we are still writing and typing here. Putting-in time at the typewriter aka the laptop here. 2

Broke Gals, it is actually the second time in the day that we are watching this. While perusing the

work of PhD students in literature the world over, what they do with the language. Editorials,

essays, that kind of stuff. Doing research about how and what people write here. Online, it is

basically an open university. You might not get a degree but who really cares. Roberta does not

care here. She reads up about stuff and she writes stuff. That should be suffisant here. Who needs

fame and fortune, obscurity is the way to go here. The writer in her room and the words that

come to her. There is no wine needed and no pomegranate juice and no OJ, if push comes to

shove, nobody cares how you do your sustenance here. At this point it is Sheldon and Lennard

and Howard and Raj and Penny and Amy and Bernadette, yup, it is four in the afternoon already

here. 152382, sorry, 15382 words here.

423.

Four oh two. Writing is not good for one’s back. The hunched-overness is not exactly

elegant. Jennifer Lawrence does not do the hunched-overness here. The problem with sitting at

the computer is that one automatically hunches over and that is not what one should do here. If

she did this professionaly in the typing pool as it used to be called, she would sit straight and

erect. Nowadays, there are no more typing pools or are there? Everything is changing, constantly

here.

424.

134
 Nowadays, writers are freelancers which is not really that good, it makes for the wrong

kind of working habits and exultary working hours. Roberta is not quite sure if there is a word

that is exultary, does EXULTARY even exist, but it sounds good, even if it is a mere neologism

kind of word here. The pseudo-scholarly terms that we use here. Roberta could do vodka or

whiskey but, nah, water, sheer and pure H2O has to do here. Maybe tea in the evening, water

boiled in the coffee maker and one bag of tea, from Costco. That is how we troll here. In the

morning it is the coffee house next to the gas station and then it is the Y and then it is back here

in her cottage industry of penning amazing novels, the best novels of the century. Many many

many of ‘em here.

425.

Two thousand and eighteen, March. Too rainy here on the westcast and too snowed in on

the east coast here.

426.

Raj on tv. Four ten in the afternoon here. Later on she should pop a potato into the

microwave and that should be more than enough. It is important to stick to the weightloss, at this

point we are standing at 186.6 and it definately should go down to 127 pounds. Shoot for the

stars here, shoot for the stars here. Less weight means more wrinkles but apparently it is good for

the vascular system, the blood can flow more easily if there is less fat brimming against the

cellular walls of the veins and arteries here. Nobody really knows how the body works here and

so much stuff is definitely uncurable. We will all die here, we will all die here. We might as well

just write and read, mostly writing ah writing here. The masterpiece, the magnum opus, one

135
magnum opus of many. Roberta is happy about her writings, her musings. No booktour and that

is fine, because who needs that kind of aggrivation here.

427.

Besides, why would anyone fetishize the autograph of a writer anyways? Words are there

to be read, to be consumed. In book form or in podcasts or online, whatev. Ah whatev here. it is

all fluent, all fluent here.

428.

35851 words here, four and seventeen here. March of 2018. Thursday here. The rain has

stopped ah stopped here. The sun though is still behind the nuages here.

429.

Literature is not just happening at the bigname schools, it happens at community

colleges, at smaller places. Good Will Hunting, that is where that idea comes from. But

apparently that is what it is like this one prof who started a certain kind of novel, the ambient

novel, he teaches at a school in New Jersey and he is influential or something here. Where does

literature really happen? Does a book need to have a prize, an award and what does it really say

about the work? Bigname lit. Fame fortune. Minor writings are just as good or as bad as any.

Roberta ponders, she always does while watching what is on on the telly here. While listening in

to the songs of the laughtracks here. While walking thru the mall with all of the other

mallwalkers here. Fame and fortune, ah, nah and nah and nah and shmeh.

430.

Hi-bro, lo-bro. Hi-bro versus lo-bro. Juxtaposition as aesthetic element.

136
431.

36061 words here.

4:24 in the afternoon here. I love you too, somebody says on the telly here.

432.

Back to where you left off 29 minutes ago.

Back to bookwriting after you looked at everything that is going on on instagram and

Instagram stories. Instagram, office of baby is just really good, you remember them, they are the

ones that are behind the ads that were everywhere about two years ago on the nyc subway and on

the buses or maybe not, but they were definitely in the tunnels under nyc all over, all over. And

now they have this new zulily app ad-campaign which is zany too though nothing will ever

match those meticulously drawn commercials some two or three years ago. The ones that depict

life in nyc. Where a washer and dryer mean that you have arrived, that you made it. The city

where owning a washer and dryer… you remember those.

433.

36199 words here and it is one minute to five here.

434.

Five zero zero here.

435.

Her m.o. is usually very different, she writes in short spurts in public places. Library,

coffee house. Writing at home in your pee jays is not how she usually does stuff because you just

137
tend to procrastinate, check your email and stuff instead of writing the magnum opus. Too many

distractions when you are an armchair writer, you tend to become an armchair traveler and

hardly make it to getting back to your writing, you get lost somewhere online here. And you

have to stay put so in order to bring in the minimum of words here. Yup, that is how life rolls for

our Roberta the novelist here, the fictionist here. The writer, auteur, whatev, ah whatev. Here. In

Boston it is eight now according to the news outta Boston here. On the telly, on the telly.

436.

36536 words here at five seventeen in the afternoon on March the third, maybe ah maybe

here.

437.

Thirty-one minutes ago, she left the page and now she is back here. Some online surfing

and on the telly, the news outta Boston here. Page 135, this is times new roman and

doublespaced, point twelve, that is the size of the font here.

438.

Literary journals. Thre are lots of them. She could peruse those and peruse other stuff.

Too much perusing here.

But with writing, Roberta knows that it is Just Do It. Nike.

439.

How come there are 444 little vignettes here? This is not how novels are chaptered. Will

it fly? Well, maybe it will, it is the only way that she knows how to do this here.

440.

138
 The description of what a writer does all day long. Yup, this is the story of Roberta’s

novel here. The gist of the narrative here. Her going to the coffee house. The sojourn into the

gym. The weightchange, up or down, the boredom. The websurfing. The thinking about the

validity of MFA programs. Workshops. The kind of things. The microwaving of potatoes after a

long day at the laptop, that kind of thing here. Law and Order on the telly, the greenery outside,

the pickup of her garbage by the garbage truck. Life in literary land is bland ah bland here and so

very solitary. You are just getting nuts but there is no way around it. This is how books are

written, yay here.

441.

Products have to be manufactured, stories have to be written. Even if it are stupid stories

like the ones that she pens here. Her life is so work-a-day and it shows. No adventure but the

typing ah the typing here. The repetitiveness all day, all day here. The room of one’s own- ah

boring boring here.

442.

Dinner was a potato for Roberta. One big Idaho one. Russel or russert. One with a brown

skin. A big potato microwaved for ten minutes. And then salt and milk. The milk seeps in and

gets eaten up by the potatoflesh. It is too much, the potatoes are way too big. Smaller ones are

better. Not a big sack of potatoes that you have to eat over three months here. On the telly, it was

the end of Law and Order. A man and a woman. The woman burnt fifteen million dollars and

they were in ashes. And there were three victims, dead. The story does not make any sense when

you just watch the end here. Now it is Pix News here. Roberta has 36700 words here. Seven oh

eight here. The writing of a novel. We need more people here not just Roberta. There has to be

139
an antagonist not just the protagonist. That is how novels roll, novels roll the world over. How

are novels constructed? The history of the novel. They teach that at university. College-level lit

studies.

443.

How do you write when you come from the visual arts? When you just know how to

doodle? To give form. To make short animations? To take pics with your phone? How do you

construct a story, the right story here? A story that is 300 pages long, not just a short thirty

second story.

444.

36909 words here.

Thirty second ads, they are a whole story in thirty seconds. Thesis antithesis synthesis.

The pacing of the narrative, the right action at the right moment. The flow of the story here.

445.

The formality of a novel? The form.

446.

We will get there, eventually. There are online workshops, Gotham and otherwise. Fork

over five hundred bucks and you are there, ah, there. Or just keep on writing ah writing here.

Reading things and writing things here.

447.

Nine more words and we will have after three more words, 37001 here, yay ah yay here.

140
448.

Eight twenty-seven. In the eve. Once more at the keyboard here. Struggling against the

plotlessness. The futility of the undertaking here. The endeavor of being a writer. Something that

is not in her stars. Something that does not come naturally. The unnatural storyteller here.

449.

37009 words here. Something must be wrong with the wordcount. It computes wrong.

37068. Yep, that is more like it here.

450.

Another Seinfeld episode. The woman who plays in Will and Grace. Gotta tell you, Beth,

you could have done much better than him. A physician married to a salesman. So George

Costanza. And then they will separate here.

451.

The rain seized but we cannot do something now. It is night, dark outside here. Just time

to pen the masterpiece here.

452.

Kim, that is the name of the doctor, no, Kim is the person who tells Elaine that Beth has

separated from her husband and Beth is the name of the physician, the one whose actress was

Grace in Will and Grace. Yup, I know, it is difficult, complicated here.

453.

141
 37188 here. Elaine and Jerry, both on the phone here. 37198 and eight and thirty-eight

here.

454.

Am I happy Beth left me? Of course not.

455.

Eight forty.

456.

Literary pursuits. Can one follow those while sitting in front of the telly here?

457.

37233 words here. It goes slowly, the accumulation of all of these words here. It is like

knitting, knitting a yarn here.

458.

Apparently, the grammar and spelling corrector will not work anymore so the interface of

the word program tells her. What can we do? She wrote some 5000 words or so, she did not do

much reading but, hey, writing sure got done here. Yay ah yay here.

459.

In the end, Roberta will do all of the correcting in one big whoosh here.

460.

142
 Seven and forty-four in the morning. 37365 words. March 24, 2018. So these are the

numbers. Wait, there is still another one: 186.6. In pounds. So back to where we stood two days

ago, though a tad more, maybe 0.2 pounds. Which is 50 grams, or 46. A Mars bar, yup, a Mars

bar here. Not many peope in the Y in the morn. The Y opens at seven anyways on Saturdays,

because, yup, it is a Saturday. The Y opens one and half hour later on weekends. Coffee in the

mall, in the corner. Banana bread, a slice.

Driving by three early morning runners. One in red, and two in grey. The red one is the

woman, the grey ones, indescript. Three marathon athletes, three weekend warriors. Later on,

there will be many of those, the weekend trainers, the one who run so to be part of the marathon

run in April. They are usually office people who train on weekends and evenings, who bop on

the asphalt of the streets, inside of the concrete jungles here. People who sit at laptops or

computers, deskware here. Not necessarily laptops, the laptop jockeys are more freelancers like

her, who are students or writers, novelists or scriptwriters or playwrights. Poets.

The early morning writing, at the laptop, the masterpiece, the magnum opus here. Not

much rain outside, every now and then. The day, grey still, the sleepy sturday morning when the

writer pens stuff here that nobody will read. Nobdy might ever want to read this here. There are

publishers, but just because something is published does not mean that it is good enough here.

Write something that total strangers will want to read or more, write in a way that you do not

waste the time of total strangers. Vonnegut and what he said or what people say that that is what

he said. She still has to read Slaughterhouse Five here.

Today she can fashion a lot of words, the story of Roberta. The fictional Roberta, in

Reykjavik. In a city that she is not part of. That she came to to be part of a writing residency. The

143
city that she came to in order to work on her book. Roberta here, the writer. The one who types

up two thousand words per day. Each and every day here.

The fictional Roberta person. And then there is the real Roberta person. Here does one

end and the other start here?

On a Saturday morn she has one page already. Later, she will go in and edit this, iron out

the mistakes here.

She will take up running because apparently that is what writers do here.

She will read this book RAIN or at least start it up here.

The writing ah the writing here. 37821 words here. Some five hundred she did this

morning. Later on, she will iron out the glitches, yuh. If she only knew how. Each small

paragraph has a number in front of it and that is not the format that books are. Each new moment

cannot be preceded by a number. The moments are to be seamless, they have to seamlessly flow

into each other in a text. Novel writing, she really has to study this. How do others do it? When

does it work and when does it not? The history of novels, the format, point of view. The nuts, the

bolts. The ways of storytelling, its conventions. Conventions change over the years. Roberta has

to look into that here.

37943 words and it is five minutes after eight on a dreary day in March here. Too dreary

for spring, but at least no snow as it is happening in nyc or Boston here. At least that was what

was on the news some two days ago here.

Two pages already, she has two pages. Read thru them as you go, do not let it all stay

until the end. The last two days, all that Roberta did was read thru all 144 pages and correct the

144
obvious mistakes. Some are ah so obvious and then there are the ones one could argue for

different ways to remedy them. That is how it is, how it is here. Makes you want to run for the

bottle even though it is in the morning, early here. But drinking is out of the question, she is not

that kind of gal anymore here. Serious writers that can do it sans liquor. We are that kind of

persona here, that kind.

461.

38117, just saying, just keeping score here. A Saturday in March of 2018 and near to

forty thousand words that were not there at the end of last year here. Stories on exotic places like

Reykjavik here.

What is the time over there, the weather? Google will tell yer, obviously. Everything you

can find out online here. The new universe of the writer here. Writing in 2018 is so different than

writing in 2008 here. At the mercy of technology, that kind of thing, that kind of stuff here.

462.

So this is what she does, writing of two pages and then getting in there, correcting stuff.

The correcting and rereading kind of interrupts the flow of the writing. But it seems what the

machine wants you to do and we have to obey these machines here. The autocorrect does not

work anymore, somehow the softeware noticed the mistakes here. Weird ah strange here.

463.

38628 words. Three-six, nope, three-eight-six-two-eight. Roberta played around with the

format of the novel. Formal elements. The page number. Written in times new roman now. The

space between bottom of page and bottom of sheet. The small numbers at the beginning of each

145
vignette. The CHAPTER ONE heading or the lack thereof. Seems, that this is more a formal

piece of writing than it is something meaningful here or without meaning for that metter. The

way we transcribe the words seems to take over which is of course not good. The meanings of

the words, that is what should be paramount. Not the signs on the monitor here. Not the final

object, the final hand-held book.

Anyways, nine thirty now, she is exhausted. Rearranging all those numbers does that to

yer here. Maybe coffee shop will help, normalize everything here. Hopefully ah hopefully here.

464.

The picture of piazza di spagna on best Italian sites. Instagram makes Roberta happy.

465.

On tv, Legally Blonde. This guy who is breaking up with the character of Reese

Witherspoon. The guy who wants to be a senator is breaking up with her. A senator has to be

with a Jackie not a Marylin. I told you, I need someone serious. So that is where the title comes

from here.

Roberta had the coffee that she left in the car. Microwave it. And the rest of the banana

bread here. Gotta write up the master piece while watching what is on the telly. Which in this

case is Legaly Blonde the movie here.

465.

So when was this film in the theaters? Google it here.

466.

146
 On instagram, a picture from the DC protests against guns. The march by the Florida

school shooting vitims. Second amendment, your time has come.

467.

30485. 10:19. March 24, 2018. 806. 186.6 lbs here. Elle Wood, welcome to Harvard.

468.

So the movie was a 2001 flick here. Eighteen years ago. Well, the shooting of the film,

that is.

469.

And the end of Legally Blonde. Now a musicvideo. And it is so near noon here.

470.

The credits of Legally Blonde.

471.

Two minutes to noon here. Still some more of the movie’s credits. All pink writing on

black. And what looks like locks. Pink locks here. All girly in going with the theme of Legally

Blonde. And now Entertainment Tonight.

472.

The Guardian has this series that is called “interview with a bookstore”- interesting and

check it out here.

473.

147
 Roberta came upon this Guardian thing because she wanted to check if it is Powell or

Powell’s. It is Powell’s City of Books. That is the name of the store, the one in Portland in

Oregon here. Writing, typing here. On the telly, Two and a Half Men here. Berta and Charlie in

the car. And laugh tracks. It is after noon on a Saturday in March. Ten minutes or so after noon.

Late march. We could venture out or just keep on penning the magnum opus here. The

masterpiece here. The novel-like thingie here. The journal, whatev. Somehow it is not going very

well. All of these laugh tracks are not that conducive here (to good writing). But gotta type, gotta

type and want 4 the best here. Hope for the best here. Roberta did not go to the coffee place, she

just had her coffee in the mall. After the gym which is not how we do this usually. First coffee,

then gym, that is how it should be here. Today everything is off, mainly because the routine was

broken in the morn here. 38862 words here. Not that many left to ring in the 39 thousand here.

Outside, reluctant greenery, not wet enough, not sunny enough. The right weather to

write up stuff here.

474.

38900. The theme song of the sitcom.

475.

Still another episode. Alan and laugh tracks. Snarky remarks by Charlie. Their talking

about booze. Malibu and boozing. Seems to go together. Nothing else to do in a house by the

beach. But boozing. Roberta has been in Malibu. And yes, definitely too much alcohol, the

grocery run to this place named Ralph’s and white and red en masse. Maybe the show was the

reason for the booze fests? TV made me do it. How do you know here? You are what you watch.

476.

148
 Seven words and then we are done here. 39001 here.

477.

One thousand words, good words. Then we will have some forty thousand here. In March

of the year. The novel with the reluctant story. Mainly descriptions of what a woman namd

Roberta thinks about while typing up a text. A text of which the parameters are, well, nonset.

The story can go anywhere and maybe that is the reason why it does not go anywhere. Circular

reasoning. Not even reasoning. Just rambling, rambling here and the wish that an outline will

somehow magically emerge. Crystallize. The writing without any goal here. There has to be a

plan, even in art or especially in art. A plan that we have to stick to here. So many duties. By

which we try to live here. Gotta adhere to the plan, the blueprint. At this point Roberta just

knows that this is supposed to be a novel. Some kind of novel here.

478.

Roberta is just one person. One character, the main character. But just the woman who

writes, that is not enough. Usually it is all about different persons interacting. Characters. Just

like characters on the stage. In a play. Maybe that is where the novel comes from? Plays.

Theater. Greece. Theater and Greece. Athens. People with fabric around their bodies. Draped.

Bed sheets. Draped bedsheets. They usually are men.

Anyhoo, just typing just typing here.

Roberta feels kind of sick. Banana bread and cheese and bread. That should do here. 1300

calories. Maybe an egg later on here.

479.

149
 Twelve fifty.

480.

39255. Impressive here.

481.

So we watched a movie, the Witherspoon movie. And now the show with Charlie Sheen.

482.

The woman who plays the mother in this show was a judge in that movie. This is what

we write about here. Definitely not enough fodder for a novel. The stuff that is on the idiot box.

Stuff outta Hollywood here. Well, there is always the news and the protest march in DC. The

anti-NRA.

483.

Twelve and fifty-five here. Laughtracks. The subject matter of this book. Life of a writer.

The writer or moreso the typist. The person who stumbles a text into the machine here. The

struggling artist, the confused artist. Typing is not an art. Capote said so to Kerouac, so the story

goes, the urbam legend, the literature legend.

Both writers are dead and whatever they called each other, that was eighty years or so

ago. Nobody cares anymore what men of letters call each other. Their competition. How they try

to outdo each other and gather more readers. In a country that doesn’t read here.

Nowadays it is all about new media. Whatever that is. The stuff you watch on your

phone.

150
484.

The stuff that you shoot with ur fone.

485.

One oh one. Maybe some less TV. Silenzio. Hear yourself think. Less noise pollution. A

room of one’s own. Who exactly was Virginia Woolf? Has she something to do with the film

with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton? How does the story exactly go here? What is the

narrative and does it even matter? Maybee Roberta should vie for literature studies, maybe that is

what is just more interesting to her. The literary gossip of the ages. The National Enquirer of the

literati here. Who’s who and who is nobody in lit land here. Who is good with words and who

sucks and who is the person to judge. The reader, Oprah, the committee in Stockholm here? Who

are the runners-up for Nobel 2018?

486.

Roberta now reads about Maxim Lieber and about Saul Bellow and Langston Hughes.

About Langsto Hughes saying stuff about when Harlem was “in vogue”, he does not talk about

“en vogue”, he calls it “in vogue”. And that is how it is, how it is here. Judging from the real

estate prices, Harlem is en vogue right now here. And Maxim Lieber apparently was both a lit

agent and spy.

For some reason, Langston Hughes was part of her (Roberta’s or Roberta’s alter ego’s)

American lit class, part of the poets in the book “Six Poets”, but the prof omitted him.

And we have two o’clock here or something like that. An afternoon in a room and typing

up the Great American Novel.

151
 Anyways, it seems this Lieber was the person that Tom Wolfe went to in order to

represent him after he left Maxwell Perkins. The stories of literature land here.

487.

Her writing is confusing, instead of being straightforward and crystal clear here. Maybe

this is because she is not quite sure what she is saying or what she wants to say here. Can’t make

up her mind apparently. Or maybe the subject matter in itself is way too complex, so many

players. So many different writers and so many different books by even one of them, in other

words, if you add it all up, there are so many books on this planet that nobdy will be able to read

thru in one life time. There is no way that you can have lexicon-like knowlegge of all of the

books that were ever written. It is onfusing, it is complex. Even if you try to categorize the

different tomes that are and that ever were published on this planet of ours here.

488.

Lit studies, huh. How does that sound instead of creative writing here?

489.

Three nine eight nine eight. One forty-two.

490.

These days she hardly ever does wine. It is all tea and for the most part the tea from

Costco. The one in the blue box. One round teabag in the coffee maker. It still is pretty strong,

there must be artificial coloring in the tea powder that is in the round bag. She does not sweeten

the tea, and she does not put milk in her tea. Sometimes she puts a lump of sugar into her mouth

and sips the tea through that lump and thus it becomes sweet.

152
 She writes about literature and tea. Roberta has a full life. Well, more like a boring life.

Maybe, they will show Legally Blonde again here. The first Legally Blonde, the original one.

491.

40 027 words here @ one and forty-nine in the afternoon on a Saturday in late March. Just

saying here.

492.

Welcome back, so the software tells yer. The machine that welcomes us back here. Now

this is normal here. No interaction with real people but interaction with some kind of machine. The

Word Microsoft interface that is happy that Roberta, yup, that Roberta, is using the interface and

types up stuff. The fictional Roberta. The alterego of the author here. Roberta played around with

the downloading thing, the one that downloads Instagram stories and makes them eternal. Not just

ten minutes, no, wait, twenty-four-hour things here. so now you can download other people’s

Instagram stories. Tom Ford’s Instagram story. It is kind of weird, it is a movie but real movies

are better. Those Instagram stories by famous fashion houses, they all suck. They are lesser movies.

The one that showed the fashion show in nyc, the one by Tom Ford, it was a total disaster, one can

watch that stuff on you tube here.

Anyways, why are there easy apps that make you downlad other people’s stories, isn’t that

private? Privacy concerns and the internet here. Everything is surveyed nowadays. Whatever you

do is somehow public these days. There is a word for it, a German one, Verfolgungswahn and it

denotes the paranoid idea by someone that one is watched and followed. But, yuh, in today’s world

you are watched all the time. You walk over the street and there are cameras everywhere. Well, in

the cities that is. On Times Square.

153
 Typing up a novel, a manuscript, that is more like using a typewriter here.

And btw, we have some 40312 words here and should now go down to the coffee house be4 it

closes up 4 the day here. A latte, something, ah, something here.

493.

On the telly, the people who protested in Boston against the NRA. Because of the Florida

school shooting. Gun control marches, yup, that is what one could call those protests. Not all of

the protesters are of the same opinions but they all are of the opinion that something has to be

done. No country on the planet has so many guns in people’s hands, in regular persons’ hands. In

other places, soldiers and police persons carry guns- but in the States it is a different case

apparently here. But it seems there are no statistics or maybe they are the United Nations, they

should know. How many persons carry guns? In Switzerland they all go to military service; do

they take their guns home? How does this all work here?

494.

One potato, one sandwich, one banana loaf. Lots of carbs, but not more than 1300 calories

worth here.

495.

Five oh eight here. 40493 words. March twenty-fourth here.

496.

Now they talk on MNSBC about gun laws and apparently, each state in the union is

different. Fifty states, fifty ways of doing things here.

497.

154
 Well, let me tell you, I am pretty sure that laws will not change down in the US. Gunlaws

will stay exactly the same as they are right now. Or not. Let us watch here.

498.

Well, they sure talk a lot about all of this here on the telly here.

499.

Five and twenty-one here.

500.

40581 words here.

501.

110 persons have won the Nobel Prize in literature. 14 of them were women. Go figure.

Ninety percent of writers apparently are men. The gals do not count. Maybe because they suck @

math just like Roberta here does.

502.

Five and fifty-nine. In the afternoon. Reading thru the exchange between one of the writers

of the New York Book Review and one of the committee members of the Nobel Prize for

Literature, actually, the chairman, the director of the committee. Interesting here.

503.

40 669 words here.

504.

155
 40674 words. The number of the words does not make a novel. Does not make a good

novel. Nobody cares about the quantity of the words. It is all about the quality, apparently here.

505.

Gun regulation, the theme de jour.

506.

We have more than 3000 words here. 3000 words in one day. Well, about 3000 words.

Nothing special did we say here. Just rambling, ah, a-rambling here. Decorative words. Something

like that, something of that kind here. It seems to go much better if you do the writing and then go

in much later to iron out the glitches. It is as if you court the words and thus they fall into place

after a while without even trying here.

507.

Roberta has long hair. In curls. She looks just like that person who is on the telly. The

woman with glasses at Toys-r-us. A shopper in Calgary who is one of the many who buy toys

before the store will close up for good here.

508.

40847 words. Six and twenty-seven here.

509.

She could print this out. Then she has her own li’l book here. Nobody will publish this but

one can always self-publish here. Why not here? Sell all of this in art bookfairs. Though,

technically art books are illustrated books. Books with pretty pictures. Not just pretty texts here.

Art books and regular books, they live in totally differing worlds here.

156
510.

Laughs on the telly. Sitcom, sitcom. You know when you have to burst into taughter, the

audience will lead you by example here.

511.

Writing a story. An intricate story oncerning our Roberta here. Roberta the wine drinker.

That is about what we have here. Curly hair. Glasses. Non-descript curly hair though. Ashen.

Librarian hair. No offense to librarians. Regular face, regular clothes, regular weight. Everything

middle-of-the road. The sometimes wine drinking is the most exotic thing that Roberta does here.

She writes books because she believes in “better safe then sorry”. And writing is as safe a

profession as one can get. The profession that is as safe as well as sitting on the couch and watching

Friends. A safe profession if I ever saw one. You cannot top that here. 41044 words here, btw.

512.

Funny, Friends is on. Speaking of the devil…

513.

A woman comes in to the coffee place. A woman in a wedding dress. Rachel. Well, it is

the second show. The one after the pilot. Nope, actually, it is an amalgum of Friends scenes here.

demarking Ross and Rachel scenes.

514.

Eight oh seven. Evening. 41104 words here. The first novel of the year. There will be other

ones because that is what we do here now. We write books. Books that do not sell. Mainly because

they all suck here.

157
515.

She could use wine right now. Drinking yourself silly after you suck @ what you do all

day here. She will not get better @ this, she will just get worse here. This will be her subject matter.

The artist in the gutter. A woman on a couch eating bonbons, that is basically the gutter for a

novelist, a writer, an artist at that. Artists have to be successful, they have to be good at what they

do. They need an audience, people that clap. The silence, the people not clapping, that is never

good here.

516.

On the telly, Mike and Molly here. Ten forty-five. 41248 words here. Well, at least Roberta

does this here.

517.

And now it is twelve and twenty-two minutes here. Twenty-two minutes after midnite.

Saturday nite. Life. Tax reform.

518.

41277 words.

519.

One-eighty-six point seven, no, one-eighty-seven point six. The fluctuating weight. 187.6.

How much was it the day before? That is the question. Roberta has to take score, meticulously.

Each day is a new day that you have to be a certain weight in order to make it. In order to walk

from point A to point B. Be obsessive, apparently, OCD is the way to go here.

158
 Sunday, March 25, 2018. Twelve and thirty-nine. Gym and coffee house and now the

typewriter. Sun shining. Time to fashion 2000 words, 2000 words on anything. At eight it is

Columbo, until then you pen the masterpiece. The magnum opus. The amazing novel, the one that

is the crown jewel of, well, of masterpieces. Literary ambitions, tough tough tough here. Have

goals even if they are unattainable. It is the way to go, the way of sanity, or insanity here. Seems,

they both are very close, carbon copies of each other here. She looked at Instagram feeds, they all

depicted people havinga siesta. Sleeping in the middle of the day here. What to make of this, what

to make of this here? Images depicting something, they take us away from the main story here.

The coffee house, maybe. It was interesting in the morn, people in nice clothes, church people et.

al. The barista waved at her, apparently, she is part of the usual crowd, the one that makes this all

going on here. Predictable people, we are anything if not predictable here.

520.

Somebody put a big pot on the stove and Roberta seems to have to stay in in order to keep

tabs on it. You cnnot leave the place with stuff burning on the stove. Or simmering here. Gotta

stay inside while the weather is ah so nice and sunny here. Merely short sojourns here, the coffee

house once more or something. The drive-thru, the conversation with the drive-thru window person

here.

521.

Sun shining, March weather here. Sun in this rainy city, what went wrong today here? The

usual here is rain storming down on the city, it is so random, one has no clue what is going on

when it is non-rainy here. No wetness on the wet coast here. It is ah so random, the weather. That

is what she should write about read, about. The predictability or the unpredictability of the weather.

159
She will pick up the book she bought in this bookstore in Santa Monica, the one where the cashier

had his self portraits in the back on the wall here. The book is called RAIN and it is very highly

recommended on amazon dot com, everybody loved it. The negative reviews were one percent, so

it must be great here, the book about the weather here. It has an umbrella, an opened umbrella on

the book jacket, yup, an image of an umbrella. Black on white or more like grey on white here.

522.

187.6 here on March 25, 2018. What to make of this here?

The book about rain. Roberta puts it on the table so that she will pick it up and read it. It is

lying around on the bookshelf for more than a year. Which is just like so many other books here,

she tends to amass them never to pick them up to read. They can just stay inside of the bookstore,

why do we have to gather and hunt them down, why do they have to be possessed here? What is

the pathology behind that, the consumerism that is injected into us here collectively? She ponders,

anti-consumerism seems to go with everything here, is always en vogue, though not as much as it

used to be, apparently. Blame the purchasing power on everything going wrong on this planet, and

more so the pobsession with hoarding stuff here.

Sun outside and writer inside at the typewriter. What is wrong with this picture here?

Everything. The life of a writer. Sans wine, with wine here. What does Roberta want to say here?

Let’s just stick to the numbers, 41960 words here, in March, the twenty-fifth of the month here,

weather nice and time about one oh seven here.

523.

The story of Roberta here. Ok, that seems to be the tentative title here.

160
The casting of the right words while the man is talking on the telly about guns here because of the

anti-gun protests here.

All of the protests, all of the protests here.

524.

Yup, Roberta checked it, she gained one whole pound here on Saturday, the whole

yesterday to put that much into your body so that the little pointer on the scale moves to the right

here. Or the left, no, more the right here. One whole pound, it is the fat-contents in the cheese nd

the carbs in the bread and the potatoes here. How to lose weight, what are you supposed to live

on? Air/ air and water here? The mystery of weight loss and weight maintainance here. And it does

not help that all the exertion, all the physical exertion that she can muster here, is basically the

sitting still and pushing down of little squares here, typing at the laptop, which is basically a very

stagnant, a so very stationary system of behavior here. That is why there are stationary bikes in the

weight room in the Y, containers full of chlorined water to splash in here. Sports, ah, sports here.

525.

A man who answers the questioner, he has a very calming voice whereas the reporter has

a very aggressive voice here. Talking heads, ah, talking heads here. The term of talking heads is a

term from a bygone era, not necessarily the term one would use in 2018 here.

526.

Two thirty-one. Sunday after lunchtime here.

Pix-eleven news. Facebook and apologies for breach of confidence here. And a lot of info

about the city of eight million. Stuff that happens. The woman on the news, in red. The weather.

161
Forty-five and Central Park readings and New Jersey. It is three hours later than it is here on the

wet coast which is actually sunny today as stated before. Roberta has not much to say here, her

book lags and that is how it is here how it is here. The bookishness that is basically stagnating

here.

527.

Now the woman in blue talking about Lebron Jones here. Sports here.

528.

Well, what do you know, the bookmark in the RAIN book says that this was purchased in

a book store in Venice, not in Santa Monica. They apparently are next to each other, Santa Monica

and Venice Beach, and Roberta actually thought that the name of the city is Venice Beach or that

there are two places, Venice Beach and Venice down there in California. We have google map for

that and then there are the pics on google that have this little “i” sign where you can look it up on

the map. Roberta took the pics she took on her i-fone and then emailed them to herself and then

stored them on her google account which is a very laborious process and then there is something

called i-cloud which is still another way of storing ur digital pics here. Samsung and google and

apple and facebook and Microsoft and amazon, all of these are different systems and they are

competing which each other or they are not here. Welcome to 2018, where everything is confusing,

confusing here. But the rain is coming down no matter what here. (We are referring to the book,

obviously).

529.

25468 words, 3:09 PM. 157, sorry, 187.6 lbs. March 25, 2018. Stats, ah, stats here.

Numbers that mean the world here. Everything can be quantified, quantified here. Three and

162
twelve, btw here. And actually, it is 42585 here, my bad, sorry here. standing next to 42600 here.

It is getting obsessive, definitely here. Snap outta it, snap out, snap out of ithere.

530.

The news is always bad. A fire and deaths.

531.

The rain book is happening. Mars, Venus. Too much info to digest in book form.

Pudgemont detained here. On Aljazeera. How to write a book while the telly is happening here?

42652, the li’l icon tells you so here.

532.

Spring means statement bags, so the caption on an Instagram feed by Harvey Nichols. How

can they possibly be wrong here? And the bags are cute, red pompons on wicker bags. Red and

beige brown. Makes yer happy here. Roberta writes her book but in between all of this it is perusing

pics online here.

533.

There is of course the elephant in the room, how come there still is no story here and will

there ever be one? Going to the coffee shop and having coffee, that is definitely not enough here.

The show about nothing, the book about nothing, the novel about nothing.

534.

Writers block, palpable here. Nothing to write about on a Sunday in March. Reading this

book about RAIN, kind of boring, nothing really happens. It is nonfiction, so nothing is supposed

to happen, maybe it will get better once one sits thru it here.

163
535.

42811 words here. maybe two hundred more and all is good here. On the telly something

about cricket, and everybody has an Australian accent here. Outside, still the greenery, the rest of

the greenery.

536.

Six eighteen in the afternoon here.

537.

Nine PM. Columbo with Faye Dunaway in it.

538.

So what is bitcoin? Cryptocurrency. The New York Post said that there are two apartments

on the Upper Eastside that are traded in bitcoin. Bitcoins? Well, one of them is on the Upper

Eastside. Anyhoo, rain is coming down on the city, we stand at nine fifty Pacific time here, and it

is March 26, 2018. 42862 words here. Coffee already and gym already. Weight, 187.2, great huh.

Once it was 187.4, once 187.2. in the Y. And now we write up the masterpiece here. The one and

the only here. The romance of writing of being a poet, not a starving one though. A starvng artist

has a better BMI, there are less fatty deposits inside of the skin of the staving artist here. A

nonpublished artist, can that muster as a starving artist? A failure in literature land here. Rejected

by the powers to be here.

43011, yay ah yay here.

539.

164
 One twenty-nine. Reading the RAIN book. Page 97. And all the notes. On the telly, Mike

and Molly.

540.

One fifty-two.

541.

Seven oh eight. The day is coming to an end for Roberta. Highlights of the day were the

gym and the weigh-in. Before that the coffee and the piece of banana bread in the mall. The

purchase of frozen mac and cheese. This was what was her day. And besides, watching TV and

reading the book RAIN, which is quite a slog though it is interesting. The idea that we can and

want to influence the weather. Or the idea that we cannot. Apparently, Bill Gates is investing in

that technology. The book is now going on to reflect how writers represent RAIN. Should be

interesting. Outside here it is raining all day, though maybe at this point it does not anymore. If it

does, it is a very soundless rain, not the really hectic kind like before in the day, it is seven and

thirteen minutes and the day is definitely coming to an end, it is still light but more near to dusk.

One can still see what is going on, the greenery, though a very late in the day greenery here. Her

writing ah her writing. She too can describe the rain. Rain as described in literature. Maybe reading

whatever better ones have said might not be that good. After all, you are not supposed to steal from

the great, you are supposed to come up with your own ways to describe the rain. The deluge, the

water that is coming down on the city here.

The book about rain is very informative, lots of bits and pieces that Roberta doid not know

before. Now she knows more about the inscript on the wall in the post office in nyc.

165
 Her writing, ah, her writings here. No alcohol these days, no hard liquor and no soft liquor

here.

542.

43340 words here. At seven twenty-seven. On March 26, 2018 here. some mere ficve

hundred words today. Not enough. You have to pen two thousand per day, any day, every day.

Roberta and her life as a writer. As a reader, well, she did that, but writing, she definitely did not

fulfill the quota. Even though she was inside in the rain. Even tough there was ample time to write

up words. To make up a storyline here. even if it is just the description of the look of the laptop.

The greenery outside. The stuff that flimmers over the mionitor of the idiot box. The plants near

the window, the barren story, the narrative that is lacking action. She watched these food shows,

where people are in a grocerystore, on a supermarket and they compete against each other. They

run around the store pishing their carts here. Interesting, this is what we can describe here.

543.

43497. She started out at 42800 or so, 42862. Ok. 700 words. So, we still have to come up

with 1300 words here. About the world. About what is new here on this day in March. Nothing is

really new when you are cooped up inside and the gym and the coffee place are the only places

that you go to. The venturing out into the world. The news we get from the telly. CNN et. al. All

the local stations, Boston, Seattle LA. PIX-Eleven News. The real local stuff, she tends to hear on

the car radio. Roberta’s life as a writer. It is drab. Pushing words together, it is such a nonphysical

job. Without remuneration. When you pen novels, you basically make stuff and then you try to

sell it and all you get are form letters that refuse to represent yer. She got one just today and she

166
did not even know that it is a formletter until the woman stated it herself. Such a drab profession

here.

544.

Melancholia. The engraving by Duerer. Melancholia.

545.

Much darker now. The day is officially over. Seven forty-five here. There still will be other

days, more fruitful ones. When her writing is amazing but today it is not one of tose. Maybe reading

a nonfiction book is what is doing her in here. Gotta read Faulkner in order to write good stuff

here.

546.

43733 words. Nine hundred words here.

547.

Every paragraph numbered, that is not how writing works here. It is way too experimental

for a very conventional profession. Publishing does what is tried and true, there are not many new

ways how to do stuff, so it seems. And besides, publishing is beleaguered these days. People don’t

read books, apparently. Yup, so the story goes. Books are dead, long live books. Ah, whatev, Commented [na3]:

whatev here.

548.

An ad for a medication. On the telly. So weird, that there are commercials for medications.

549.

167
 43825 words here at seven and fifty-six here.

550.

The news now is out of Chicago which is weird because Roberta has never been to Chicago.

But this is what is on the telly here. How about writing a story about a person living in Chicago, it

will definitely be fictional. But the problem is that a person who knows Chicago will totally

decipher the glitches, the mistakes. A fictional Chicago here. Where does fiction begin and where

does it end? Maybe Roberta should vie for writing poetry.

551.

Science fiction is not up her alley neither is mystery writing.

552.

The seven-day forecast for the weather in Chicago.

553.

43936 words here at twelve minutes after eight.

554.

Now a show about some murder that happened some 15 years ago here. This after going

down to the coffee house here. Whatever is on the telly. The music Roberta listens to while writing,

typing here.

555.

So, the coffee house. At eleven or so. Spring break outside, that is why there are hardly

people in the coffee place. Their main biz is the local high school after all. And in the yard of the

168
school there are spring break camps happening, kids much younger than high school. You do not

really know the dates if you do not have kids in school anymore.

On the way to the coffee house, near the gas station, two old people. This is what this

neighbourhood is, either the very young or the very old here. And some person who writes books

that nobody will publish but that have to be written anyways. Roberta has a bad stomach, but she

still has to adhere to her routine here. Gas is not much in the tank, but we can make it to the gym.

186 pounds. Nice here.

There are books that talk just about the coffee house. Whatever happens in a room where

people come and drink coffee? A café, a restaurant? If you work here that is your life, the everyday.

For a person who just comes in and goes out, there are different things to describe. It is temporary,

only a short time of the day. Fifteen minutes. Not enough to write about, to write about home.

Threre is a new drink, some kind of psychedelic Frappuccino with silvery sprinkles. The story

goes that it is some mysterious brew here.

556.

They do not have easter bunnies or stuff in the coffee place. Nothing seasonal, so it seems

here.

557.

44242, 11:54, March 27, 2018.

558.

Time to watch FRIENDS. Twelve oh five. The rerun, yay. Whatever happens to Joey here?

559.

169
 The scene where Carol wants to call off the wedding. And now Ross and Carol. So, we are

back on? You heard the woman. Peel, chop. I can’t believe I lost two minutes. -You know the

scene, don’t yer here?

560.

Oh, my god, now I heve seen everything. Starangers in the night, Sinatra.

561.

Writing shoud be more than just writing up what is going on in a sitcom. It should be about

writing up what is on a soap. Just kidding here.

562.

Later on, the rest of the RAIN book. And then off to the ART SCHOOL book. If you are a

writer, you keep on reading. You have to be either a producer of words or a consumer of words

here.

563.

Can go to the coffee house later on in the day. People who read and write are the same

people who hang out around coffee houses. That kind of demographics here.

564.

Ten twenty-six, sorry, twelve twenty-six. Nice weather outside of here.

565.

Roberta, the writer. The one who is cugging away.

That is what we have here of the story. Not enough. Definitely not enough here.

170
566.

Two oh one. Writing, typing here, reading. People come people go. Phone calls have to be

answered. On the telly, Huckabee’s daughter, press secretarying here. The 27th. of the month here.

Roberta reads through parts of the new Sean Penn novel. Another person who starts writing a novel

in later life. Well, more midlife.

The coffee house, maybe later in the day, a second sojourn into that place here.

567.

Wolf Blitzer on the telly. The situation room. A commercial. Telly is so boring here.

568.

Two and twenty.

569.

3:20. Two Broke Girls. The one with Martha Stuart.

570.

So we finished the RAIN book. Better to read it than just have it stnd on the bookshelf.

Like a tortoise, Roberta makes her way thru all of the books that she has bought at one time and

just put on the shelf never to touch it again here. Just hoarding books, that is not how it should be

here. The book was ok, but nothing special. Too many info, all over the place here.

571.

On the telly, a documentary about Hugo Chavez’ friend here.

572.

171
 Seven thirty-five here. 44648 words. She started the day at 43936 here. so, apparently some

four hundred words. Definitely not enough, we are vying for somw two thousand here. CNN now,

the woman who is the press secretary spokesperson woman here.

573.

Legal analysts on the telly. Turmoil on Trump legal team. Four different prsons on CNN.

And now another person and now a commercial here. this is what we write about and it is not

enough to be a novel. There has to be action, not just this. A commercial for some kind of tape that

helps you to train longer, apparently.

574.

An ad for Visit Utah here.

575.

Nine sixteen. Nine nineteen. 44756 words. Darkness outside. Night. Definitely writers

block here.

576.

Ten oh seven. Anderson Cooper. People talking politics here. Ten o nine. Time to turn in

here.

577.

Roberta’s story. It is ten and fifty-six and it is Wednesday, March 28, 2018. 44773. Words,

that is. Weight: 16, no, 186.2 pounds in the Y in downtown. The Y on forty-ninth was closed,

something with no power, the one downtown was open. The trek down. Train. People. Finally, the

weight that is exactly the same as the day before. After that, the going back to the mall, uptown.

172
A Danish, a cheese Danish, which is too much, too much for an irritable tummy here. And now it

is the writing thingie here. The book that will be or will not be here. The novel. By the novelist.

What exactly is a novelist? Somebody who is published? Roberta tells herself that she should not

worry about being published or nonpublished, she just has to produce the work. Publishing to the

world is irrelevant here. Lots of things are published. Lots of crap. The publishing element has no

bearing on the quality of the work here.

The day before, no, two days before, Pean penn was on Stephen Colbert and marketing his

book, a novel. So, it is doable here. Write on ah write on here. The reviews are mixed, some say it

is total BS, others thingk it is great. The Sean Penn novel, that is, here.

Anyways, this stands @ 45008 here. The novel with the right wordount. The days of our

lives. Documented on paper here. Inside of a machine here. Can be printed out at any time here.

Magic, that is how this works here.

In the mall, Roberta was having her cheese Danish and her peppermint tea while looking

at KFC and at something Opa and at Taco Luis. The mall at ten in the morn. Full of people, full

with people. All of the apartments next to it here. People sitting and having peanuts, peanuts in

reddish shells and natural shells, and some other stuff, popcorn maybe. The mall at ten in the morn,

a world in and of itself here. Construction workers, hardhats.

578.

451125, 11:07. Later on, it is Friends again here.

579.

Oh, and weather ok, though pretty chilly here.

173
580.

11:08.

581.

45145 here.

582.

An altercation between an uber driver and a passenger. The passenger was intoxicated and

got mad at the driver. What, not my adresss. And now the Stormy dDaniels affair. This is all out

of Boston here. It is now eleven minutes after five, all day sitting inside and reading 150 pages of

this Art School book. Interesting stuff, especially if you went to art school as Roberta here did.

She bought that book nine years ago and just got around to reading it. Not good here not good.

Gotta read it the minute you get it. Now on the telly, Zuckerberg. Facebook under attack here.

583.

You know the old saying if you lost Will Ferrell you lost America. The person on the news

is smurking.

584.

Playboy and Will Ferell #Delete Facebook.

585.

Roberta, the writer. Well, she goes to the mall, life of a mallrat is more interesting than the

life of a writer. Sitting cooped up in order to type up stuff, words that make or make not sense and

either way the work is laborious and without any distraction. Labour. It is clean labour, I give you

174
that. Physically stunting which is good and bad at the same time. Sedentary life styles are not good

for your body. Obesity, the like. Basically, obesity. Which stifle bloodflow apparently. Vascular

flow is easier when there is no fat putting strain on the skin of the pipes here.

586.

Eight hundred words already. 45392. She started out @ 44700 and something in the

morning. Nothing special has been said here. She has to iron stuff, but this is more fun. Writing

has its good sides. The sitting is easy even if it makes yer fat. She eats less though mainly because

her tummy is acting up. Not because she has will power. Nah, not the right amount of will power.

The will power of a Kate moss. Now there is a subject matter, dieting. One more dietbook. A

philosophical one. Why are some peole rail thin and others superfat? Do their brains work

differently? Roly-poly versus superskinny. There actually is a British show, superskinny versus

superfat. Something like that. They use better words to describe the persons. Politically correct

ones.

587.

A car commercial. Lease a car. A Hyundai Sonata, a blue shiny one.

588.

She used the train today. Car and train. Both.

589.

Icehockey on the telly. Zdeno Chara on the telly. The captain of the Boston Bruins. Now

you know.

590.

175
 Six here, nine over there.

591.

Roberta could write a story about a woman who is working in an office in nyc and is now

going home. Basically, the story of Friends. Well, Chandler’s story because he is the office guy.

And Rachel too, later after her Central Perk waitressing stint. Next to Gunther here.

592.

How do you come up with a plot? There are plot making workshops. Apparently. She has

to look into this here.

593.

45647. Six oh four.

594.

Seven ten. Day coming to an end here. On the telly, Two and a Half Men here.

595.

She could describe people in a writing workshop. How does that work? A group of would-

be-novelists who are workshopping plot development.

596.

Looking at images of Escalante, Utah. Two and a Half Men is over, now something with

drama. Even scary, scary music. And now an ad for an insurance company here. A trailer of a

movie. Blockers. That is the name of the flick.

176
 Roberta started to do this plot generator thing. She now has a plot and she emailed it to

herself. Will read through it. Later.

Sean Penn penned a novel. Reviews are mixed. But apparently, it definitely has a plot. So,

how bad can it be? Not worse than all of these novels that she reads these days here. Just another

novelist, it seems here. The New York Times was lukewarm. What more can you ask for here?

For a debut here?

597.

The plot generator is hilarious. There are name generators and movie script generators too.

Amazing.

598.

45832 here.

599.

Now talking heads are yelling at each other on the telly here.

600.

Trumps’ press secretary. Anderson Cooper. Keeping them honest. And now different clips

of the Huckabee lady. Apparently, Anderson has problems with her. Or not here.

601.

45874 words. Nine and seven. In the evening.

602.

177
 The coffee in the morning. Different people. A woman in hi-heels. In the end there she is,

sitting with two other women.

So, this is what we do. Fifteen minutes of people watching, strangerwatching. And then

bringing that all home to the typewriter and trying to recreate it. The drizzle on the windshield, the

gaging of the rainfall, how harsh a 27th of March this is and is it really the twenty-seventh or is it

the twenty-ninth here? The writing of a book full of useless observations, nothing grave, nothing

about Marc Zuckerberg and his company, the end of facebook, his stint in the corporate world over

before it even began. Well, this is not how it is, facebook has a billion users, not bad for some kid

out of Cambridge, Massachussetts or boston or wherever he is from here.

The novel and the scenes we describe here, the woman in the corner who looks demented,

the woman behind the counter who says how is your day so far to everybody and makes yer think,

how was my day so far here?

The inscript on Instagram by some person she follows and who was a citizen journalist at

the march on the weekend, in DC, while people were protesting the NRA here. He wrote that life

is too good to him on his story, “first I am writing on Instagram, now I am riding a Tesla, oh em

gee, oh em gee, life is too good to me”, this is the sentiment of some kid on the other side of the

world, very positive, when you are eighteen, the world is ur oyster, apparently, apparently here.

She did not go to the gym, Roberta, that is, she does not have enough gas in the tank, today

it is all about staying put in here, writing reading ironing, well, writing moreso than ironing, one

is a chore and one is fun here, one is self-expression and one is playing around with hot stuff that

might burn the fabric here, just saying, just saying here. Her novel does not have chracters, a plot,

it is all about the one coffee house next to the gas station, the fifteen or so minutes, she is in there

178
every morn, the Subway sign, the Subway flag that is wimmering around in the breeze, the wind

here. The cars that go up and the cars that go down, though there is a parking lot and a sideway in

between the coffee house window and the street where the cars go up and down here. There is a

bus station in front of the coffee house too, sometimes it parks there, on the way up the road here

next to the coffee house, not on the other side where the Hellenic center is, the church where there

are funerals or weddings, either way either way here.

This should do, for writing in the morn here. 46373 nine oh eight, March 29, 2018. The

weight not clear, maybe the same as the day before here. 176.6, no, 186.6 but it feels like 176.6

here. She quenches all kinds of words into the notebook here, the laptop, into this li’l machine and

she calls herself a novelist because that is what she has to be these days here. There will be a plot,

there will be a plot someday here. Roberta and the other writers, those ones ah those ones here.

There are meetups, there are nanowrimo groups, others do exactly what she does here with varying

results, apparently ah apparently here.

603.

6479, 46481 here. Eight hundred words in the brink of an eye here. Brink of time, blink of

eye, however does the saying go here, google it ah google it here.

604.

Community of writers, there are communities online, she should check this out, check this

out here. to keep her going though it seems that writing comes easily naturally here. the practice

of the language, the typing, the soothingness of the taptap of the typewriter jhere. Something of

that kind, something of that ind here.

605.

179
 She’d rather venture out, the only reason she is a homebuddy today is the task of ironing

and the procrastination of the chore that has to be done and that we put off here, it is much more

fun like that, no hush no hurry here apparently ah apparently here. It is Thursday, rush hour people

in rush hour traffic, people on the bus on the train, stuff to describe here, hecticness, energy,

dynamic lifestyles here. A story, a plot that might finally crystallize here, hopefully, apparently

here. Everything but ironing, everything that keeps us away from that damn ironing board here.

Descriptions of the city, descriptions of the city. Sinatra and New York New York here, vagabond

shoes, that kind of stuff and nothing holds me back in Hoboken here.

606.

So, ironing we did here. There were problems. The spout thingie, where you put the water

in. It has a lid and the lid broke. Then there were parts of the ironing board that seemed to overcook,

overheat after one left the iron on it and the fabric became a tad scorched. And now the fabric is

ironed but it still has the folds in it, they are not really ironed out. It is some kind of sheet or fabric

and we folded it, hopefully this will do because now the iron seems to be overheated and we have

to let it cool down. And then there was the problem that everytime we tried to put water on the

fabric, it was too hot and it splashed down and we put our socks on it. So, yes, maybe this is what

we should do, dicuss ironing in detail. While she was ironing, this Malcolm Gladwell person in

between Sinatra songs, in between the belting out of Strangers in the Night and You are Just Too

Good to be True, Can’t take my Eyes off of You, in between, Malcolm Gladwell was giving writing

lessons, talking about David and Goliath and how Goliath apparently had an eye disease and could

not see very well, and then Gladwell is propagating his writing workshop where “we” will talk

about plots and semicolons here. Well, Roberta does not need this, she just learns by doing, another

Gladwell thing, the outlier theory, if you do something ten thousand hours, then you get good at

180
it, something like that and something of that kind here. The ironboard is in the way, we cannot

watch tv, no King of Queens, no Arthur in the basement here. Just writing ah writing here. Twenty-

two thirty-eight, a miserable Thursday here, rainy weather or something like that, grey and drizzle,

the look of rain even if the water is not coming down here. 47016, by the way here, four and seven

and zero and one and six here. The novel, ah, the novel here. Later we will read thru this artschool

book here, yay, why not ah why not here. Or move thru the city in rush hour. Or just stay put and

work laboriously on the next great novel here. Literary ambition, gotta will one self here, gotta

will oneself here. Someday we too will find our Maxwell Perkins who will cut all of the words in

half here, the ones that we too will fight for in order to sustain them here. The romance of making

a novel, anynovel here. More a comment on comntemporary publishing processes than anything

else here, apparently ah, apparently here.

607.

Ten fifty, 47144 here.

608.

On the telly, Ross and now Monica and the Selleck guy. Oh, you’re a grandpa. And

Instagram, a woman who exercises and calls it Thursday. Not what we do here, just sitting and

sitting and sitting some more here. Physical exertion, not me thing here. Maybe after the loss of

bodyweight, you know when you are flexible, and everything is easier here. Some thirty pounds

less or thirty kilograms and either way that will work easyp-peasy then. Until then, no exertion

please here. We can always write an amazing novel here, the one about Roberta the writer.

609.

47247 here, 12:29.

181
610.

The tummy is still acting up. Bananaloaf and crème and coffee. One banana, almonds, a

handful. A slice of cheese from Costco. Meat and Potatoes and chickpeas and beans. All in all,

800 calories, maybe 900. The mail thru the mainslot, one can see the postlady through the window

while she is going to the house on the other side, up the stairs or next to the stairs, about to ascend

here. She has a blond long pigtail, a blue and red and white uniform. Mostly blue, just a little red

with white here. Her back is to us here. She is young and thin, apparently. Not like Newman in

Seinfeld here. Now it is the Friends episode with the party and the twinky in the city. So, Richard

shopping in the junior section.

611.

Twelve thirty-six. 47417 here.

612.

Not enough drama for a novel. Tell me it ain’t so. Describing stagnation is one way to go

here. practicing the writing chops here, yup, all of those chops here. Is ur byfriend the boss of you?

Who is the boss of u? You?

613.

So, Jack, ever thinking of trading me in for a younger model?

614.

12:40 PM.

615.

182
 We are not Bert and Ernie.

616.

Nine forty-eight. PM. Monica on Friends. Talking to somebody she went to high school

with. The one who stayed in a time warp. And now Joey who is locked in the closet unit. And we

laugh, well, they laugh here.

617.

47473. 9:50. Subaru. Commercial here.

618.

The Artschool book is finished. Now, 222 shrivjers. Schrivjers. Reading Dutch while not

understanding it. Understanding selectively here. Lots of words are like German. It is mostly

portraits, 222 portraits of writers. Each saying one or two sentences about writing. Captions all

concerning, well, writing. Most of them you can understand somehow. Like “writing is ten per

cent inspiration, ninety per cent Pinot Blanc”. A straightforward statement here.

619.

Out of books at this time here.

620.

The morning on Good Friday. Roberta ponders if the last sentence, well, technically the

sentence before the last is a miswritten sentence. Is it “out of books” or is it “out of words”?

WORDS makes much more sense, like “I am out of things to say”, something like the state of

writers block. But “out of books”, that does not really make sense here. Especially because she

described the contents of this Dutch book, the one with photos and captions, portraits of writers

183
and what they have to say. Maybe one of them will say “I am out of books to write”, but apparently

all 222 of these writers have more than enough to say, all 222 of ‘em are published, though they

are not many in a country of ten mil or however much there are in the Netherlands here. Holland.

Anyhoo, it is nine oh nine in the morn, coffee house and then gym and before that the gas

station and the pumping of thirty dollars worth or so, they have a new, easier money handling

station now, the last one was so annoying, and it never ever worked here. Though maybe they still

have it, it was another station here.

Roberta is rambling these days, apparently that is how her writing goes. It is all about

nubers in her life, numbers of words. Time of day, temperature, numbers of liters or moreso the

dollar amount of the amunt of liters of gas that she pumps into the machine, numbers on the

weighing machine, which is 184.4 first and 185.2 later on, because something is definitely wrong

with the scales here in the Y, but still, her weight has come down here.

47862 words, Friday, March 30, 2018. Stop and spellcheck spellcheck here.

621.

The description of the cpoffee house. Not many people. A new barista, very serious, very

doctorial. Authoritative. Stellar student. He had that aura about him, that is how he presented

himself. “I am knowledgable”, whatever that means here. The demeanor of the people who give

you coffee, it varies here. Roberta could write about that, now there is a subject matter. Some

subject here.

622.

184
 Outside, nice weather. Easter weather. Six twenty-one. Will she make it up to fifty

thousand words here? Today? Fifty thousand meaningful words here? Or meaningless ones? A

novella, fifty thousand equals a novella, but if she keeps on writing it will eventually become a

novel. The wordcount is what counts, who cares about the ontents, the meaning of this all here?

623.

Time for book three here.

book 3

624.

We partition this into book one and book three after a certain wordcount. Somehow it does

not really gel, if this is 100 000 words long, we have to do this after each thirty thousand words

here. something is off with the math here. but keep on writing nonetheless here.

625.

Google: how many users on Instagram, sorry, facebook? And it says that facebook is

quickly going on two billion users. Something is wrong with that number here especially amidst

the decline of the social media app, the rapid fall, The bigger they get, the…,somebody said that

on the comment section about, well, an article about facebook here.

626.

The weather is still nice here, and life goes on. The ARTSCHOOL book was a bust, it is

from the point of view of the people who provide the service and not from the point of view of the

users. That is like yelp being authored by the restauranteurs. Reviews are supposed to be from the

user side, the consumers weigh in, not the ones who manufacture. Nobody asks car salesmen what

185
they think or doctors what they think, the people who use a service, they are the reviewers, the

judges here. How would the facultymembers know what the people on the receiving end go

through here. It is one-sided and that is why that book is basically a bust, 500 pages of time a-

waisted here.

627.

48249, nine and forty-five here. And the sun a-shining, a-shining here.

628.

Eleven twenty-three. Sun shining. Words amassing. Though Roberta is more looking at

stuff, videso, photographs, interviews. Whatever is on a screen or in a book. That is how writers

work, apparently. The way that other writers do their writing thingie. First the end and then the

rest. Put the end at the beginning here. That will not work for what she, our Roberta charcter

(persona), does here, her writing is about whatever happens during her day. The consequent days.

A journal, a log book. Except that she is not going to south pole or north pole, nothing dramatic is

happening. Everyday, very routine. Waking up and then the coffee house and the divers people

you see in there. And they are all the same, they want coffee and then they leave. Later on in the

day, they hover around the café and chat. They do their chatting meetings in there. The socializing

sans liquor, sans alcohol but with caffeine or theine. Something that they drink while chatting up

a storm. You have people who read and who write. Solitary figures who work against a screen

here. Give input into a screen. Let themselves be entertained by whatever is on a flat screen, laugh

at that, smile at that or read serious stuff. People who consume words versus those people who

dispense words. The language and how we use it here.

186
 Anyhoo, we have how many now? 48492. She read about this guy from Holland and about

this guy from Russia. Wait, a lady from Russia. A writer from Brooklyn and an intervier from

Brookline, New York. Or is it Massachussetts? Must be Mass. Everything in black and white, the

footage here. Old movies, detective stories on film in black and white, with cars that were en vogue

in the fifties here.

And writing still and writing here.

On the telly, something like Little House on the Prairie, though more nowadays-y and

pretty conservative here.

Eleven thirty-three here, in half an hour it will be all about Ross and Rachel here. Twelve

o’clock and two hours of Friends, nope, wait, one hour here. Friends, you rememeber when it used

to be called Seinfeld here.

And then there are soaps and bonbons and a couch here, the green couch.

This is the world of a writer, the studio, the workshop, the werkenkammer as the Dutch

apparently call the workplace of a craftsman slash craftswoman. The garage, that is where words

accumulate here. Anyplace where you can sit and type here. The new way of typing, usually in a

coffee shop, one of ‘em, all over town here. Not in the foodcourt of the mall, though, there peope

just eat and talk and watch people here.

48782 words, so near to fifty thou here, fifty thou here.

Roberta the writer, the author. There are differences between authors and writers and poets,

but what they all do, is, use words to make a buck here. They all take little letters and fuse them

together. Each word cut into one of twenty-six, because apparently there are a mere twenty-six

187
letters in the English language here. You could use other languages than what is the lingua franca

of our days here. But than you need some pretty damn good translators here.

48795 here.

A story, ah a story here. She should watch The Fountainhead or read the Atlas book or read

something by that mystery-story writer who wrote “I the Jury” and he himself played in his movies,

or the guy who wrote, Ik Jim Cremer. These are all persons who were, though some of them are

still very much alive but their career hi-lighty days are over. Something like that, something of that

kind here. With poetry, with literature, it is all about dead poets or it is totally irrelevant if they are

dead or not. Who are the greats, who are the greats and who gages that? Who mystifies the process

of fame and fortune here?

One day she will venture out and do readings again, all over the world here. In gin joints,

in beergardens, in gasthofs, gasthauses here.

Anyhoo, the words, they accumulate, accumulate here. A woman in curls on the telly here.

Two women talking, one of them looking like Caroline Kennedy here. The other one looks like

the sis of Michael Jackson, though with a long face here. Two long-faced women talking with each

other, both thin, both sounding full of reason. Women as voices of reason, apparently, apparently.

They seem to be reasonable voices just by virtue of being female here. Do not jump, do not make

a mess. That kind of voice of reason here. Not the voice of kooks here.

49038, yay ah yay here. Eleven and forty-six here. Roberta will stop now and stop now

here.

630.

188
 Roberta, the woman who writes about coffee houses. Yup, that seems to be her subject

matter. Her fiction is not absurdist fiction, whatever that is, not crime fiction, not mystery fiction,

nope, it is definitely coffee house fiction, whatever that is. A new field. The description of places

where you have coffee. the world over. In Reykjavik and Itzehoe, in nyc and anywhere where there

is a public place that churns out coffee to strangers in exchange for money. Not cryptocurrency

because that is still in its infancy here, in spring of 2018 here

And now, Phoebe on the telly and laughtracks, Joey, Chandler, or moreso that creepy

roommate of Chandler who scarees the hell out of Chandler here.

631.

49179 here. A banana, milk, almonds, cheese. Yup, that will be lunch here, though kind of

non-traditional here. Maybe a potato in the microwave here.

632.

12:37 here.

633.

An Instagram live feed.

634.

TODAY AND HERE (actually, in reality this title is all in lower case letters)

So, this is her first day on wattapp or something. A new kind of app. One of a million or

so apps. Something to write the next big thing on. The one that will cement her place in the

189
pantheon of writers. Pantheon of literati. The greats, the Nabokovs of this world. Come to think

of it, they are mostly male. Eighty per cent of ‘em. The gals are just starting to catch up and if

they are they are usually writing about, well, girly stuffi-muffi. They use words like stuffi-muffi

here. Gotta write about war. Or peace, sometimes here.

Anyhoo, it’s getting late. Gotta go down to the coffee place. Gotta ask people about their

choice 4 drink. Something with an Italian name. gotta smile and say please and thank you.

Apparently, those are the writers who use watapp or whatever the name of this app is.

The movie on the site shows a woman, a very young one who types up her stuff in2 her fone.

And then she asks people what they want for coffee. So, this is the target market for the users of

wattapp, whattsapp or whatever the name of this app here is. Young people and not people in old

people’s homes who, come to think of it, have more time and are basically not that mobile

because, well, they are old, and their bodies have problems. Eyesight sucks. Hearing sucks. Back

sucks. And those are the good ones, I tell yer. Lots of us are dead already.

Well, this writing thingie is taking a turn for the worst here. Yeah, yeah, life’s a bitch and

then u die. What else is new?

For some reason this whatapp app does not have a wordcount thingie. No icon that shows

u how many amazing words u typed up already. You know like the one in Microsoft word here.

after all, this is not for longhand writers here.

So, what else is new here, time to have lunch or something and then come back to pen the

rest of the great novel, American or other.

190
635.

So, this is the first story that she wrote on this app. She still wrote two others that she will

put into her novel, later, once this is all figured out here.

This is the second story:

It is called “tomorrow” and has two parts:

Union Square, at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday in April. Rain. The second floor

of whole foods. Looking down on the shiny street. Hardly ever is it that desolate. For union

square that is.

Later on, she will go down towards abc city. Past the infirmary, the eye and ear place.

Have a vodka pizza at artichoke. Sit in the steps. Or maybe it is a bench. She opes not come here

that often, ever since she moved to this place in Amagansett in the middle of nowhere. It is

beautiful, lake et. al., but let’s face it, it is the middle of nowhere. Here in the city, that is where it

is at. Near to the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea. The place where the grad schools are. But

who has the time, money or the energy to still get another arts degree that is basically the road to

nowhere. Except if you want to teach at Columbia or Yale, but those positions are highly

coveted. She will not get any of those and if push come to shove she does not even want to teach.

You have to be young and idealistic and she is everything but. She is some kind of writer mainly

because typing is the only thing that she can master here.

636.

191
 Oh, and btw, these two are named today and tomorrow and nyc and magnum opus, and

they are all published on this mobile app.

637.

How does this work? How does one publish this story? How how how and when here?

Questions ah questions here. (this one is titled nyc-later and is part 2 of the second story that she

typed into the app.

638.

This is the last one here: The third one:

Great work, that is what we do here. That is how we roll. All of the best words. We have

them. Roll over, current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Well, this is not what we do here, Colbert is better @ this. We are the writers of the world

here, the best ones, yup, those ones here. Eell, actually, this is just one lowly writer who pens her

magnum opus here in her li’l abode just before she ventures out and has a latte in the coffee

place on the street next to her house here. Yup, writers have to stay incognito, or @ least

reclusive. A la Salinger, a la Pynchon. The myth of the writer, the auteur. We can provide that

just as we can provide semicolons here. em dashes, that kind of

639.

So, these are all the mobilefonestories here. Yay ah yay here and 50022 words here.

192
640.

So, there are problems with the ink here. The digital ink. Gotta somehow fix this here.

641.

50 456 words here. Yay ah yay here. Four thirty-three. Yay. Everything yay here.

642.

So, this is all chaotic here. The wordcount is standing at 50088 here. 50090. So why did it

register at 50 456 words here. Something here is definitely fishy. And the stories that she took

from the writing app and pasted into the novel, they are all haotic too. The first one was not the

one with Union Square, that was the second one here. The first one is called “today and here”

and goes like this:

643.

Apparently, it is all ok here. First one and second one. First one, yup, the “today and

here” one, and the second one is titled “tomorrow” and has two parts. Part one called “nyc”, and

part two called “nyc-later”. Roberta is not quite sure if she mentioned that before, she might have

done so. The magnum opus story she will take a phopto of and then make sure that it is part of

this novel here.

644.

193
 So, everything is ay oh kay here. She was able to copy all of the stories from that weird

digital ink to the Microsoft Word ink here. And the wordcount was just off, the real word count

here is now 50298 here. At eight and forty-six in the evening on Good Friday which is actually

not a holiday down in the States, but it is a statuary holiday here in Canada. Well, Roberta

though, she is a fictional person, so we do not really know where she lives and does her writing

thingie. That is how it is how it is here.

645.

On the telly, Seinfeld. Laughtracks. Everything is ay oh kay here. Even though it got kind

of confusing with the use of the writing app here. We will stick to this writing software,

Microsoft Word here, times new roman, point twelve, doublespaced. As long as this works,

everything is fine, and nothing is standing in the way of the most amazingish novel here. Even

though there are three short stories interspersed into the text here. The ones that were written on

the app and then copied and pasted in here and did not really gel with the rest of thtext, formally

that is, here.

We have 50466 here, finally at eight and fifty-eight on March 30, 2018 here. Weight

hopefully still @ 184.4 here. Depends on which scales you use and if you are wearing sneakers

here. This is how it is how it is here.

646.

Appropo the Instagram feed, the live one. One was by nanowrimo and the other one was

by this account about books that was interviewing (well one of the persons who own the account,

194
she was interviewing) these persons who own a bookshop in Ann Arbor and have a typewriter

standing in the corner and all the patrons write stuff on the typewriter. They made a book out of

that, apparently, an amalgamation of the typewhriter messages in the bookstore here.

647.

And now, Friends here. Yup, it is that time of day again here.

648.

50604 words. 9:28 in the nite here. Yay ah yay here.

649.

50616 here.

650.

So, this here stands @ 158, sorry, 185 lbs. Here. Amazing, huh. Roberta was exactly ten

pounds more in December. Three months later and we have put down ten whole pounds here. Put

down as in lost. Where did those pounds go? They vanished into thin air, dissipated here. What

happens to those grams? How is the body able to get rid of ‘em here?

651.

One twenty-three. 50688 words here. Half a book. Written by yours truly here. The

Roberta here. In the morn, coffee house and gym. A woman in front of Roberta. Paying in coins.

195
Wearing a wedding band that is too tight. Getting two drinks. One smaller than the other. Behind

the counter the barista with the grey toque. Behind Roberta two persons talking in foreign. Then

the young man who looks like jesus orders coffee without any accent. The language might be

Greek, but more something local, Cyprus, Yugoslavia. The coffee shop is happening ah

happening here.

Later the gym. The weight is good, better. People on the bikes. Actually, nobody is on the

bikes. Empty seat for biking. On the telly, Michael Jordan in his youth. There are four TVs and

you can watch the monitors while biking. Sports channel, news channel, food channel and

miscellaneous channel. There are TVs on the bikes too. Nobody here is really fit. Maybe because

of all the TVs here. The Y made me fat here. It is badly organized, badly planned out. They do

not want you to get in and get out while losing weight. They want return business, never really

ever lose weight and get better. Something is wrong with the way this is planned out here.

Outside the sun. on the day between Easter Sunday and Good Friday here.

Her writing ah her writing here.

She thinks about the li’l movie on the site of the writing app. The barista who writes a

story and one of her customers is reading it here. Nice, yup, nice here.

652.

Notes from a public typewriter- that is the name of the book that gathers together the

writings in that bookstore in Michigan, in Ann Arbor here. On the telly, three persons talking

about shootings and protests in Sacramento here. So sad here.

196
653.

Sun outside. Reading thru the Dutch book, without really understanding what is going on.

One could only guess here and read into the words whatever one wants here. But there is

something to be said for understanding it halfway here, and one can make up stuff from looking

at the black and white portraits here, the author portraits which are always staged. Certain poses,

certain environments. One person in a total mess, manuscripts on the ground, the messiness of

the creative process. Though actually the photos are taken at different times and thus they reflect

the fashion of the times here. Fifties until now here.

654.

On the telly. Marylin Monroe. Happy Birthday, Mr. President… It is on CNN in order to

propagate their series about the Kennedys.

Outside, a woman runs in the distance. White top, black bottom. Two kids in blonde and

purple. Different shades on the greenery. How to fashion a story here? What to write about, ah,

what to write about here?

655.

51163 here. Two thirty-one. Stormy Daniels and Trump pic on the telly here.

656.

197
 Nine and twenty-nine. Nite outside here. On the telly an ad for Towne Plaza. Hotels. The

Kennedys.

657.

Mike and Molly at ten in the eve. Funny, huh here.

658.

April, April. Nine thirty-one. Easter morn. Easter egg hunt. Laundry in the machine here.

Coffee house and gym. Weight @ 185 lbs. here. On the telly, a guy talking about Trump. A

positive book that he wrote and that he is peddling. The man who interviews him was a former

cartoonist. CNN, the most trusted voice in news.

659.

51267 words here. The first day of camp nanowrimo, whatever that is here.

660.

Checking wattpad and the stats. Five reads is the highest we have here. Yay.

661.

Camp nanowrimo, maybe we can do this just as part of the greater novel here. The story

within the story. That is how stories are anyways. Bigger stories and smaller stories. Like rooms

198
in a house. Something like that, ah, something of that kind here. The camp nanowrimo is a tad

too complicated, so Roberta just does her own thing here.

662.

Ten in the morn, well, next to it here. ten and 51000 or so. Greenery outside and tiredness

already here.

663.

Ten o’clock, Sunday, April 1, 2018.

664.

Eleven sixteen. Still Sunday here. Still Roberta at the typing machine fighting to come up

with a story. I am a storyteller and I am everything but. This woman who writes books about

beachhouses in New England or the Hamptons or anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard, she starts

her video by proclaiming that she is a storyteller. But the crux is if you really want to read about

beachhouses, because if you are not interested in that, then she can tell all the stories here and

nobody will ever read that or publish that. The idea by publishers is that reader like to read about

beach houses. But there are just as many people who could care less about beach houses.

Beach houses, that is where people whith too much time live. Who have enough money

to sustain that kind of life style. (escapism). The same persons who have extra time to fill it with

reading books. Nonessential books. Unimportant books. Stories. What exactly is literature here?

What constitutes lit? And what is lesser lit. Lesser stories here? Questions ah questions here.

199
665.

Mainly she thinks about books, about literature. And she is out of answers here.

666.

A novel about the merits of literature. Yup, that seems to be what she does here. Our

Roberta. Our protagonist here. One day she will venture out to different places the world over, sit

in coffee houses in Iceland and the Northern parts of Germany, go there by train out of Hamburg

and sit and write and write here, each and every day here. The solitude will make you write, it

has to, has to. Eensamkeit is herlik, solitude is great, so this Dutch writer proclaims on page 103

of the “222 scrivener” book here and maybe he has a point here. Solitude makes you write, there

is nobody to disturb your train of thought. Even in class, when people write their essays, the

teacher makes sure that there is quiet, silenzio and the idea is that under that circumstances

people are s able to write as good as they possibly can here. The optimum conditions, the full

spectatordom to one’s own words here. But what if your talent is not enough, never ever enough

and if all the solitude in the world will not make for a good novel, a good book here? you cannot

will it forward, now, can you here?

667.

One of the Dutch guys in the book declares that it is all about the right kind of wine, the

process of writing has to be fueled by ethanyl, by alcohol. That is when the ideas come, and

nothing less will do here.

668.
200
 A smit of inspiration, but the rest is a good wine, apparently here.

Outside the wind is blowing, leaves in the rain here.

669.

Wind is there, but rain is not. Poetic liberties have to be taken when pushing words

together to land on the paper of a typing machine here. And eventually this will be on paper even

if it is now only existing in digital land here.

670.

51879 here.

671.

Eleven thirty-four, the pope on the telly.

672.

Two and twenty minutes. Complete silence, complete desolute existence here. No noise.

The quiet before the storm. The only noise is the tapping of the typewriter here. The laptop that

makes noise as if it is a typewriter. Somehow that seems to be an afterthought, there are

keyboards that are quiet. This one though, loud loud loud. An electronic device that wants to be a

mechanical one.

673.

201
 Apparently, there are whatapp conventions. Gotta check this out here.

674.

Read these five essays by George Orwell. On whatpad. Apparently, he too wrote 4

whatpad here. Just kidding, whatapp has stuff by real writers on its app. There are real writers

and unreal ones. A new way of categorizing literature, invented by yours truly here. 52037 words

here, three oh five in the afternoon of April one in 2018 here.

675.

Five thirty-five in the afternoon. This works much better than wattpad because you need

really good eyesight for using wattpad here. And you do not have a keyboard, you just write on

the phone which is way too trying here. We can hardly do it on the laptop. On the other hand,

you can take the fone on the bus on the train to the coffee house and type up ur words here.

Which is what we did about ten years ago, longhand though. Writing while watching the world

go us by here.

676.

For some weird reason, this all is mushing together here. This does not happen with paper

now does it?

677.

202
 Sinatra did it his way, so he declares here. In song. On the fone next to the laptop. What

if my way is the road to bust, the road to nowhere here.

678.

52200, 5:57 here.

679.

April, April. Nobody played us and we did not play anybody. Some April fool’s day here.

680.

Monday April second. The weight @ 184. Wow.

681.

It was driving Roberta crazy here. Finally, she remembered what the name of the book

was, the one she read two weeks ago. RAIN. She had to look through her notes to remember.

Sometimes there is a reason for journaling, for documenting. You cannot remember everything

here.

Anyhoo, Mike and Molly here. And the obligatory laugh tracks here.

682.

203
 52289 here. 1:43 in the afternoon on April 2, 2018. Writing, ah, typing the Monday away

here.

683.

Writing while everywhere is pretty messy and while the garbage truck is outside and

there, it left. In a heartbeat. On the telly, Mike and Molly here. Two new books, which she will

devour once she is finished wwith the Dutch book here. Fifty bucks worth of books. Expensive,

huh. One book about the small bistro in France according to the title. The cover has a coffee cup

and two hands that hold it. A small cup, espresso-ish with a handle, ecru colored, eggshell here.

684.

One fifty-five. 52394 here.

685.

Five thirty-five here.

695.

Five forty-eight. The weather in Boston on the telly here.

696.

My name is Lucy Barton, Roberta should purchase that book. It is about a woman who is

an author. On the telly, this crime show with the woman whose mom was Jane Mansfield here.

204
The day is coming to an end apparently. Greyness is setting in, reluctantly here. A scary man on

the telly, that is how crime stories are. Columbo though, that is always fun. Always good here.

Nowadays the crime films are just not like that anymore here. Ah the good old times, when

everything was innocent and the way it should have been.

697.

Coronation Street. At seven in the eve. Now Don Lemon here.

698.

Seven thirty-three on April second here. Don Lemon. A man and a woman talking

politics here. Greygreen outside here. The writer at the workbench. No story here. Let us peruse

what others are up to. Nanowrimo and wattpad here. The community of writers here. The literati,

the glittering ones in their pee jays at their laptops here. Typing typing here.

699.

Seinfeld. Watching Seinfeld at the end of the day here. You know who that is? Keith

Hernandez. The baseball player? What do you have to do to be a buff? So biff wants to be a buff.

Sleeping less than 18 hours per day would be a start.

Laugh tracks. Coffee, get together for a cup of coffee.

700.

I thought he liked me.

205
701.

Jerry, he’s a guy.

702.

Roberta’s way of writing will not do here. watching what is on on the telly and typing up

stuff. There is no story, just the writer who cannot make it. This is not George Orwell talking

here. It is a lesser writer here, an anyroberta here. She will go for a walk in the morn, by the

coffee house, by the barbershop. But now, she has to stay put here. Nighttime, darkness here.

703.

52727 @ 8:11 in the nite here.

70. 704.

So, this Instagram feed is on, belletrit, nope, belletrist. It was live twenty hours ago, it is

all about books and she talks about World Book Day which is in April, someway down the line

in April, not @ this moment yet here. Late April here. The Instagram live feeds are in the stories

you know, who are all these people who make these apps possible, people who sit in workplaces

and seem to run the world, the virtual one, not the real one here. What a power trip, what a power

rush here. But we, we as in Roberta here, we are just writing up a novel, an amazing one that will

never ever be published, not in paper apparently. April twenty-three apparently is World Book

Day here.

206
 The woman talks about all of these bookstores in nyc, it is not quite clear why she talks

about it, because Roberta listens in and types, and it all mushes together here. Roberta gained

some two pounds because she went off the wagon the day before with this chocolate pistachio

crossant kind of thing here, the one in Faubourg that costs near to six bucks and it managed to

make us two pounds more here well mainly because it opens the floodgates and once you eat that

you start to pick at other stuff, slices of cheese, two of’em and then all of those nuts and raisins

that are all mixed together and partitioned off in the fridge. And glasses of milk and cake pieces

with slabs of butter here.

The woman talks to all of these people who are from all over the world here.

The woman talks about her reading habits here. She is in nyc, she talks about the lion

library in midtown and her event on the sixteenth of this month which she will do together with

other people and she reads about, talks about the book that she reads just right now here. She

shows the book, but one cannot really see it here. Because on instagram everything is reversed

and she holds it too near to the camera, so one cannot make out what the book is here. Black

Swan by Eve Babbette here, by catapult apparently here. The book will come out on April ten

here.

53118 here.

705.

Coffee in the morn and gym as always here, and the grocery place in the mall. She put all

her trash into the trashcan near the door of the mall here.

207
706.

Now the woman on the Instagram feed, she talks about her classics favorites here.

707.

She is quite good while talking about books here.

708.

Favourite books, yuh here.

7709.

Eve Babette, whoever that is here. (note: I guess her name is Babitz, gotta google and

wekepedia it, though, at a later point, just saying)

780. (wow, something went wrong here but we just let it stand, yup, why not, here)

Outside the weather is greyish all with pink flowers, blossoms on the trees here.

781.

She tlaks about books ah books here. And you thought that books are dead here, nope,

they are very well alive and well, they are talked about on new media here and that is how it

works here, the world of books here ah the world of writings here. Actually, the writing of books

is a very different world, theses people talk about the finished product, the literature, once it is

208
bound into li’l pieces of paper, with spines, books, that is, the objects of books here and they do

not really read them online but more in the form of real world books here, the objects that you

can take with you and read on the bus or on the subway here. on the train here.

782.

White Houses by Amy something is a book that she recommends here. The woman with

the darkblue toque on her head here. And apperently she has not listened to Seinfeld who says it

is weird how people collect the books that they read like trophies and then they have them

around their houses like trophies here. Anyway, this is quite a fun feed to listen to and she now

talks about a Belgian book that is published in Antwerp apparently here and she shows it

apparently here.

How do you choose ur monthly readings, that is quite a good question here?

783.

Bestseller lists, how reliable are those here? Interesting. Bestseller lists, a good way to

discover books. The Immortalist, that is a runaway bestseller, Roberta’s words here and not the

woman who is on the feed here.

784.

53471 here.

785.

209
Somehow this RAIN book got lost in her place, misplaced, huh, misplaced here.

786.

Book with quotes about books. If u do just listen, u do not catch what she talks about

here. No Two People ever read the same Book here, apparently that is the name of the book

filled with quotes about books here.

787.

53531 words here. Eight hundred words here, we typed up eight hundred words yay ah

yay here, once more listening to the Instagram feed of the belletrist website, mainly because you

have to listen to the whole thing in order to get to the end which is so very annoying here.

788.

U cannot skim the feeds which is weird and so yesterday here.

With a book, u can easily pick it up and then read the last parts of the book if u feel like

doing so, and there are lots of books where u have to do that, encyclopedias, you do not read the

stuff from a to z, you pick and choose here, novels, well, that is a different reader behavior here.

But with movies online, you skim and forward and pick and choose here but Instagram feeds,

they are different, they might be ephemeral but still you have to listen to the whole thing, you

cannot leave and come back here. Weird ah weird here, how they try to suck you in in these

times of bombardment of info here.

210
789.

So, she still writes here while listening in to this instaagram feed here. Mainly she likes it

because it is about books here.

And if writing books and reading books is your thing, then you like this here. The

fetishizing of books here, the love for the object of books here, what is this all about here? Words

as objects here, bound into objects that you can amass or stash and stack in the corner of the

room you live in here. Apparently, this is called culture, whatever that might be here, be here,

apparently. World Book Day, World Book Day, April 23, apparently here, twenty days from

now here.

790.

Listening to the belletrist feed for the second time, it is basically a podcast and it is

interactive, well, you see all of these comments from people the world over, which is like

reading thru the comment section after reading thru an article here, like a New York Times

article here, though you just can read ten each months and after that, you have to subscribe,

apparently, here.

791.

So many books, so little time. You have to have a system apparently here.

792.

211
 A system to help you choose, which books to read here.

793.

Discover books.

794.

The Immortalist.

Roberta has to read the amazondotcom reviews of the book by Sean Penn here. But he

has name recognition anyways because, hey, he was the husband of Madonna and that seems the

reason why ppl know him anyways here.

795.

Cleo Wade, an author that she talks about here.

796.

Book Quotes.

797.

No Two Persons ever read the same Book.

798.

212
 So and now we have how many words here? 53990 words here, at eleven and twenty-four

here apparently, ah apparently here.

799.

April three or April two here.

780.

Yay ah yay here.

781.

54015. Another yay, ah, another yay here.

782.

Round numbers make us happy here.

783.

Whatever round might be here.

784.

Coffee is my writing rystal ball. Crystal ball. So says the caption on the coffee mug pic

on the nanwerimo site, well, the instafeed and the coffee is actually a bird’s view and it is a video

of coffee, because the coffee is shaking a little from side to side here. So people write their

213
books, something old and something new and then there is something else going on in Boston, an

event today in the evening or the afternoon Boston time where people will talk about the

relevance of art writing and if there still is something called art writing versus literary writing

here. Well, it seems there is a lot of writing going on, any kind of writing here. traditional and

not so traditional here. Words ah words, whether they are just a yelp review or something that

you will write on ur Instagram feed here. Words are used all the time. But in very different ways

here. There is not just one way to use words, there is music and poems and dicussions,

ephermeral ones and then there are writings on whattpad here.

It is a funny media landscape and how do you really write in this confusing writerly

landscape here? So many words ah so many words here.

54246 words, at eleven and thirty-nine here, on April the third in the year of 2018 here.

Short dispatches ah shortish dispatches here.

785.

What exactly are books of the months. Who are those persons who gage these books of

the month? So can anybody do this? Any person who reads, can she just suddenly say I tell yer to

read this book or that book here. I recommend it, I really do here.

786.

How do you make people recommend your book and tell people that this really is the

book of the month here? Can you not say that the book that I am reading just now, this is the

book of the month here? What if you hate it? Then you cannot really recommend it and most
214
books suck anyways, all these books that are written by real life people, people who are still

living and they all have to live in Brooklyn if their books are worth reading here apparently, you

know, Brooklyn as the city of writers here. Or as a wrter said about himself or herself. though it

seems it was a guy, this prson described himself as a writer who does not live in Brooklyn here.

Funny yup funny here.

787.

Eleven and fifty-eight and some 54459 words here, time to go and sit and watch

FRIENDS here. It is that time of the day here, that time of the day apparently. Eleven fifty-nine

and go, ah, go here.

788.

FRIENDS. Let’s take this outside. Who talks like that? You had to ask. So, this is a scene

from FRIENDS, in the coffee house. Where two persons talk to Ross and Chandler and bully

them. This episode must be some twenty years old now, a generation in-between there,

apparently. The world has changed since then, no more Friends watching, this is basically a

timewarp here.

789.

But this novel, this is happening in the here and now. We can publish this at Kinko’s or at

Staples and bind it and the sell it at artbook fairs the world over and call it an artbook, an

artnovel here. This should go, should fly here. Roberta went to art school, she writes books ergo

this is an artbook. And a novel too, it is all in the definition, the categorization here, apparently.
215
A book as an art object, it is pretty expensive to publish this at kinkos, more than if it is

publishec by Simon and Schuster, they know how to keep the price low, apparently, here. Later

on, Roberta will check her wattpad feed here apparently ah apparently here.

789.

Twelve and forty-one. Now we should venture out here. Enough of sitting cooped up

here. Outside, stuff is happening, in the real world here. Later on, she will come back and do the

reading thingie here. And now it is Friends. How is the world in the vascular surgery game? This

is what Ross asks the father of Rachel here and he answers that it is not a game, a woman died on

my table today. Yup, this is how it is here, the episode definitely is dated here. The episode

where there are two parties, two Rachel birthdays in two different apartments, one in Monica’s

apartment and one in Chandler and Joey’s apartment. One with Rachel’s dad and one with

Rachel’s mom apparently here.

790.

And now Gunther leaves Monica’s apartment because Phoebe made a distraction, staged

a distraction here.

791.

1996, so that is when this episode was aired. Twenty-two years ago. We are watching a

show that was filmed twenty-two years ago or maybe even filmed two years before that here. It

was aired twenty-two years ago here. Talk about living in a time warp here.

216
792.

What a boring book. That is what Roberta says and she closes the book at page sixty-two.

This is the second day that she is tackling this book and it is really trash, though the writer was

nominated for a Pulitzer and her other books have really good reviews on amazon dot com but

this one apparently is trash. Well, it is a boring book, very languid and the stories are unrelated

and nothing is really happening, just different families in a small villagey town somewhere in the

middle of nowhere. If you want to read about small town life you can read this. It is kind of like

War and Peace where you have no real clue what is going on because there are so many players

and they all have names that are similar to each other. Here the same is true, you have no clue

who is who. And you just read thru it so that you get to the finish line, but nothing is really

happening, and all of the people are equally demented here. These are persons who are dull and

they are the people whom you try to avoid and they are all described in this book by this writer

who looks very nice and wears glasses and gives talks on you tube and she is wearing a nice

dress and looks very intelligent and school mastery but her book is nah, not very good at all,

even if it was nominated for the Pulitzer. After all it did not win and there is a reason for it, the

writing is way too dull, it is just well, way too dull here.

And we are writing here and writing here, we too want to type up some dull book and

then try to get it published eventually ah eventually here. Books are always dull, because you

would rather see a movie that says Bond, James Bond here. Action adventure, worlds that are far

away from what constitutes the everyday for most people here. Escapist fare and not fare that

mirrors the everyday lives of people who read books, the coffee house and the gym and the mall

and maybe Costco and Ikea here. Suburbia even if you live in Brooklyn here. The world of

217
bookstores, yup, that kind of world here. University campuses or community college campuses.

The everyday the everyday here versus well, the world that Ian Fleming portrayed, the world of

the rich and famous here, Capri and St. Tropez, somewhere in another time here, where people

speak French or Italian and drive at the Cote d’Azure in an Alfa Romeo here.

792.

Roberta will go to the coffee house on west boulevard, the one that was closed for

renovations and now reopened here. She will walk by the wine store and she will not buy vino

because she is not good with alcohol, not good at all and that is a fact here,

793.

Two forty-five. She had a viennoiserie of the season. Pretty good, lemony. A tad too

citrusy and too custardy. A little bit of stuff, too fatty too citrusy. Not that good here and that is

why they just have it for a season. Anyhoo, that place is not that good anyways, tastewise, it is

more the atmosphere that you pay for. The location, the idea of a French café, an upscale one.

The idea of Paris for people who live far away from Paris and think that paris is forever the Paris

of Hemingway and Zelda. Well, it is not, it is not even de Gaulle’s Paris anymore. Paris changes

so it seems because everyplace changes. The Eiffel Tower though stays the same here. On the

telly, Two and a Half Men and laugh tracks here.

794.

Charlie Waffles, funny, huh.

218
795.

He is a musician. It would bother me if he wasn’t. Loaded, that is here.

Funny.

796.

Two and fifty-three. 55524 words here. Roberta and her nonnovel here her nonnovel

here.

797.

52727 and 55524. What is the difference between the two numbers. 55524 minus 52727.

Mor than two thousand words here. That is what she produced here. Three thousand words, that

is what we have to write per day. She wrote a story on whatpad, too. Quantity begets quality, at

least that is what we are shooting for here.

798.

Two Broke Gals now, it is that time of the day here.

799.

She has to listen to audio books, it is easier on the eyes here.

800.

219
 A book in eight hundred little pieces here.

801.

Now Two Broke Gals. Watching it while reading thru li’l captions that show what people

do these days, influential ppl in the lit world. It is weird if you try to make it, if you want to

figure out how to get some stuff published. If push comes to shove, does one even want to have

stuff published. Who has time and energy for a horse and pony show here? Publishing words

means that you have to go public. And be criticized. Except if you state the obvious, any idea

will be pulled down, pushed down into the dumpster. You cannot write words and not be

criticized. It will always be too this or too that here. Nothing will be ok with everyvbody.

Writing is not like painting, writing will be full of thorns just be definition. It comes with the

territory. Whatever you say will be an insult to a certain group. You cannot word stuff in a way

that goes down smoothly here. Even if this is merely a novel here. And it sure is, it is not a diary

and not a journal. It is the story of one woman, one fictional person here. One fictional woman

named Roberta with long locks and glasses. Apparently, so much we have here, this is how she

looks. She is middle-aged or maybe not, maybe she is younger, or she is older here. It does not

really matter, because old people have been young once, and young people will get old

eventually. So the age is not so important, not that important. What is important is the field that

she works in, literature or the wish for being a literati. And it is not her first choice, it is her only

choice. She is more the kind of writer who sucks at everything else and thus she stumbles into

writing here. Nonfiction is definitely more up her alley, but she is not that good at fact checking

thus she has to write a novel. And if you think it is a novel, then it is a novel. To paraphrase the

good people of national novel writing month here.

220
802.

55992.

Now it is the sophiewoman, the one who played in friends and in Seinfeld. Roberta is not

quite sure if she should use the preposition On instead of IN. In Seinfeld versus on Seinfeld.

56028, 3:36 here.

803.

So hopefully this will work here. We can be part of this booklaunch in this bookstore in

Brooklyn, the one that is called Books are Magic. Apparently, this woman will have her Commented [na4]:

booklaunch and a guitarwoman will play music and this writer for the New Yorker will ask her

stuff. And you can all see this online in fifteen minutes or so because it is Four and fifteen here

on the westcoast and in fifteen minutes it will be seven thirty in Brooklyn over there. But we do

not really know where to watch it, on the belletrist site or on the Books are Magic handle here.

Apparently these are called handle, who would have known here, but the belletrist woman called

them handle, so apparently that is what it is on Instagram, ur instagramname here. Handle, huh.

804.

The bookstore thing is not good, they seem not to know how to do the live Instagram

story feed, and not everyone knows how to do this. Tom Ford had it for the first time, well,

Roberta came upon the Instagram story live feed over there during fashion week, the live feed

where people do the commenting thingie here.

221
85.

805.

Btw. On the telly, it is all Amy and Sheldon here. Yup, Big Bang ah Big Bang here.

806.

So while writing it is the live feed from this bookstore in Brooklyn the one that is owned

by the writer of The Vacationers and Modern Lives and she is on the mic and now there is the

singer, everything is happening live and we see it on the fone, ah, technology and now she sings

I am woman.

806-807.

I am invincible, hear me roar, whatev.

808.

Wishful thinking here.

809.

Still later in the day here. Six and forty here. Typing away in a vacuum. So it seems

because there is utter silence here. No music, no Sinatra. No telly, nothing. Even the fridge is

quiet and maybe we do not even need a fridge. It is filled to the brim with stuff that we could not

and should not and have not in our tummies here. It should contain one half cucumber and we

222
would be railthin just as it should be here so that the body will function at optimum, so that the

blood will flow without any obstruction by bulging fat deposits her. A vein and an artery where

everything goes smoothly. Pipes that are unobstructed. It is always about platelets but that is not

how it is, medicine, doctors they have it all wrong here/ it is the extra fat that hits onto the

vascularsystem, the pipes that cannot transport the bloodflow easily here. The body mass index,

it is all about the mass. The massive mass here. The one that comes from food and alcohol here.

Maybe Roberta should write about doctordom here, maybe she is not a born novel writer but a

gifted medical journaliste here.

810.

56522 here. Six and forty-six here.

811.

Twelve twenty-eight at midnite here. Well, after midnite. Just had to edit this up and it

took some time here. A lotta time, definitely. Quite the time here.

812.

56609 words.

813.

The Goldbergs on the telly.

814.

223
 The description of stasis. The descript of stasis. The rumination about which word to use:

descript or description. Which one is more melodious here? The virtuoso at work, the musical

instincts have to get her somewhere here. The symphony of words and other matters of bullshit

here.

The drive to the gym, the weight that is ah so weird. The three-pound discrepancy

between going on the scales before the workout and after the workout here. What is wrong with

this picture?

And then there was the coffee house, the usual crowd. At nine, the nine o’clock people in

the coffee place. Three, no, four persons who always people up this place. Those and the

baristas, total strangers we are but we all use the same public place here. For earning rent if we

are young, for socializing if we are old. The symmetry of lives and then everybody goes home

and writes up a novel here. Yup, that is how it is how it is here. Science fiction of the weirdest

kinds here. Grammatical failures that should not be here.

815.

April four and 56802 here. Ten and fifty-one in the morn here. Write on ah write on,

drunken without alcohol in your veins here.

816.

Once more on the Instagram story feed of belletrist and watching the reading and the

discussion and the singing in Williamsburg on the other side of the piece of land Roberta lives on

here. She tries to download this especially because she really likes the song and the singing of
224
“hear me roar” and the bizarre but funny collaboration between musician and non-musician, the

singer who knows what she does and the total non-singer who sings along and tries her best and

let us face it, everyone in the audience can relate to singing a song you know and you do not

really know here, anyways, downloading does not work, you can copy but not paste here and

technology has us all in its grips here and none of us can figure out what the f. is going on, is

going on here.

Anyways, she can watch this, it will vanish into cyberobscurity after eighteen hours, no,

after six hours because this was filmed eighteen hours ago, so the script at the left corner of the

screen tells yer, the ephemeral pieces of video, mimicing real life here, real life ephemerality or

something like that here, something of that kind here. Pics lost, films lost, ideas lost. And they all

just exist in ur memory, forever here, they are non-documented, they do not exist on reels of film

in some storage place in a governmental institution, a university archive or something here. And

we type type type here. yay ah yay here.

817.

More words at two and thirty-five in the afternoon here. Two and a Half Men and laugh

tracks. I am Woman from 1971 and from yesterday. Funny stuff on the telly here.

818.

Reading and writing and eventually you will say stuff worth saying, worth repeating

even.

819.
225
 57075 here.

820.

We could just write some more here. Writing as raison d’etre. Something that you are

forced to do. The day before she read this article in the New York Times Review or, wait, the

New York Times Magazine or some other name of a magazine that has the name of New

Amsterdam in its title here. By the woman who penned The Gincloset. About drinking and

writing it was and whether those too are interrelated or not. It is part of a book that she is touring

now, an exerpt from the book. Where does writing come from, why do people write? Though the

gist of writing is more “beschrieven” (described) in the Dutch book about writers, the one with

the 222 portraits of writers and what they have to say here. Ruminations about writers here.

Talking shop here.

The day is coming to an end, Last Man Standing is on the telly. Her weight is going up,

because for three days she let herself go instead of watching her weight as sharp as she can here.

Tomorrow it will be back onto the wagon again, meticulously here. Watching every bite that you

put into your mouth sharply here. Every single bite, it has to be watched and weighed here,

yessiree here.

821.

57341 words @ 6:15 PM on April 4, 2018.

822.

226
 Six forty-one here. A tad darker outside. Writers block so palpable here. Still busy with

this book by the woman in glasses and black dress. What was her name and the name of the

book? Her talking on a video online, that is what sticks in Roberta’s mind here, the name of both

book and author seem to be forgettable and it does not help that she was trashed on amazon dot

com here.

823.

The long wait on April five. The cable guy. Why are they always cable guys and never

ever cable gals? What is wrong with the world here? Go ahead, break the cable barrier. Roberta

ponders, too much Seinfeld will do this to yer. You quote the show, though there it is about age,

ball boy versus ball man. The show with Kramer, then again, they are all shows with Kramer

here. It is eight and forty-three, the cable guy will be here between nine and eleven. In the

pouring rain here. The coffee house, we did that already, the gym, there is no time for that here.

No gym has to do for today here.

The coffee house, so very full. People in the pouring rain. People with laptops working

away. People streaming in and out. They ordered their drinks while being in the car. There is a

sign that says “order and take out”. It is actually the picture of a phone and the picture of a coffee

paper cup here. A rectangle that is supposed to signify a smart phone here. From phone to drink.

Push some buttons and you will have a drink. Not even push, it is mere touching the phone here,

pushing down on the surface of the phone here. Magic, yuhuh here.

57642 words and eight and forty-eight here. Her writing ah her writings here. Roberta

and her book. While she was driving down to the coffee house, she was imagining how to sell

227
her book to potential buyers. It is all lost now, all her amazing ideas here. She turned around into

the gas station and her ideas got lost. Later on, they will resurface, hopefully here. It is that way

with ideas, they come, and they go here. Memory is slippery, though this is the idea that with old

age memoryloss is inevitable. How much can you really gage that here? The idea of selling the

life of a writer, that is anyways a difficult undertaking here. Who would be interested to hear

about the thoughts of one person here? If you are not Proust and dead, then nobody is interested

to read the ruminations of one Roberta here. Roberta with locks and glasses here.

Every now and then the phone on the counter makes a ringy noise. Each and everytime

somebody sends her an email. Magic, yuhuh here. 57842 words here. Already already here.

Would be nice to gage this, but for some reason the laptop mouse thingie is stalling here.

Weird, ah strange here.

824.

So now she could move the rectangle thingie and roll it up and down, she has next to two

pages already, well, more like one and a half here. Waiting inside for the cable guy, yup, fun ah

fun here. Sitting inside while the rain is coming down on the city here only because some box

has to be changed, nobody knows what that is for here, the old box is just as good but apparently

this is a new gadget, a better one, an unpdated one here.

825.

She has to stick to the diet, it is paramount to lose weight. We need this for health

reasons, the lesser weight results in no feeling of seeps in the heart area here. There is a
228
correlation between BMI and the propensity of the muscle to pump the blood through the system.

It is all mechanics. Mechanics here. She should have listened more in Dr. soandso’s class,

chemistry biology.

826.

Roberta and her words here.

827.

9:10. 58097.

In this book that she is reading, it is all about some writer and her booktours and how she

interacts with the bookbuyers and what she writes in the flap and how she dedicates the book to

the consumer here.

828.

Well, at least there are parts about this writer customer interaction, the interesting parts

here. Apparently, there is a whole other book about the writer, that is the one that won a prize

here or something here.

829.

Seven hundred words already. Maybe six or five. Words that should be good here. That

denote the rain and something. The writer at her laptop. People do this, they type up stuff.

Speeches and dissertations here. Articles for newspapers. How do they ever get remunerated?

229
Paid? How much for one word here? There was this German writer, a very famous rockstar kind

of one, who said that he just made two cups worth of coffee with his writings. Everything else

came from his cabby gig here. That is how it is, apparently apparently here. But keep on truckin’

keep on writing. Nonetheless, yup, nonetheless here.

830.

Little passages. The book is all about little passages. 830 of ‘em already here.

831.

Apparently, it is all about April not being April. Snow on the east coast, according to this

Instagram story feed that she is following here, some youngster who does the story feed, more

like a journalist because that is how he is, some journalism student though from his looks he

seems to be more a junior in high school but he sure is ambitious because he is reporting

constantly from protests and from his own life and he is on the radio too and that in itself is

highly documented so you watch him reporting about the outside world and about his own life,

his life as a reporter, his professional life, so he lots of times is the star of his reporting, kind of

like Billy meets World which is about this person talking to people in nyc and getting filmed and

putting it on you tube here.

Anyways we went to the mall in the other city, yup, Roberta in the rain in the other city

but then she had a flat tire and had to go home again because well, the car tells her that the tire

pressure is low and one does not even know which tire it is but basically one has to get home as

soon as possible or make the tire full of air which is not really possible ‘cause it is raining cats

230
and dogs here on all of these cities here, April showers bring mayflowers though on the eastcoast

it is more snowstorms bring mayflowers, anywhere outside of the big cities it is snow in Maine

and Massachussetts and that is how it is here how it is here. We could of course google it though

at this point this man is protesting in midtown Manhattan and holding a sign that says Mark

Zuckerberg equals evil and on the back of the sign it says google it so Roberta here googled it

and it was all aout Mike Meyers being on the today show or one of these shows, the one with

Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or whatever the name is, the person whose last name is Fallon

here and he, Mike Meyers was Dr. Evil in a movie and he wants to run as Dr. Evil with

Zuckerberg as running mate in 2020 against Donald Trump.

Who really knows what is going on here, if you are online, you know that somebody

somewhere in Bangalore or in Silicon Valley is keeping tabs on you so do not do something that

will get you in trouble, just search strawberry tarts and whipped cream and you will be fine here.

That is how it is how it is here.

Roberta bought this book in the bookstore in the mall in the other city and she bought a

piece of poundcake with blueberries therein. First, she wanted to get an almond croissant at the

coffee place next to the station but they were out of almond croissants, they just had cheese

croissants and regular croissants here.

This is what Roberta writes about and it is not enough here, not enough here, apparently

here.

58740 words, we put in one thousand words or so, easily ah easily here.

231
 Roberta did not get wine and the liquorstore in the mall in the other city went out of

business anyways here. Or it moved to a bigger place here, more liquor to the masses, apparently

here.

Roberta is not into drinking anymore, you cannot be a prolific writer and keep on boozing

here. It is a myth, that drunkards are better writers here. They are just sicker writers, writers with

a disability that is called alcohol addiction here. Yup, that is how it is how it is here.

832.

On the telly, Big Bang. Sheldon and Penny and laugh tracks here. It is thirty-nine minutes

after four in the afternoon on a dreary day in April. But the rain has stoped, it is merely cloudy

and grey, even gritty, and that is fine by Roberta here. The best weather for writing, for being a

gifted author here. Maybe now the words will come easily, and maybe even a plot that is more

temperamental than the shear descript of the process of writing. Maybe there will be even an

antagonist here, not just the protagonist. Maybe a conservative traditional plotline here.

Something that can be made into a Hollywood movie because that seems to be what everybody is

writing for. As if a book is not enough, as if anybook has to be made into a movie which is

ridiculous, not everything is better as film here. Each medium has its own parameters here.

Maybe we should read our McLuhan here and whatever it is that he posits here.

832, nope, 833.

833-yes

232
 So now she could go down to the coffee house. Would be nice to finally try out this egg

thingie that they have at the Seattle-based coffee chain outlets all over town here. The two eggs,

which they have in two flavours and which have a French name and are pictured on posters all

over the city, in subway stations- everywhere and anywhere. But Roberta is full, she had a potato

and some mix of eggs and potatoes and tomatos and a piece of poundcake with blueberries in

there and a piece of banana loaf and then tea and then coffee with cream and then some amandes

too. Much too much for a woman who wants to lose weight and who just gained some weight

after having lost weight. The yoyo-ing has to be stopped, it has to be kicked in the butt,

something like that, something of that kind. How not to yoyo, maybe that should be the theme of

her book, the only subject matter that makes sense. How not to yoyo here, the problem is that we

have no clue how not to yoyo here. As long as there is food, one is bound to yoyo here.

834.

The news outta Boston. Do they have snow, or do they not have snow? That is what

matters, the amount of snow or non-snow here.

835.

And now Trump who is asked about Stormy Daniels and he is asked while he is in the

doorway of Airforce One here. It is ridiculous to try to sink Trump on sex charges, that will only

backfire. One could argue that the whole sex charges cost Hillary Clinton the vote, she did not

get elected because the opposition could care less about the discussion of the Bush guy and

Trump, nobody cares about stuff like that. That seemed kind of weird that that video surfaced

just before the election and it totally backfired. The minute that people saw that Trump

233
opponents want to talk about moral highground, they reacted. Many voters who were undecided

vied to vote for Trump after the video surfaced, they just thought that this is hypocritical and

irrelevant. You can attack a political figure on so many levels but on moral stuff… That is weird,

these are politicians and they are all not very morally ok. Who cares who sleeps with whom? It

did not work when the Republicans wanted to sink Bill Clinton, it will not work when the

Democrats want to sink Donald Trump. Sink them because of their politics not because of what

they do in their free time. That is how it is, how it is here.

836.

5:38. 59460 words. April 5, 2018.

57. Sorry, 837.

So how many words did Roberta pen today? How many words have been penned by the

author of these lines here? Gotta remember that Roberta is a different persona than the author

here. Roberta is fictional, she is not the author’s alter ego. Gotta stick to the story here. This is

the story of the Roberta person as told by an observer. That is how it is here, how it is here.

Anyways, be that as it may, we started out @ 57300 or so and now this stands at 59557

here. Two housand and two hundred or so words here. Her math is off and that is fine here. Math

is not her sharp side, if it was, why would we push words around here? Comes with the territory

of being a writer here.

Roberta looks out the window. Weather sucks here.

234
838.

On the telly, still the news outta Boston here.

839.

Cannes Red Carpet Selfie Ban. Wow, ah wow here.

840.

Five and fifty, next to evening here. The trek down to the coffee place. The

eggstravaganza. While the rain is pouring down here.

841.

Four hundred words and we will have sixty thou. This will stand @ 60k here. Do you

capitalize the k in 60k?

842.

Now a baseball game on the telly here. Or maybe it is basketball. Or football. Who

knows really here?

843.

235
 59699. Roberta watched the instafeed of nanowrimo but for some weird reason it acted

up mid-play, the person twittered around, jittered around. The image has to stay solid here if one

wants viewers to watch this here.

844.

Novel 1 or The Story of Roberta. So, this is the title of this novel at this time. The

working title. Roberta could still go down to the coffee house and have a tall soy misto. They

will ask you what kind of coffee should be misto-ed, so to speak, do you want a light one, a

medium brew or a dark coffee. How big do you want your drink to be? They have four sizes. It is

nice to sit in the coffee place at this time of the day when it is still light outside. Apparently

sunset is at different times in different cities in north America. Roberta should know that, it is

basic geography knowledge. And you can google everything here, fill your

BILDUNGSLUECKEN, as the Germans used to call it back in the day. Maybe they still call it

that, one never ever knows which terms are dated if one does not live in the country. A

Bildungsluecke is a hole in your knowledge, basically, though there are better ways to translate

the word. More apt ones. Basically, it says that it is ok if you do not know very basic facts even

though you are otherwise a very well-read oerson. It kind of pokes fun at the stuff that we as

informed citizens do not know. Bart Simson said to another person, “no offence, lady, the things

that you don’t know could fill a warehouse”.

So, this is how Roberta writes here, she loses her way and then calls it a journal. Not that

good, but we are at 60007 here and that is all that matters at this point here.

845.

236
 Seven and thirty-eight. The sunset will be now but that does not seem right here. It is still

bright outside, not sunset time as of yet here. Still time to go out, have a latte, misto or something

else here. Too much sitting inside is not that good for the sytem here. For the posture, for the

circulation. Roberta used to have a stationary bike, a long time ago, she bought it at a garage

sale, some thirty years ago or so. It never worked, after a while it was a clothes rack. Which is

the way that most stationary bikes go, most home gyms here. A gym has to be a place where you

see others work out and you become motivated here. That is how it is, how it is here.

846.

My mother always said, be happy you are not a genius. It makes for a lonely life. This is

what the woman said at the end of Law and Order, while the cops come in and take the guy

away. Apparently, he is the genius, what with white hair and glasses and dishevelledness. This is

how geniuses are potrayed in public culture nowadays. White, male, white haired, disshevelled.

And crazy too, at least this person was. He was a criminal too. Genius as criminal. Weird, a

weird storyline here. And now, Seinfeld, well, that is basically what we all can relate to. Pretty

obvious observations, hahaha here. And an ad for an allergy medication here.

847.

Miss Rhode Island.

848.

237
 All novels have characters and plotlines here. Roberta is kinda baffled what her novel’s

plotline is. On the telly, Ross and the Central Perk inscript on the window is in the background.

Now he talks to the crowd about, well, of all things, fossils.

849.

60267 words here. Nine oh six here. Nine oh seven here.

850.

She is reading up about novels that are written by literary critics. Seems, everybody is a

critic. Roberta prefers to watch what Joey has to say here. Instead of reading about how other

writers are trashed on amazon dot com here. Or in the Guardian or the Atlantic. Maybe Roberta

should not be a writer here because as it seems whatever you write, somebody will find fault

with it here. Especially stuff that is not even novel-like here.

851.

About three thousand words here. The episode with Rachel and the father of Ross’s

girlfriend. The one who is his student here. The episode with Bruce Willis in the role of the

father. Funny stuff here.

852.

Now The Goldbergs here on the telly. Ten and six minutes here. We are tired here.

853.

238
 Ten and thirty-three. 60333. Tired, tired. And Rules of Engagement, btw here.

854.

So this is a morning in the rain. Magically she lost ten thousand words here. What can u

do? Technology seems to do that, it devours all your words here. Don’t want to talk about it,

because why delve on it? It is what it is. Back it all up or else this will happen here and there is

nada we can do. It is April twelfth, it is a day full of rain, it is eight and forty-three in the morn

and this stands @, well, what do you know, the wordcount icon does not work here. 60568, now

we pushed the right button and suddenly it showed up at the left bottom of the page, beneath the

text, beneath even the page number. Roberta ponders about the words that got lost, the ten

thousand here. seven days of writing down the drain, maybe six. Yes, actually, six here. Sunday

to Friday, Saturday to Friday. All of it lost and all of it lost here. The eloquentest of words here.

Those ones, those amazing ones here. This would never have happened in days of longhand

writing, paper gets burned or falls off a bike, but still, with digital stuff it just get’s poof and

vanishes from the face of the earh here. How to archive it ah how to archive it? Is Roberta’s

voise that insignificant here, the one writer that matters here? Alas the words are lost forever. Let

us see, she wrote about finishing that book and starting up this new book, The Female Persuasion

and she is now on page 100 or so, the book is 400 pages long, so still a lotta reading to do here.

The book is slow, nothing much is happening, Roberta called it Orwellian though in her critique

so much she remembers here. Anyhoo, it is raining, it is April twelve and this stands at 60785

wehre it should stand at 70785 here. Ten thousand words for the birds here. It is all about this

part that asked her if this should be saved and when she said no, well, it was not saved. Luckily

this she put on scribd, so we could download it and start writing again here. All of this is

239
confusing we know here. The confused writer and, let us face it, is there any other kind here?

How does Murikami do it, how does he roll? How do the great ones do it? Do they lose their

work just as much as she does here? Actually this has never happened before, never did she lose

this many of words here.

855.

She had one thousand passages already, now it is back to 855 here.

856.

No crying over spilled milk please here.

857.

Friends now. Twelve and twelve. Twelve minutes after noon. Rain is not that loud

anymore, but it is still coming down here. You will get wet without raingear or umbrella. It is

more than lite drizzle, gotta stay indoors or wear something protective if you do not want to be

all drenched up here.

On the telly, Rachel and Monica and there is noise from the apartement upstairs and so

they leave in a hurry here.

Now Ross and Chandler here. They try to figure out which one of Joey’s sisters is which

one here. Mary Angela.

858.

240
 Somehow, there is something wrong with the formatting of the page numbers. There is

nothing we can do here. The software has a mind of its own here.

859.

So now we are listening in to the interview with these four or five librarians in the New

Amsterdam branch of the New York Public library which is really interesting and it was live and

now this is a replay on instagram here, instagram stories here. At this point there are three

librarians but later on they will be joined by still another librarian here. And then there is the

woman who asks them all the questions here. And then there is the nanowrimo feed which tells

yer how to produce all of these books that are literally standing on the shelves in said library

here. The stuff that the librarians talk is really interesting here, lots of info here. This one woman

uses the word “literally” a lot so that is contagious here. Professional book recommender, that is

tough and not really something what Roberta could do because she is never very clear in her

opinions about anybook, all books are good and bad at the same time here. Roberta is not good at

discerning the quality, she kind of chuggers through any book even if it sucks in a very obvious

way here. Either too boring or too fast-paced, that is how it usually is here.

860.

How mny people work in the New York Public Library system, apparently they are not

quite sure, they did not answer here.

861.

241
 It is one oh seven here on the west coast here and they are there in nyc @ four, well it

ended, so maybe it is three at the time that this was live here. At the time of the recording of this

talk here. Now there is another librarian who said something cool, according to the lady from

belletrist, but the phone blocked it out here. Listening in to Instagram live feeds is really a funny

undertaking here, it is fragmented by the machines here, people say stuff but the mic flares in

and out at random here.

This Roberta can write about, it is part of how the world nowadays works and this is all a

new thing here, Instagram stories apparently started up in August of 2016, so less than two years

ago and they always add new features here or they even take away features here. In the good old

times, there was snapchat though apparently it still is live and well here.

862.

Now they talk about something called overdrive, maybe that is the same as the hold

system that they have here or not, here.

863.

So, maybe this is not recorded in the New Amsterdam branch library because he is

talking about Murray Street and that is where the New Amsterdam branch library is situated in

nyc according to google map here and it sounds as if he is from that branch and the other three

librarians are not. Or maybe they really are all in that branch at this time. It all gets confusing

mainly because it is on a phone that we watch this here.

864.
242
 So, it is not quite clear if this is recorded in the New Amsterdam library branch or not

here.

865.

So overdrive is in Austria too and in Canada, whatever overdrive here is. Commented [na5]:

So, Roberta imagines herself running into one of her fellow students from back when or

even more dramatic, one of the profs. Or admin. And if they ask what she is up to these days she

will answer well I basically read and write and then I send it out to be published and then I get

back polite or sometimes not so polite rejections, this one agent was basically rude but that

happened just once maye because she sent out her query on a holiday and she had queried him

before but he basically was an attorney so not really a bookish person to start with, not a literary

creature but somebody who fashions the legal agreements here and just tries to hang out around

the library world instead of hanging out around mafiosi here.

Now it is the second time that the belletrist feed is playing and each of the librarians is

telling the interviewer lady which book he or she is reading at this point here. The librarians are

four women and one man, so librarian, that seems to be an overly female job here.

866.

61784 words here. At one ond forty-four. She had potatosalad for lunch, mayo, potato

gerkins. Too much ah too much here. It is lying heavily in her tummy here.

867.

243
 Still pondering about the ten thousand words that got lost here.

877.

The woman writes in the one room with rain outside. She sees the person in front of the

neighbor house, walking slowly. He has a hoodie, a black one, and a vest of a construction

worker. The hoodie is a fleece, the vest is orange grey and is this big production in form of an x,

the one that you just put over whatever you are wearing and that can be seen from far away and

that signals that you are doing construction work. They are finally doing something to the

neighbourhouse, they will build a new buiding or something. The house has been sold at a very

low price, apparently. If it will become a construction site, it will be very inconvenient for

Roberta here. Her writing. She needs silence, quietness here. She will start writing in coffee

shops, universities, libraries. She will not be able to do it here in the room with the telly.

Roberta ponders about her first sentence in this book. The one with the glass of red wine.

It is always liquor that you have to have if you want to write. Or even if you want to cook. Red

wine, rose, white wine. Vino. Prosecco. Vodka. Something not stirred. Tequila. A margarita

here. The man who was talking about art on vimeo, he gave everybody tequila. He was

discussing why artists start talking about stuff instead of making stuff. When did art become

something to be chatted about in front of a perceptive audience. Art as performance and in a

wider sense, literature as performance. Something that you read to people. Poetry readings,

music. Ballet. Well, mostly literary readings. Roberta has done that, she read to people. They

loved it, well, her readings had different outcomes. You are a great crowd, you have been a great

crowd. On the other hand, you guys suck as an audience here. Some are like that, they just stop

short of throwing foul egs at the poet here.

244
878.

62157 words. April 12. 2018. Rainy day. Three oh eight in the afternoon here.

879.

Frank Sinatra singing New York New York. It is a live performance. In black and white.

He is wearing a wedding band. He changes the words every now and then here. must have been

1968 or so here.

880.

Must have been much later, though. Who knows?

881.

Ok. it was 1990. Who knew?

882.

You only live once. So make sure you spend 15 hours online.

883.

15 hours on the internet.

884.

245
 Three and forty-one here. 4/13/1208. Weather: a certain kind of dreariness. The one that

even the nicest swirl on a cappuccino in Reykjavik cannot heal here. And, btw, we are not in

Reykjavik here. But Roberta the writer can imagine that she is over there. Or Amsterdam here. A

bookstore in Amsterdam. That is what writers do, they dream that they are somehwere else here.

Somewhere better.

885.

The escapist element of writing. Aha, google it. Google everything. Make sure that you

use those 15 hours wisely here. Sinatra, the like.

886.

62 338.

887.

Writing some more here. Maybe going out would generate better ideas. Or maybe we

should just sit and look at the monitor. Close ur eyes. For seconds. Four forty-five. Sitting in here

since eight in the morn. Potato salad and bread with butter and honey. The boredom of the

writer’s studio. Nothingness, and we lost some ten thousand words. Wrote them and lost them

just like that here. The work of April first to April twelve. Or maybe April two to April twelve.

Eleven days down the drain. The work of eleven days just vanished with the push of a button

here. Those amazing narrative structures. Writing with pen does not do that 2 yer. But like this, it

all dissolves into nothing in an instance here. Back up ur work, back up ur work here. Reminds

246
you of Ross and his paleontology keynote speech. You remember of course. If you ever watched

Friends here.

888.

Seventeen years ago was the opening for the Foundation Show. Make that sixteen years.

The art education that should not have been. That did not go anywhere but to this room with the

telly and the monitor with words on ‘em. The keyboard that Roberta here types into. The

fictional person named Roberta. This is what the author writes about here. Roberta is fictional

and the writer is not. There are no overlaps. Fiction, they say, is autobiographical. Well, we beg

to differ here.

889.

6283, sorry, 62585 words. Four and fifty-five. And the rain comes down on the city, the

city here. Loudly, that is.

890.

Six twenty-two. The cold house. The rainy weather. But mainly the chilliness of the room

with the telly. The teapot on the stove. The coffee maker that makes a gurgle every now and

then. There is no teapot on the stove. No kettle. Roberta fixes her tea in the coffee maker, the

coffee maker that is not disconnected. Maybe that is why it always makes this gurgly sound.

Maybe the gurgle comes from another appliance. It is always weird with all of these machines

here. Appliances. Small electronics. The phone connected to the outlet. Chargers. Everything

technological is so hi-maintenance. So confusing. The Instagram feed has a story, the one about
247
the librarians in nyc in the New Amsterdam branch on Murray Street which is kind of near

Battery Park. Far away from the midtown library with the two lions, the one that everybody

thinks of when thinking of the New York Library. Even the guy who calls out can’t stand yer, he

sleeps near that branch. You know, Seinfeld. Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn.

Anyhoo, be this all as it may, downloading from the Instagram feed is no easy task here.

You can just download the audio in one file and the visual file, in another mp4 file. They tell you

that you yourself should merge the two files, the video with the audio but who knows how to do

that? There are other ways to download an Instagram story because she has done it before but the

problem with technoloy is that if you do it right once you cannot figure out how to do that, come

the next time around. You are still losing your way and it takes some time to remember how you

did it last time. Just like losing your physical way, there always is a learning curve here.

Roberta is still reading this really sucky book, The Female Persuasion one, it will still

take some 250 pages or so to get through it. It is a comfortable read, she teaches Creative Writing

at Stonybrook, so she knows stuff but the story itself is just very non-interesting here. The

subject matter in itself sucks. A bildungsroman if there ever was one here.

891.

Later on, still later on here. Six and fifty-six here. Apparently, we have to stay in here and

type and read and listen to this Instagram feed which for some reason does not merge with the

video. It is just as if one listens to the radio, as if it is in the thirties here, the nineteen thirties. A

different kind of life. A different lifestyle apparently here. This is what new media does to us, we

248
all hgert more into using media in an anachrostic way here. Instead of anachronism, nope,

instead of progress, it is anachronism here.

63974 here.

892 here. 892.

Six and fifty-nine. Wait for it… 7:00 PM. So, Queens and Brooklyn, they both have

separate library systems here.

893.

So now we know that the main library has the humanities research section or something.

Social sciences maybe too here.

894.

The small video icon at the bottom of the monitor here. The clipboard thingie of a movie.

The rectangle and the diagonal board above it with the black stripes. The one that is held in front

of the actors before the call for “action”. The board that comes down on the rectangle here. There

is a name for that here and obviously we all can google this. The life of a googler here.

895.

63194.

896.

249
 Seven oh five.

897.

She listens in to this talk by the four librarians and the woman who interviews them, but

the problem is that they press way too much info into these thirty-five minutes here.

898.

So now they talk about which books they are reading here.

890.

Seven and twenty-one here. What book are you reading right now? They are both young

adult novels that one of the librarians is reading here. Great title, well-written. Not stilted. Snail

mail books. Apparently used to be a series. Now a book about serial killers. Non-fiction. They

are talking about Zach Ephron. She is on page four. Freshwater, she just started. When do

librarians even have time to read? They have to keep all of those books in order, apparently here.

Librarians are pretty social, the ones in the art school were. All of those people together behind

the registration desk, they have to be team players here. They usually are. But seems, they are

either interested in science fiction or in crime and mystery here. Not necessarily books like this

one here, all about different scenes from Friends here.

63386 here. At seven twenty-seven here. The day is coming to an end here. At this time

some twelve hours ago Roberta was in the coffee house next to the gas station. Hardly anybody

was in, but the gas station woman was there and several people with trucks on their way to work

250
here. Seven thirty is that time of the day here. When people go to work and the chatterboxes are

not in there as of yet here. The coffee klatsch people, they are in there at a later time of the day

here.

891.

Nine thirty-nine in the morning here. A Saturday like many. A sunny one here. 63487

words. TV. Gym already, coffee already. Weight standing @ 187 pounds. Small victory here,

tremendous victory even. The coming down. The loss of three whole pounds here. Amazing.

How did you do that? What is ur secret here? The winning secret. Determination, nose to the

grindstone, that kind of stuff. The lesser fat deposits here. The illusion of dedication here.

Though once she went upstairs to the stationary and then came down, the weight is actually up

again. The scales are not consistent, there are different readings at different times here. All of the

dedicated gymrats here. On the way to the gym, all the marathon runners, the ones who are

training together, in roudles. Thin people that want to run from Sparta to Athens and die there.

892.

Not much is left of the book here, The Female Persuasion one here. Forty pages, she was

up till three in the morn to get to the finishline but in the end she could not do it here. The book

is so boring, the story is too perfect, the storyline. It is told too meticulously, and one knows that

something is missing here. There has to be more off-ness in order to call it literature here. It is

not a piece of knitting for sale at the bakesale in the senior center here. Whatever happened to

pizzazz, that kind of stuff here, that kind of stuff.

251
893.

Too tight, the story is way too tight here, winded too tight. Wound?

894.

63746. 4/14/2018. 9:50 AM.

895.

On the telly here, Cheaper by the Dozen. Steve Martin. A family with twelve kids. A very

young Ashton Kutcher. Suburbia. White. White middle class, upper maybe. The burbs. It is all

about the frog. The petfrog. The dead petfrog. When was this made? 1998. Just guessing. Beans

was the name of the frog. Twenty years ago. A nineties feel. No cellphones, in every hand. No

facebook, no instagram. a different world. A Leave it to Beaver mentality. Heile Welt. Um acht

Uhr morgens ist die Welt noch in Ordnung. The kids are not ok.

896.

The book is over. It was nothing special. Sugary.

897.

Maybe all familysagas are like that. It comes with the territory here.

898.

252
 Writing on a Saturday. While the telly is on and a Steve Martin film (flick?) that was

definitely forgettable here.

899.

The woman in the movie is a writer.

900.

Outside, reluctant sunniness. She could venture out or stay put. Either way here. On the

telly, x-mas time at the fam. With 12 kids here.

901.

A midwestern family.

902.

The dufus dad.

903.

Eleven and fifty-one. 63934 here. Roberta lost ten thousand words. Insightful ones.

Regrettably lost ones. Words that she can never ever mine here. They are lost and will not make

it, will not cut it. Meticulously fashioned ones, they were mostly of the literary criticism kind

here. Scholarly insites (insights?) apparently. She needs liquor because that is what writers do.

They drink themselves to stupor. Into stupor. It is what it is, if you write in the English language

253
you have to be utterly drunk. Or else you are just a minor writer, one that puts down forgettable

words. All the greats are stock drunk all the time here. They are in male bar brawls. Above all,

they are men and if they are female they write feel-good bullshit. If they do not, they will never

ever end up on shelves. The big five are biased here. Discrimination, that is why we do not make

it in lit land. Or because we suck at writing here. Either way, this is the way the cookie crumbles

here. 64109, not bad, we are catching up here, we will be back at 70000 in no time here. Even

though we lost time here, lost ten thousand words here. There are always new words to be

written here. Apparently, Thomas Wolfe came up with word after word and then Maxwell

Perkins will cut them out here. That is how the saga, the story goes. One of these days Roberta

too will watch GENIUS.

904.

The end credits of the movie here.

905.

Later, she has to edit this all here, but not at this time here. She had mac and cheese what

with feta in it. Yumm. Hopefully she will stay at 187, even make it down to 185 here, it is all

about portion control here.

906.

Here.

907.

254
 Maybe we should have donuts and find a new book to read online. Or even an audiobook

here.

908.

So now she is through part one of Anna Karenina. The beginning of chapter sixteen, the

audio book. A librivox edition which is in the public domain. Moscow and St. Petersburg. All

happy families are all the same, all unhappy ones are each unhappy in its own way. Or

something like that. In between listening, Roberta fell asleep which is what always happens with

audio books, they lull you in, you just simmer off and fall into slumber here. It is inevitable but

basically she was all up till three in the morn and up and running at seven, so after some mere

four hours of sleep it is not Tolstoy’s fault that she fell asleep here. Anna Karenina, when did he

write it? Which translation is it here? Who was Anna Karenina here? It is definitely easy on the

eyes, an audiobook. But you have to listen, not sleep while the lady reads her book here to you.

End of chapter sixteen. Chapter seventeen. Read by Marianne something, a woman with a British

accent here. A very pleasant voice, pausing in the right places, intonating very professionaly

here. Alas, the sound could be louder but it is what it is here. At whole volume here.

909.

Hi, Mme Karenina.

910.

64469. 2:49 PM. 4/14.2018 here.

255
911.

Part one chapter seventeen. Translated by a man with a name that is a hyphenated name

here. Librivox, public domain.

912.

Roberta looks at the Art Critical site, the School of Visual Arts sent her a reminder about

the two week residency for art writing in nyc, in June, two weeks, in Chelsea,. It will be hot and

expensive and excrutiating, better not here, we write anyways here even though it is not about art

here.

913.

Literary that is how we write. Writing while a woman reads Anna Karenina to yer here.

Writing to Anna Karenina.

914.

64573 here. She could go down to the art school to look at the foundation show. The

voyage there is so long. Two hours to go, two hours to come back here. Then the watching itself

will take a mere one hour. But all in all it is a five hour production here. It is three in the

afternoon here. She will be back at eight after dark. Nope, maybe, we will do other things here.

A tea at the coffee house. The penning of the masterpiece here. The editing of the master piece

here. The making up of words, the telling of a story here. The description of the writer at work

here. She still is reading the Dutch captions under the photographs in the book about 222 writers

256
here. The Dutch book. It is fun to read in Dutch and try to figure out what the writers have to say.

The poets and the novelists. Dutch is so near to German and you can figure out what they say or

you can guess what they say. They all say stuff about what they do, writing here. Schrift, that is

the German word for something written. Script. The written word, the signs on the page that

stand for the sounds that we utter here. People make money while doing that or they write for

free here. But write they do, read they do here.

64808 here.

915.

Two mac and cheeses, that is what we had here.

916.

Too much of grease, too much at once. The mac and cheese that is produced,

manufactured under the generic brand of the market here. Roberta got it in the mall, the market

in the mall. She got two frozen packages and went to the machine where you just swipe your

product and pay with your card here. Everything with machines, you do not have to interact with

real people here. You interact with machines and push buttons, it is like a videogame. You are

not passive as a consumer, you are active. You punch in numbers here. The machine makes

sounds and tells yer stuff. Well, it writes what you have to do, there is no voice like Siri’s or

Alexa, Siri being the voice of your i-phone and Alexa being the voice of google here.

917.

257
 We can google who the person is whose voice Roberta can hear here, the voice that reads

Tolstoy for yer here.

918.

Roberta read this article about genre fiction and about literary fiction, the article that was

published in The New Yorker. She did not quite get it, it was all about novels and its history

here. There still was another article. Who are these people who write about novels, how many

books have they really read here? How many books can you read in a lifetine? In how many

languages, that is? Well-read, how can anybody be well-read in a life time here? How can you

tackle all of literature here?

919.

Meg Wolitzer, she should google her. Where does she teach? Stonybrook, is that NYU or

City College? Which campus of which U?

920.

65096 @ 3:43 on April fourteen in 2018 here. The weather is meh, here on the westcoast.

Could be better, could be better. In California there is Coachella time here. Music for the

youngens and the ones who were here. At least nobody is sporting an oxygen tank, so a journalist

wrote here. You know, people who like Pearl Jam here.

921.

258
 Stonybrook SUNY, so that is it. You can google verything here.

922.

4:38. 65171. One thousand words in a day, one thousand and eight hundred. We are

going beserk here, naturally. Writing does that to yer, easily here. Now it is time for a literary

bar, or else. A bartender who listens while whiping down the Theke, as they say in Germany.

Anna Karenina, monotonously she is reading the novel to her here, the voice as background

music here. Writing against the sounds of Anna Karenina here.

923.

65246.

924.

MaryAnn Spiegel is the name of the narrator. Such an extraordinary good job, that is

what she does here.

925.

It seems that there is a button that one has to push and then the ten thousand words can be

revived. But we tinkered around as much as we could here, they were nowhere to be found.

Seems they are lost forever here.

926.

259
 65267 words at six oh one here. What to write ah what to write here?

927.

This has to be in stores. As a debut novel. Roberta has written other books and her first is

definitely her best and she will never ever write a book better than that one. But all of this is

irrelevant, her oeuvre is for the Harold Blooms of this world to decipher here. Apparently. On

the telly, a woman talks and talks, like rapid fire. She talks about the weather and Long Island.

She is wearing a sleeveless number in blue. Even though Kim Cambell has voiced her negative

opinion about sleevelessness and the lack of gravitas or something here. It is in the nite, after

midnite. It is Monday morn, and sleeping seems not to be in the cards. It was a day too filled up

with stuff, too much living in the real world which seems not to be what a writer, any writer here

should do. You have to push down squares and read what is on a monitor or else you will die in

obscurity. Well, either way you will die in obscurity, but that is a story for another chapter here.

Two twenty-three after midnite, on the telly, the news outta New York. The Boston marathon

will be on a Monday and how does this really happen and why is the Monday a holiday down in

Noston here, who knows ah who knows here? An actor that she does not recognize has passed

away here. Coachella.

928.

There is no reason to write about the wordcount or your weight. Storis should be stories.

Roberta really sucks at writing here. Just saying.

929.

260
 The Zoomer conference and the playing of the slots. Tea in Yaletown here.

930.

65609.

931.

187.2

932.

Once more the weather bunny lady. Her dress is actually very dark blue, maybe black.

Her backgound is blue though and maybe that is why Roberta thought that it is blue here.

933.

Roberta bumped into a parked car. This is the second time this happened in the last two

weeks. This time she exchanged information with the owner of the other car. Insurance will pay.

The last time, the other driver said that his car has a lot of scratches anyways here. One scratch

more does not hurt here. But that is not it, the problem is that Roberta’s driving sucks. She

cannot see what she does, she tends to swerve a tad to the right. In order to avoid coming into

contact with cars that are on the right side. Sorry, she tends to swerve to the left. She leans to the

left. The right side is her main side. No, once more, she swerves to the right. The left is her weak

side. So she leans into the right side here. And that is not good when moving thru the world here.

Driving or otherwise.

261
 The gym was fine, the weight is standing @ 186.0. Nice. The coffee house in the morn,

nice as always. But there too the parking spaces are way too tight as they are in the gym here.

And that is why this happens here.

Anyways. Now it is all about writing and writing here. The greatest novel ever.

Especially because she hardly wrote anything in the last two days here. 65670, Tuesday, April

17, 2018. She now will listen to the belletrist feed here, it is somewhere in nyc at a library. A

woman in a white dress talking to people, to listeners here.

Listening in to the library lady on forty-second street in nyc here, the woman in the black

and white dress who asks people if they have library cards here. She holds a mic and her dress

flutters, well, not, in the wind but when she moves here because, well, it is a dress and now a

woman talks who is the moderaror here and she introduces a person who is a staff writer at the

New Yorker and now she intruoduces the lady from belletrist who apparently is a writer too and

the moderator lady talks about what she does here.

Maybe it would be better if one could see what is going on but it is what it is, an audiofile

here has to do because you cannot download both video and audio, you have to do it separately,

either video or audio or both and then merge them however that works here. So now Roberta

listens in to the audio while typing up her amazing novel here that will take the world by storm

because that is how it works with amazing master pieces here. At this time she is at chapter 21 of

Anna Karenina, talk about masterpiece that took and still takes the world by storm here,

anyways, she is reading that and at the same time this other book, The Futurists which is quite

good and Roberta is halfway thru, well, technically, one third is finished, so a thirdway thru here,

so to speak. Roberta bought that book in the other city in the mall, the day before here. This one
262
and still another one with a black and white image on the cover, and she bought glasses too

which were thirty bucks for some reason, way too expensive here. Roberta had the cinnabon

thingie in the mall and read the book and she ponders if she has not told this to this her diary-

thingie the day before here. This is how it happens with writings, you have to make sure not to

repeat yourself here.

Coachella and Beyonce, she is not sure if she wrote about that here before.

A woman talks about crime and crime writing here on the Instagram feed here. Instagram

stories, huh. This one person talks about how he puts stuff on Instagram stories. He is on a

podium in Ithaca College and he talks about his experience in recording and documenting

protests on instagram, and how he uses Instagram stories as a device for documenting. He is a

reporter or moreso an aspiring one here. He is a journalism student at said college here and he

covers all of the anti-gun protests, the hashtag something protests. It is so very interesting, how

reporting stuff has changed here in the age of smartphones here. Even in the morning when

Roberta and this other person were giving each other their car infos, exchanging insurance

informations, it was all about taking pictures with smartphones here. Roberta remembers how

this happened a so very long time ago when those phones that take pictures were brandnew here.

2004, so basically this was some twelve years ago, no, actually, it was fourteen years ago here.

Or maybe Roberta has all of the dates wrong here, mixed up here ah mixed up here.

Technology changes everything here.

66460, somebody told here that she can retrieve her words on this computer because

those ten thousand words are not really lost here, they are still stored somewhere on this

263
computer and you can revive them by pushing the right button. Wishful thinking here, if push

comes to shove, those words are lost forever here. Roberta does not really know what to believe

here. Whom can she ask here? Confusing ah confusing here.

934.

Roberta got a notification by this Microsoft technical support thingie and it obviously

was a scam. They want you to contact them and they make you believe that a virus is infecting

your computer and steals your info. But everybody knows that they are the real info stealers.

Hackers, that kind of thing here.

935.

Roberta reads about this book White Noise by Don deLillo and she vaguely remembers

that it was required reading in her American lit class some four or five years ago here. This is

what happens with her readings. She reads books and then she totally forgets about them the

minute she puts down the book. Well, obviously there are forgettable books and books that you

remember. But these days that she started up readin’ voraciously she blocks out, what she read,

much more easily here. Once you read it, it is done here. Like watching movies, like flipping

thru tv channels. Like surfing the web. Your attention span is zero and your storage capacity is

equally zero. You do not retain the info, it just vanishes, falls out of your brain. You need space

for new info thus you make sure you forget what you just learned here. First in, first out. Or

maybe you just choose, are very choosy and make sure that you only remember what you think is

worth remembering. You are very judgemental and judge if the incoming info is worth retaining

here. Yup, that is how it is how it is here.

264
 In the end she found out what the panel discussion in the public library on forty-second

street in nyc was all about here. The reimerging of a book that was out of print by a Babette lady

here. Black Swan, it was out of print and now it is printed again here. Apparently, there are a lot

of books out of print that Roberta wants to read, a book called Class and a book titled Golk or

something like that here.

Anyhoo, still writing here and still writing here. Outside the sun is shining and we are

hungry here.

936.

So now she is in this place and is typing here. The old art school library, might as well

type up some words here because we still have to wait a long time here until the talk will be by

this boss of transdisciplinarity in nyc, at Parsons. This program that is overpriced but apparently

nice, grad skool for a master’s in fine arts here. We could do this but apparently it is quite a

commitment here, we have to do this eventually here, move to nyc and get another degree here,

why, we do not really know here but it seems that it is in the cards here, two years that are done

in a productive, streamlined way here, in that kind of manner, yup, why not ah why not here.

937.

So maybe a short text before the talk will start up. Roberta here has to wait this out which

is annoying here. The library of the art school, the new one in the new building. Everything new

but still stale after the day before when she roamed around all excited. The honeymoon is over,

265
now it is just some ol’ institution here. This is what happens each and every time here. Stifling

fatigue seems to take over here, it is the cycle o’life here.

938.

So, we might as well use Calibri body 4 writing this up; here. It is a day in April and the

weather is ah so very nice here which is not how it usually is in April. But the weather will go

bad again, there is no way around it here. It is that kind of city, rain is part of its existence, its

character. This is a rainy city, a so very wet city here. The art school is happening and moreso

the library of this place is happening. There are places where u can listen in and maybe we will

do that. It will start up in half an hour. Ppl defending their thesises, their dissertations. You can

listen in; the public is invited. Open to the public. At this time of the year. Everywhere there are

theses defended. If u r into that, it will keep yer busy here.

The scholars in the making, they have stuff to say, they have 2 improve on our

cummulative knowledge here. Scholardom as business, it is weird and strange, but it is what it is

here. If u feel like getting a PhD, u will be broke here. 197 words written today here. Great ah

great here. April nineteen, in the library of the art skool here.

939.

She is sitting at home. She would rather be in the art school, but it is way too late to get

there. It would be killing. This really good talk is on, but we have to miss it here. Missing all the

good talks, this is what we do here. There will be other talks that are just as insightful here. This

266
one is by this guy out of Edinburgh, so if you ever are in that city, go and talk to him and pick his

brains here.

940.

Copying and pasting. At seven oh nine in the evening on April 19, 2018. Weight very

good here. 875.5. sorry. 186.6. nope. 185.4. Amazing. Weight loss here. There is a talk in the art

school. She missed it. By this prof. out of the University of Edinburgh here. Maybe they will

record it. It is too late to get there, one has to make the necessary arrangements in time here. It is

a long drive there. And lots of buses to change. Trains and buses here. So you have to leave

home in time. Roberta was in the art school in the morn, but she came back home and then there

just was not enough energy to get out again here. Now she is fine, but now it is too late here.

Might as well. She did a tad of her reading, this book by this woman who grew up in Whistler

apparently and went to Yale here. Ratings on amzondotcom were not very good, people did not

like the book. Well, the ones that gave one star, those ones obviously did not like the book here.

It is actually quite good, more interesting than Anna Karenina. Better than Anna Karenina.

Which btw did not have good ratings either. Was called boring and the other book was called

dull. Ah. Let us face it, it comes with the territory, books cannot be anything but dull. They are

not fireworks, it is not the Coachella. Beyonce does not sing here. It is a book. You sit in a corner

and read. That is how it is here, how it is here. It is bookreading, a dull endeavour. What can u do

here?

941.

97903.

267
7:17.

She copied and pasted stuff here. But we said that already here.

She had some red wine and a cookie. All yum here.

942.

The belletrist live feed. A replay here. Interesting stuff here.

943.

Ten and twelve here.

On April twenty here in this place here in front of da laptop here while the fone is

entertaining us here and the woman is talking about the Pen Voices event in nyc which she will

livestream tonite, later on, though this is a replay of yesterday so it was something yesterday at

seven in the place in nyc here. Pen America Voices even on a day in April of two thousand and

eighteen here. We can watch that too here online and after that we can watch Friends or King of

Queens here on the telly, yup, still another screen here. This is our live here, these lives, our lives

in 2018, weird, the waltz from screen to screen here, watching the whole wide world here on a

screen amd now it is a woman saying “hello, welcome”. Comecon or whatever that is. African

American poets here. A very good-looking woman here. An extraordinary good-looking poet,

poets are supposed to be butt-ugly here, what is wrong with this pic here, that is why we are into

writing, you hardly need to take a bath apparently here. Poetry huh in nyc, let us try this here,

instead of novels, short stuff, three minutes instead of thirty hours here.

268
944.

68156 words, April 20, 2018. The weight is at 185. Hopefully here.

945.

Merlot, that is what we had the day before here. Yay. You remember the scene in

Seinfeld where the woman who is Costanza’s mom asks about Merlot, is that a new wine? And

Susan’s mom rolls her eyes here. Funny huh funny here. The rooster has sex with all of them

here.

946.

Poems. It is poetry month here. Poems everywhere, novels for the ones who do not have

enough time here.

947.

I’m a poet and I know it.

948.

A beautiful poetress. The one in Emily Carr was beautiful too here.

949.

269
 On the telly, Charlie and the analyst. Yup, the telly here. Outside, the weather kind of in

the middle, not too bright and not too bad. A weather that is indifferent. The laughs on the telly.

The Two and a Half Men laughs here. Two and thirty-seven on a Friday in late April. Coachella

is over or maybe it is the second Coachella weekend here. TV and writing of the novel here. The

first novel in 2018. There is nanowrimo, all of the pep-talks on instagram. For the month that is

camp nanowrimo here. One day, Roberta will learn how to write on her fone, you just need

shorter nails and then you are good to go here.

950.

Oh, and btw, the clipboard when filming is called clapperboard. Just saying here. You

can google anything and everything here and watch a movie that shows you how to text with

fake nails. Amazing, huh.

951.

68383.

952.

Two Broke Girlz.

953,

At home and writing and reading. A different pace from the last five days which were

just turbulent here. But let us face it you cannot keep up that kind of hecticness. There has to be

270
downtime, recharging of the batteries here. Just reading just writing. Nose at the grindstone, nose

to the grindstone. The grindstone being the production of words here. Accumulation of words

that have not been on this planet before. Not in this combination here. So what, that nobody

reads this here. We produce it anyways here. With audience and sans audience. If you build it

they will come.

954.

6525, 69525, 68531. She lost ten thousand of the most amazingish words here. Whut can

yer do here?

955.

The woman out of Boston talking Boston weather. Five twenty-one. Five and twenty-

two. Time flying by here.

956.

The book that has to be written. The writer at the typing machine. She, our Roberta, she

was out already, coffee house and gym and art exhibition and bookshop, all of of it and now it is

back here and typing up the master piece. She finshed a novel, well, the reading, in the evening

and is now busy with reading two novels at once. And writing another one here. Now we have to

clarify this here, it was not a bookshop, technically, it was one of those “take a book, leave a

book” places, it had very good books, one by this woman who wrote this book about a woman

who dives, somewhere between World War One and World War Two, Manhattan Beach, it was

very big last year here. Her first book, the one with the goon squad, it was there for the taking,
271
though it looked as if it had been thru a lot of torture, you could hardly decipher that it is a book,

so overread it was, so tortured here. Really disgusting, you would not even want to touch it, let

alone read it. What do people do with their books here, should they not be deferential and treat

the book with respect here instead of messing the whole object up. A book is, after all, an object

that should stay intact, in one piece, without being all messy, all scrunched-up pages here. In that

bookplace on the third floor of the community college, there still was anoter very well known

book, The Kite Writer, or kite something, the one by the writer with a Pakistani name or an

Arabic language name here. Hanif something here.

Anyhoo, Roberta is back here and typing up her master piece here because that is how we

roll here. On a Saturday in April at the cusp of some 68655 words here. This better be good ah

better be good here.

957.

Maybe she should write more about this Saturday morn, the events that passed her by. All

the details, which coffee, which cup, which breakfast pastry here. The women behind the

counter, the other persons in that place. Both people who are customers and people who work

there. The people in the gym. The number on the scales. All of the numbers of this day here. The

paintings in the exhibition in the college. The media room, that was not open because it is too

soon in the day here. All of the li’l details here. The ones that have to be mentioned in order to

liven up the prose here. The narrative that has to be interesting here. 68788 words, she is tired

already, fatigued from typing and writing here. She did not sleep much, too late into bed and too

soon up in the morning. The weather is ah so nice, so you tend to do that here. To choose waking

272
up over sleeping here, or moreso, staying up after waking up at the brink of dawn here. Eight

forty-nine, she was all over town already already here.

958.

Writing is something you do in a darkened room, the weather has to suck so that you do

it.

959.

Sunny places do not make for good writers. Sucky weather produces the best writers

here.

860.

Listening in to this author interview while writing up her novel here. This is what Roberta

does and she has the interview in the back, it cannot be seen on the monitor here but one can hear

the two persons talking, the woman who asks the questions and the woman who answers. The

woman who answers is the writer and her book is very good, she is a gifted writer though not

famous here. Her thing is historical fiction which is interesting because you have to be true to

what really happened and make up a story that is somehow footed in facts and you have to have

your facts right here, apparently. But what was very clear was that she is good with words here.

Her stuff makes sense, but it is also very poetic. She could write a manual for assembling an ikea

furniture piece and it would be a good read here.

861.

273
 Speaking about what you wrote must be daunting here.

862.

Discussing your text.

863.

Marketing your text here.

864.

Roberta writes about her own life, well, kind of. The routine, the everyday. What a writer

does all day. A very pedestrian life. The life in ur pee jays here. The literary life is just that, there

is no glamour. It is not something for Hollywood here. It is more something out of Seinfeld here.

No well-dressed people, no polished people here. No glamourous creatures, apparently

apparently here. The visuals suck, the words have to do here. Even if they too tend to suck here.

865.

69157 words. At 9:58 AM. On April 21, 2018. Weight: 185 lbs.

866.

Three pages already. How many words is that? Everything has to be measured. The

increments. Writing like an accountant. Where are your books? The ones where you enter what

you did and what you do and what you think you will be doing here. Writing is about putting

274
words into pieces, into interevals. The language measured, well-thought through. The language

in a straight-jacket here. Militaristic. Words like soldiers. That is art, yup, that is art here.

Nothing bohemian, nope, forget that here. Everything is intentional, formalistic here. Art in

2018. Very very stifled, nothing is left to the imagination. Everything is well-curated. Very well

planned-thru here and no surprises whatsoever here.

867.

69282 here. Ten oh five here. Sunniness outside on a Saturday at the writing machine

here.

868.

Eleven and forty-nine here. So near to noon, but not quite here. Some more words. The

profession of the writer. The ruminations about what is the essence of a writer’s life here. a

person inside. A cook maybe. A person who prepares a meal in a kitchen. That is how a writer is.

Except that she cooks up a story here ora nonstory if it is a nonfiction book. She takes the

elements and creates a bigger entity. Yup, let us say that is how it is. The analogy is as good as

any here.

869.

She watched interviews with Tom Rachman. He talks a lot about the writing life.

Interesting here. One interview was on Urban Rush and the other one was in this bookshop in

DC. Poetry and Prose or Politics and Prose. Anyhoo, 69435 words here. In six minutes this will

stand at twelve noon here. We will stand at twelve noon, the wordcount will stand at hopefully
275
seventy thousand here. Roberta will have made up for all of the words that she lost here. The ten

thousand words that are lost forever here. There are new words to go into this text and hopefully

they are even better words here. More insightful ones, thoughtful ones here. It is weird with the

language, you have to arrange and rearrange its elements. Its elements being words, of course,

short utterings that are all in the same language. With some French in there, stuff like deja-vu.

Roberta ponders if she is coherent, if anyreader will understand what she has to say here. How

do you make sure that the jokes land? And is it even witty lingo here? Does she shoot for being

witty here? Nah, her intentionsa are serious here. One minute and it is the middle of the day here.

Noontime on a sunny Saturday in April here, all with the laptop and a myriad of books to read

here. 12:00 PM, 69624 here. The life of a writer, the isolation, the boredom. Writing is solitary, it

always is, always is here. The isolation of the writer’s studio here. 19650 here, sorry, six nine six

five six here. 69660. The wordcount always changes, always is in flux here. The accumulation of

words, you measure it, the wordcount, ah the wordcount here. The ever more of the words here.

Later on, she will go back in, edit this, make some of the words disappear and add others here.

She listened a lot to talks this week, but even if she does not physically go and sit in a

place where a real licve person is talking, even if Roberta does not do that, she still watches

people talk on screen, either on her phone or on the telly or on her laptop. People who talk on

some kind of screen here, two-dimensional persons who share their knowledge with the world.

Their opinions, the like here.

870.

12:06. Maybe the real-life coffee house would be better, the reality of real life here. You

have to stay grounded in reality, apparently, writing as escapism that will not work here.
276
871.

69818. 12:13. She has to stay put, apparently, she is waiting for a call here. Might have to

go downtown, for a shopping trip.

872.

Twelve and fifteen, lunch was a potato here. A smaller one here. Maybe there is more to

literature than just writing about what you had for dinner. Literature is about more than that, it is

not a documentary of a banal life here. The everyday. How can you make the everyday

interesting, there is no glamour, no mystery here? The total lack of glamour here. The negativity

of this state of no-glamour here. The dullness. She has books to read but maybe it will interfere

with her writings here. This one writer, he posited that reading interferes with his writing. He

inadvertedly copies the voice of the book that he is reading. So, it is an occupational hazard for a

writer, according to him. Roberta is not quite sure if that is a trap that she is falling into. Yes, she

is a voracious reader, she devours books, some three of ‘em per week but she tends to block them

out when she writes, and besides, there are so many different voices, they all equalize each oher

out here. And then there is whatever happens to be on the telly, so after a while it all mushes

together as one big outside world here. Hopefully it does not interfere with her writing or maybe

it informs her writing. Makes it better, somehow here. 70067, she sure is a chatty one, she

managed to write up that many words here. At the end of April here, seventy thousand words,

that is pretty good ah pretty good here. And hopefully quantity will, in the end, beget quality

here. Who knows?

873.

277
 Twelve and fifty-seven here. Still sitting at home and waiting for the muse and its kiss

here. Writing ah reading here. 12:59.

874.

Roberta wrote five hundred words here. Which is so weird, because it seems like so much

more here. It is one o’clock and she is at it since seven. Six hours and five hundred words. Not a

very good output here. One hundred words per hour. She seems to be that kind of writer here.

Today is not her day. Too many distractions. A laptop is not good for a writer, you tend to check

your email and update your facebook status. Definitely interfering with the creation of the

biggest master piece there ever was. Midlist writers, stars and nobodies. That is how this one

writer described the world of publishing in 2018 here. Well, we paraphrase, but that was the gist

of what he posited. And it is a very accurate description of the world of books nowadays. The

state of literature here. Apparently, yup, apparently here. The lack of attention. Yup, that has

always been said. People do not read anymore. Well, they do, actually. They actually read quite a

lot here. Roth was not right or was he? Who knows, these are all predictionas anyways here.

875.

Her numbering system is off, later on, she will remedy this. Or maybe not. Let us see

here.

876.

1:11 PM. Such a nice number here.

278
877.

Ice cream would be nice right now. With sprinkles. Colourful sprinkles on vanilla. A

waffle cone in beige. At the beach. Well, Roberta describes the pic that she just saw online by

this woman in Hamburg. St Pauli, or strandpauli. Apparently, a café in Hamburg. Ice cream cone

and sprinkles while looking out at the Elbe. Ms elbville posted this pic and Roberta saw it and

describes it here. While Mike and Molly is on the telly here. This is not how writing should be.

You cannot just jump from image to image or from video to video. Watching what is on different

screens and making that flow into your story here. Which is basically no story, just a flurry of

different scenes here. Though, technically, that is how movies are nowadays. Flurries of different

images, diggerent scenes here. Movies have always been like that here. Two hours of jumping

around. Different visuals. In the old times, you would sit in a darkened theater together with

strangers and watching whatever was on. And before that, people would be in a room and look at

whatever was on the stage here. And before that… history of performance, yup, but it does not

really have much of a bearing on Roberta’s novel here.

Outside, sunny weather, inside here, we have some 70571 words here. Finally, we have

penned some one thousand words here, on a Saurday in April here. With the right kind of agent,

this too will be published here. One and forty-seven in the afternoon here. The writer of these

words weighs 185 pounds here. Imperial ones. And technically, it is Roberta who weigs that

much here. The alterego. Where does the writer end and Roberta start up here? Questions, ah

questions here. And the sister in Mike and Molly is on the screen here, in the episode with

springbreak here. Victoria in Florida here.

878.
279
 The numbering is all wrong here, ah what can you do here?

79, 879.

879.

70683 words. 1:57 PM. April 21, 2018. 185 lbs here.

880.

What exactly is a bookclub? This person who calls himself or herself amazon customer

gave a two-star review to this book that Roberta is just reading. Shmeh, that is what the reviewer

stated. She has to read it for a bookclub but does not like it. Reading as chore here.

881.

Two and a Half Men. Laughtracks here.

882.

Two and twelve minutes here. 70694 here.

883.

On the telly, Two and a Half Men. At two and thirty-five in the afternoon. 36. Roberta is

pondering if she should correct the numbering of the little passages or if she should let it stay like

this, a tad off. A tad off is kind of artistic, the out-of-kilter element. The idea of a handmade

280
unique object. If it works for visual art, it should work for literary art too. We do not want art to

be too glib here.

884.

70844 words here. The Instagram story feed out of Berkeley is over, one day is over. This

woman was giving advice to would-be-writers but after one day it all vanishes into thin air here.

The life of an instagrammer here. The Instagram live feeds, the ones that are only up and running

for one day here. Contrary to you tube movies that are up forever here.

885.

Whatever happens to those Instagram feeds? The only ones who can look at them are the

ones who produced them. Weird, huh, strange. Welcome to the new reality of documentary film

making here. And then there are the instant reactions, all those comments here.

886.

Instagram stories are now more popular than snapchat is. Snapchat is so yesterday here.

887.

5:55. So this is Roberta’s day here. Penning her book that consists, for the main part, of

documenting time and number of words here. Numbers.

888.

281
 A documentary on Daniel Eisenberg here. On Al Jazeera. Six oh ten here, btw.

889.

So there is this book that is written by this woman who will talk at the social media

conference in nyc. Maybe this is not enough info here. She wrote a book about the styleguide for

buzzfeed. Buzzfeed is a website. And the book is all about the way we write on social media.

Which abbreviations we use. How we let go of full stops at the end of a sentence. The use of the

language online. And then there is this book by the former editor of random house and the

Sunday Times. So basically, one posits that rules are important, the other one posits that they are

not. This writer writes about both of those books. And he kind of posits that they are on opposite

sides of the debate about accuracy in language use. About pedantery. But in the end, Roberta

would argue that both books basically say the same. Language is a living organism, so to speak.

And transcribing language is always in flux here.

890.

6:36. 71182 words. Weight: Who knows here. One potato, one banana bread, one piece

of bread. Raisins and nuts here.

891.

Seven thirty-one. So still another hour has passed. All the writing we did here was

basically a big selfie.

892.

282
 The novel is not happening here. Will never ever happen. It is not her thing here. Making

up persons that do not exist. The dream factory. That is what Hollywood is called. Stories about

persons that do not exist. Before that, it was the stage. Opera. Greek fora. Actors and actresses.

Non-realities here. The only reality here is the person at the laptop who types, while the telly is

singing its songs here. Weird, huh, strange here. The bizarre realities of the writer here. But there

are real things happening. Btw, Comey is now at Powell’s. Booksigning in Portland here.

893.

71323. 7:46.

894.

71327. 8:14. Still 185, thumbs crossed.

895.

Eight and fifteen here. The writing of a novel. The wordcount is the story. The little icon

that shows yer how time flies here.

896.

Nine and fourteen on a Sunday in April. Sunrun is on today. 40 000 people running here.

apparently. On the telly, Kellyann Conway here. CNN on a Sunday morn. Usually this is the

time when Roberta is sleeping here. But today, coffee and gym already here. Nicest weather of

all here. Not the weather for a writer to sit at the typing machine here. Time to enjoy the

283
sunshine but this is her job these days, amassing words here. Whether it will go somewhere or

not here. 71445 here, yup, that is the wordcount since January first. The novel that slowly slowly

moves forward here.

Fifty percent of Americans read, fifty percent do not. Something like ths was on the news

here. Today in the morn.

It is Earth Day, there is an animation with Jane Goodall as google doodle here.

897.

How to be a bookworm. An article she read the night before. On another note, what is the

fascination with book stacks? The physicality of words, maybe? Something abstract pushed into

something concrete, touchable here?

898.

Nine twenty-five. Morning still. 185 pounds. Wow here.

899.

Four hundred words already. On a Sunday. While others run. A distance. This is the

distance we do here. The word distance. Next year: booktour. Signings. Talking to readers. The

social element of writing down words. Scary stuff here.

900.

284
 The lawyer of the porn star. And now Dana Bash. Persons around a round table. A

woman in pink. Pink suit jacket. The others in dark suit jackets, all with tie here. the visuals of

peple who talk about politics. Analysts of what is going on in Washington. The Bakari guy

mentions the blue dress. You know, Monica Lewinsky.

901.

The person who wanted to be prez but now chats about what others do in DC. Santorium,

Rick, that’s his name here. A woman which we do not know here. A new face. The players of the

CNN roundtable here. We should go out and enjoy the sunshine here.

902.

The reading of Anna Karenina is not going well. Mainly because we did not put a

bookmark in there here. How do you put a bookmark into an e-book here? Gotta start from the

start here, apparently ah apparently here.

903.

Nine forty. Sleepiness is setting in here. 9:41.

904.

On the telly, Fareed Zakaria. The talks about Comey.

905.

285
 Still Fareed Zakaria here. 71760. 10:39.

906.

A heartburn med on the telly.

907.

A novel without a story. Descriptions of the coffee house. Moreso than descriptions of

the gym.

908.

71787 here.

909.

Eleven thirty-six. The telly and its Sunday morning, ah well, for the lack of a better word

here, stuff. Who won the marathon? Google it here.

910.

On the telly the man from the Waffle House. In a beige jacket. He is answering questions.

Roberta is now at chapter 30 in Anna Karenina. And at page 30 or so in the Alice book. Reading

two books at the same time. Not necessarily confusing here. Each in its own time here. A quarter

of the populaton in America did not read a book in the last year. Well, Roberta is going the

opposite here, she read some fifty books in the last year here.

286
911.

In LA, there is a book fair or something. Later, she will listen to the recording on

belletrist here.

912.

Short checking-in. Four and fifty-nine here. The episode with siri. Five in the afternoon.

71934 words. The masterpiece has this many words here. The master piece on a Sunday

afternoon. She reads two books, Anna Karenina and this Alice spy thingie here. Outsight

brightness, yay ah yay here.

913.

71974 here.

914.

Two and Half Men and all of the laughs. It is the same episode that was on the day before

here. We can quote Charlie Harper’s insights in our sleep here. 72007 here.

915.

Eight and forty-eight. Columbo.

916.

287
 Eleven in the morn. Matlock is over and now it is the Dick van Dyke show here. The

crime one. Dick van Dyke as surgeon. A man and a woman in a beach house. Malibu. A

homeless person on the beach. Beachbum. Policemen, two of ‘em. Suspension music. So now we

weigh 184.8 pounds here. Banana loaf and coffee with cream. Mac and cheese. Not all of the

bananbread but all of the mac and cheese here. Sunniness outside, nice. Reading thru the Alice

book. And typing up the most amazing novel here. Listening in to belletrist and to nanowrimo.

The live feeds that are basically boring and are going round in circles here. The interview with

the writer at the LA bookfest is nice and good but has horrible sound quality. You can look at the

people, but you cannot understand what they are talking about here. The intervier woman has

jeans with holes, but her hair is nicely coiffed. The author woman is all dressed professionally

here. They both sit on barstools and the writer woman is uncomfortable. She is holding her book

and that makes her look even more uncomfortable. The interviewer woman looks very comfy

what with mic and wearing jeans here and being all thin and comfy here.

917.

Roberta has seen this show before, the crime show, it is a rerun here.

918.

72243 words here. About to be a page here. A page worth of writing already. 250 words

or so here.

919.

April 23, 2018.

288
920.

She could tackle Anna Karenina or she could watch TV or she could do this or do that

here. Writers are the boss of whatever they do and that is why they hardly ever make money

here. Especially if they are midlist here. Not the books that sell three copies and not the ones that

sell one million copies here. The ones in the middle that will rot on the ashheap of history here.

921.

A lovestory or something here.

922.

Eleven eighteen in the ey em here. Next to noon. Roberta is up since six, since seven

here. Six, yup, let us go for six here. Sitting cooped up here in the writer’s studio. The solitude of

the writer. The isolation here. There is a dif ‘tween solitude and isolation. Isolation equals bad

and solitude equals good. Solitude is something you want, you strive for, isolation is a forced

status here. As a writer you have to love what you do. Or at least like it. So it seems, so it seems Commented [na6]:

here.

923.

72444 words @ 11:24 here. Gonna watch the show, the Diagnosis Murder one here.

924.

289
 12:00. Noon. The show is over here. The homeless guy who is a doc. Now a show with

Stetsons. A western. Maybe we should choose, switch to Friends instead here.

925.

Judge Judy on the telly here. One and four in the afternoon here. 72593 words here.

926.

Everybod is showing off her favorite book here. Roberta would like to show off hers, but

it is actually an online book. “Let the Aspidistra Fly” by George Orwell. Read it. The persons

who are showing off their books are on the belletrist instagram feed here. Today is world book

day, with a hashtag and in one word, apparently, here. She is looking at the streetview of the

place where the transdisciplinary design workshop number one is taught, it is a place near to

Union Square, on the way to Barnes and Noble. So, it is not in the new building but in one of the

buildings of the New School here.

927.

The world belongs to those who read. This is the Instagram pic of random house. For

worldbookday, hashtag wordbookday. And then there is this pic that quotes confucious saying

that you always learn something from a book. And then there is an image of the strand bookstore

in nyc. And the caprtion says that as if you need a reason to come here. maybe without the “to

come here”. Roberta is all inside on a very nice day and she reads and writes. This is what one

does on hashtag worlbookday. One is inside and reads some here. a very solitary occupation

herfe. Just me and my books. What else do we need? Seventeen cats here. how to become a
290
crazy catlady without cats? The title of her next book here? people and books, it is qan uneasy

relationship here. people are soupposed to be social and readers are everything but. How about

writers here? those drunk bastards here? the ones with their hard liquor here?

928.

Three oh eight here. Maybe, it is time for book three.

book 3

929.

So, yuh, book three. 72805 words. Definitely time for book three here. Just numerically.

The last 30 000 words, that is book three here. Even if it is a tad uneven or really really uneven

here. The words of a drunken writer here. Because, let us face it, if you write 4 a living, you

gotta be drunk. A profession that is basically a nonprofession here.

930.

Anna Karenina is now at part 2, chapter 1. Apparently, each part has its own chapters

here.

931.

Listening in to the audio and falling asleep. End of chapter fifteen. Audio is definitely not

Roberta’s thing. She always just dozes off. Has to go in again and read it all in black on white

here. Suddenly the story is way advanced. Spoiler alert. With reading in is a book it too is

291
difficult because you can read it mechanically without noticing what you read here. And this all

on hashtag worldbookday here.

932.

Six twenty-five and 72885 here.

933.

Hopefully, still at 184.8 here.

934.

Looking thru all the images on pinterest. A library in a palace. Under a ceiling that is

painted on. Amazing. The problem is that the image vanishes, and Roberta cannot find it again.

That is the problem with surfing online here. There was this German woman who showed her

favorite book which was by an Irishman but it was on the belletrist insta story and has now

vanished because one day is over, apparently, it has been one day here and we did not even

notice and now Roberta will never ever know what that book was, who that author was. There

are so many obscure writers who are really really good, the off the path ones here. Off the well

trodden path here. (off the beaten path). Pulitzers do nt reflect what is good in writing here, they

just reflect what some jurors think here. Ronan Farrow just got a Pulitzer but he was so very

graphic when he was on CNN or Amanpour, salacious even. Keep your reporting g-rated, please,

here. If what you are is a serious journalist here.

935.

292
 73153 here.

936.

Sally Rooney, that was the name of the author and the book is titled Conversations with

Friends. For some reason, sometimes it works and at other times it does not here.

937.

So, yes, Roberta can listen in to somebody reading that Irish book with an Irish accent. It

was about a poetry reading. So it is already the image of a story out of Friends, everybosy young

and well toned and goodlooking. Now they talk about a Modigliani print. So, this is the air of the

story here.

938.

Elitist stuff here.

940.

Nowadays, you can search online and know about a book. Read samples online. Listen to

what others have to say. The amazondotcom ppl here. The online world of books and

bookbloggers and bookstagramers. Booktrailers. Interviews with writers. It is like going to a

bookstore. Which, btw, still is possible here. The listening in to the nanowrimo guy outta

Berkeley. And he always says that it is seven in the morn in Berkeley here and then he drinks out

of his campnanowrimo mug here and says stuff and laughs at his own jokes here and gives out a

293
peptalk and basically posits that writing is a tough job which it is not, it is not grave digging

here.

941.

73370 words here. So she wrote some 1400 words here. Not a very stellar output here.

942.

Roberta feels a tad sick, nauseated here. the non-hard-liquor rule definitely applies but it

is now the eating-less rule that makes her feel sick. The trying to whittle down the weight

anyway one can here.

943.

You tend to barf after noneating here. At least she feels like that. All the calories for the

day were consumed already at twelve o’clock. The noon-1300-calorie dash here. That is not how

it should be, you have to portion your foodintake all through the day here. You have to always be

vigilant. Eat veggies and proteins. Nothing with exess amounts of sugar. That kind of stuff. A

bland existence here. Rationing as if you are living under the Blitz.

944.

73505 here.

945.

294
 The Secret Book and Scone Society. A new series of books here. Check it out here.

946.

It is actually none and forty-six minutes here. 9:46 PM.

947.

She finished chapter one of part two of Anna Karenina. She had listened to it on audio

and somehow it seemed more clear. Clearer. This is what the right intonation will do here.

946.

Nine fifty-four here.

947.

Ten in the evening here.

948.

April 23, 2018.

949.

Stephen Colbert. Funny stuff here. Nothing ‘bout it here.

950.

295
 73583 here @ 11:10 PM here.

951.

April 23, 2018 here.

952.

11:11 PM.

953.

Eight seventeen. April 24, 2018. 73613. 185.6. The numbers are all in. Now it is time for

poetic waxing, about the description of the plotline that never was and never will be. Roberta

was at the gym and was at the coffee house here and now she is sitting and typing up the rest of

her novel in winter and spring of 2018 here. War and Peace it ain’t and there is no storyline. Not

a conventional one, merely the description of the existence, the daily existence of the writer. The

persona of a writer, of a woman who pushes down squares so that there is a long long text here.

954.

The day before was international book day, world book day it was called. This month is

poetry month. Who declares all these days here? Today is turtle day, so the radio said. The radio

that Roberta was listening to on the way to the gym. On the way back, they were rehashing the

van attack in Toronto here. Horrible, just horrible here.

955.

296
 Twelve and four. Friends. Chandler and Monica. Before they were Friends. Rachel with a

super hat. Outside, sunniness. Watching daytime television. Reading Anna Karenina. This is

what you do when you have to produce words here.

956.

Two hundred words here. Since seven. Five hours and the output stands at two hundred

words here. Get to it get to it here. 73844 here.

957.

Friends in this place upstate. The beachhouse with sand on the ground.

958.

So the beachhouse is in Montauk. The one in Friends.

959.

Four forty-eight. Big Bang Theory.

960.

Reading Anna Karenina and the Alice book. Reading two books and writing. And

watching what is on the telly. It all mushes together. The dutch book, reading thru the footnotes.

The list of the places where the citations were taken from. The quotes under the pics here. books

ah books here. Writers, that kind of stuff here.

297
961.

The episode where the donation lady goes out with the lennard person here.

962.

Four fifty-three.

963.

The news out of Boston here. Crimes and the voice of a cop. It is dark over there, it is

after eight in Boston. Here it is ligt outside here. we can google if it is dark over there.

964.

Listening to this woman in a bookshop in a m small community in Pennsylvania talking

about her book and how she put it out into the world after penning it. Longlisting agents. The

business end of things. The bookstore is so nice, cozy, and for some reason the film gets

interrupted and shut down here. Something went out of batteries here. Btw, seven and thirty-six

is the time of sundown in Boston here. You can google everything, though both Doctor Oz and

Katie Curic did not approve of all this googling here. Ah, daytime television here and the stuff

they say here. All the voices that come out of the idiot box and dispense all kinds of info, all the

time, constantly here. Roberta writes while a person is showing the weather against the backdrop

of the map here, the Eric Fisher guy here. Outside, the shadows are getting longer here, five

eighteen here on this side of the continent here.

298
965.

74155 here. So five hundred words is all that she did today here. Ten hours and five

hundred words here. Her speed of writing is slow, tortoiselike here. The reading interferes with

it. It is either producton of words or consuming them here. cooking up words here. Not eatin’

‘em up here.

966.

On the telly, the news. PBS news. A man with an interesting haircut. Outside the day still

pretty bright here. The writer types here. While reading Anna Karenina, we are now at chapter

twenty-two in part two. All about horses here.

967.

Good digital citizens.

968.

Later still in the day. Getting dark outside. The National on the telly. Toronto. And now a

commercial for a pressure washer. An ad for gravol. Trivago. The trivago guy has a five o’clock

shadow. An ad for cat food.

969.

74294 words here.

299
970.

Eight twenty-nine.

971.

Twelve twenty-two. Afternoon. And Roberta is listening in to the belletrist feed. Later

on, she will copy and paste what she wrote in this artschool place in the morn, but this has to

wait now here. At this time, it is all about documenting the here and what is happening just here.

The sunniness outside here. The title that she thought about when coming back to her place, after

coming out of the bus here. Something about a writer who has a debut novel. The writer of the

debut novel. Yes, that seems to be a good title and it says it all. The writer of the debut novel.

And then the story is all about how the debut novel writer is handling the publishing of the debut

novel here. The sudden fame. Or non-fame, for that matter. Because lots of debut novels just

crash and burn. At this time this woman who just wrote a debut novel is talking at this bookstore

in the middle of nowhere somewhere on the east coast. She apparently had a very comet-like

start, very stellar marketing. She is all over the place, westcoast and east coast, she is marketing

her work so very aggressively which is not what all writers do, lots of’em just publish and

vanish, publish and then they perish here. Publish and burn. Very dramatic here.

972.

Now she is talking about how she has always been a storyteller. What does that even

mean here? It means that you do not write non-fiction. No essays for The New Yorker. You read

to ur kids at bedtime, maybe that is what it is here. Making up stories 4 toddlers.

300
973.

Conan Doyle tells stories for adults, not bedtime stories to his kids. So where does

creative writing stand here? Who are the people who teach at creative writing program places

here? Iowa. Columbia, Brown, Bard, Bennington. Which ones are the artsy fartsy places? And Commented [na7]:

do these places that Roberta just named even teach creative writing here?

974.

You can learn creative writing at each community college, you do not need to enroll in a

super-expensive program here. Something with too much tuition here.

You do not need to break the bank in order to be a writer here. You just have to type up

type up type up your words here and send it out to publishers here.

975.

FRIENDS is on here.

976.

She read a tad thru Anna Karenina, she was at the art school and wrote this passage that

she will copy and paste now here: (next to five hundred word, btw here)

This might as well be in Calibri (body) here. The words that are written in the library of

the art school. The keyboard is iffy but that might as well be here. The former art student writes

here and wants to start something called the prep in the – and now she does not remember what

301
the last word of the title here was. The rep in the what? The prep in the exhibition? The prep in

the art school, all she remembers here is the word prep. Prep as in short for preparation,… the

prepwork in a gallery just before the real thing starts up. The walls that are white, painted for

showing off the images, the prep and the feel of it when artists are getting ready to show their

work to the world at large, to the reviewers, to the critics here, the ones who have authority and

the ones who are just members of the general public here. The prep for publication, that is what it

would be for a book, for a text, something that you give to a publisher to edit so that he or she

can make up his or her mind if she wants to pay money for the labour of publication, if she wants

to back up these words with money here, to sell it in a magazine or bind it to be put on shelves

the world over. The biz of art, interesting ah interesting here.

Prep for publication, prep for going into the world here. Then prepwork of an exhibition

here.

It is nine in the morn of a day in late April here, quietude is everywhere, people are just

starting up their workdays here. First it was quiet but now suddenly one can hear noises

everywhere. Little lorries, wheelies that take stuff around, sculptures, three dimensional

structures. The curators will deliberate. Where do we put the stuff that the gradstudents made

here? How do we arrange this stuff, stuff made by 400 or 500 individuals here, what are the

highlights and where do the lo-lights stand here? Everything is curated these days here. You can

learn how to curate at placces like Bard in Annandale on the Hudson here. Curating as something

that you can learn but can you really? Can you teach art or writing, poetry, asthetics here?

The former art student writes these days, mainly because she never ever meets the

deadline for submitting stuff to be exhibited in the Tate or in the MoMA. And that is where u

want to be exhibited, and it is a long and laborious road to get there. Like working yourself up in

302
a corporation here, like trying to make it up the ranks in the military here. The hierarchy of any

field here, where you have to make it, where you have to prove yourself, a meritoacy and it is

tough here, tough here. Especially in art where there are no rules whatsover. Here.

She called this “how to get into gradschool”, that was the title , the one that she saved the

file under, the name of the file, apparently here.

75239 words, 184.4 pounds, weather nice, and April 25, 2018 here.

977.

One thousand words here, pretty good, she is awake since seven, it is now twelve and

forty-one here. A thousand words in six hours here, yay ah yay here.

978.

Lunch: an Italian sandwich whatever that is here. Jugo Juice in Pacific Center, 300

calories here.

979.

Chandler and Rachel, the one where Rachel is in Johanna’s office and Johanna has

handcuffed Chandler to the office chair here. Rachel opens the handcuff, and Rachel notices that

Joanna wil notice that Rachel was in this office and hat she released him. And now it is Joey and

the guy from Penn and Teller, the big one, not the silent one. He is not big anymore, he lost like

one hundred pounds or so. Very fast apparently, hmm, wonder what is his secret to weightloss

success? And now Phoebe and Monica and pulling a Monica here.

980.

303
 So still writing ah still typing here. So near to May here. Five months of writing up a

novel that will never ever be here.

981.

Back to Anna Karenina and back to The Alice Network here. The two books that we are

reading here, both at the same time here. And still watching Rachel and Chandler here. Chandler

in a blue blouse here.

982.

I guess there’s a few things you don’t learn from book learning. Fifty bucks, V. I think I

stick with the V. Gotta see how this bad boy turns out.

983.

So, we wrote next to 500 words in the artskool and now we type up what is on the telly

here. That is how the novel here seems to roll here.

984.

Nope, Anna Karenina it ain’t, it swerves way too much here. The life of Roberta the

writer in 2018 here. Write what you know, and author here knows what she does all day long

here. Tell it as it is here.

985.

Where does Roberta end and the writer here start? Are there overlaps? Who knows, ah,

who knows here.

986.

304
 All writing is autobiographical, and Friends is over and now it is Mike and Molly here.

One in the afternoon here. Five hours of writing and living here and we have 75492 here, yay ah

yay here.

987.

This book is a work of fiction. That is how all novels go. So here in this case we have to

make sure that there is no overlap ‘tween roberta and the writer of these words. Roberta is the

fictional person, not necessarily an alterego here. It is a made-up creature. She wants to write,

she listens to belletrist, she makes sure that she learns as much as she can about how to be a

writer. But in the ned she is a non-person here.

988.

The story, the life of a writer, that should be enough of a story. Not an exilharating

narrative, but that is ok here. It is what it is. The sunniness outside, the day that marches forward.

Roberta read up about this storytelling platform called The Moth. And she is reading up about

this novelist that wrote this book called Mrs. Bridge here. Not all writers are the Updikes and the

Roths of this world here. There are the superstars, the ones that everybody knows. But besides of

them, there are a lot of others who are equally good here, even if they are non-celebrated, even if

they are not household names, even if they are not taught in a classroom. After all, it is very

political, who will be chosen to be taught in a classroom to youngsters. The ones who choose

whom to teach, they too are regular people like you and me, persons with personal preferences.

Some people like strawberry ice cream, others vanilla, others chocolate. It is that simple here.

Later on, we will go on with Anna Karenina, which is definitely not that packing, it is a dull

read, just saying here. Who picks the classics, who ah who here?

305
989.

Roberta likes books about bookshops and publishing, mainly because this is what she

does these days here. Reading, writing, taking the bus, having coffee, watching strangers.

Watching whatever there is on the telly. The idiot box is like that, it teaches you, in the end, how

and what to write here.

990.

It seems to be getting hot. It is actually hot. Summer is coming. Even inside it is hot.

Roberta went out to go for a walk, but after some steps she noticed that her knees are not into it

here. She has done her ten thousand steps already, now it is downtime here. The coffee house

would have been nice, but the cars from the rush hour, the coming home commuters are on the

street ljke pearls on a necklace, you cannot drive thru to the side street here so this did not work

either. A bicyclewoman is giving notice to Roberta that she wants to turn, and it is kind of

dangerous because Roberta did not notice that the bicyclewoman wants to turn into the same

street as Roberta. Luckily everybody was going slow and Roberta and the bicyclewoman had

eyecontact and thus it became clear where the bicycle woman wants to go here. Five and twenty-

five, 76144 words here. Roberta had a a scone from the fourpack from the grocery store, she had

an Italinan sandwich and a banana bread and a coffee with cream. 1200 or 1300 calories, kitchen

is closed now, closed now. Mere fluids until it will be morning at six and coffee in the coffee

house here. Strict dieting, strict sticking to a meal plan here. Portion control ah portion control

here.

991.

306
 Five fifty-five. 184.4 lbs. April 25, 2018. 71622 words here. Anna Karenina, part two,

chapter thirty. Roberta listened in to the belletrist Instagram feed which has now vanished. The

one in the book shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania, population two thousand here.

992.

Five fifty-seven.

993.

Chapter thirty-three. Of part two.

994.

The documenting of the days of a writer. That will be her elevator pitch here. And btw,

watch some of the Wall Street Journal’s elevator conversations. Or the Washington Post’s. IN

THE ELEVATOR, they are called. In the elvator with… Shaq or the Dyson guy or the buzzfeed

guy or Ariana Huffington. The one with Shaq is really good. Shaq o’Neill here.

995.

Eight fifty-eight here. 76334. Two thousand words. None of them really matter here.

2100 words here.

996.

The news out of Boston.

997.

Short vignettes. 997 of ‘em. Still good though. Just keep on typin’ here.

998.

307
 greater BOSTON is the name of this show and it is pretty good here. So we are listening

in here. Lidia’s kitchen.

999.

The people who write. And Roberta at the typing machine here. While listening to the

nanowrimo woman here. Supertired here. DMV in the morn. Café, gym, downtown, a sandwich

in Jugo Juice. The weight is good. 183, yay. Well there is a decimal number after the three, but

we just round it up or, better said, round it down here, thus: 183 here. Pounds, those ones that are

each like 0.454 grams here each. 76390 here. How come this woman is in Indiana while the other

guy is in Berkeley? The nanowrimo people here. Nanowrimo outta Oakland or San Francisco

here. Frisco here. On the telly the two persons who are talking about lipozene which is supposed

to make yer lose weight. What, with tiramisu and peach melbas here? Roberta had a tiramisu cup

in the chocolate place in downtown here, Purdy’s. The woman was Phillipino and shorter and

older but not too old here. “Just one, do you want it in a cup?” It was amazing, very delish, their

best truffle here. One dollar and seventy cents Canadian, really good. Costs as much as a mars

bar, but you have less calorie intake and calorie intake is all we think about here each and every

day here. The DMV had moved and we got to the one in Royal Center here. It is easier to park in

Oakridge and go downtown, because it is tough to park near the one on MacDonald’s here.

1000.

11:52 here, eleven fifty-three here. On the telly, Two Broke Gals. Somebody is

complaining about fibromyalgia which interferes with her writing up the new Anna Karenina

here. Novelwriting huh, a toughie ah a toughie here.

1001.

308
 And now, Friends here

1002.

And now, Mike and Molly.

1003.

Maybe a rehash of the sandwich purchase here. A woman behind the counter. Very

young. Enthousiastic. She makes sandwiches. Then she notices Roberta. Turns, puts on gloves.

No, takes off gloves. In order to type into the cash register. Sandwich with eggs and steak. She

takes the prepared one out of the stack with tongues and puts it on the grill. After that, she cuts

the sandwich at angles and puts it all in a brown box here. Steak and eggs is ready.

1004.

On the telly, Mike and Molly and laugh tracks here. Sun outside. A Thursday here. End

o’april here. 76781 here. 1:11. Writing, watching the telly, maybe readin’ here.

1005.

Chapter four of part three in Anna Karenina. The Alice Network we did not even touch in

two days here. On the telly, Big Bang here. Four thirty-eight, 183 poundz here, 36823 here.

Sorry, 76827. Just some five hundred words in one day here. April 26, 2018. Sheldon and

Lennard on the telly here.

1006.

Why is it called the toast? Sheldon tells it better.

1007.

309
 Four and fifty-one here.

1008.

Listening in to the Instagram story feed that documents this panel discussion that is live

right now in this bookstore in Brooklyn here. Two authors and one woman who interviews them.

One of the boks just came out and the other one came out the year before here. And Roberta is

writing here, writing here. On the telly, Eric Fisher and the weather, Eric Fisher out of Boston

here. Roberta could go down to the coffee place and have a peppermint tea there, they have two

kinds, one with caffeine and one without here. Five twenty in the afternoon, what kind of people

will be in there at that time of the day here. The coffee house people here. The coffee place and

the gym, those are the constants of her life here. The two components of her days that hold it all

together. Her rituals here. And at the end of the week here, it is Columbo at eight in the evenings

on Sundays here. This is what you do when you are a writer, you stick to weird schedules, to

repeating strange and bizarre things at certain times here. You need structure, and if there is no

outer one, then you just make up one here. Coffee at a certain time, gym at a certain time, each

and every day here. 77071 words here, on the telly, a woman in blue and grey here.

1009.

77104 here. 5:28 PM, April 26, 2018. 803 lbs, yay ah yay here.

1010.

Five forty-nine. Part 3, chapter 5 finished. Apparently, part 3 just has 18 chapters here.

1011.

310
 Seinfeld here. Eight oh four. You slept with the groom? All of this here. The episode with

the wedding in India here.

1012.

Eight forty-two here.

1013.

The day is pretty sunny here. It is exactly twelve and thirty here, half an hour after noon.

77178 words. 184.8 pounds. April 27, 2018.

Nineteen degrees Celsius outside here. Inside, it is cooler here. But still warm here. The

belletrist authors are talking but Roberta does not want to listen in anymore. Mainly because one

of the two writers says something about women. Mainly positing that she is the voice of women.

That does not fly with Roberta here. You, lady, are just one writer of many on tHis planet of

ours. You happen to be female but how does that play into your choice of words here? You have

landed a publisher, big deal. Publishing is subjective, the reading lists in curricuLa are

subjective. There are always gate keepers who will make sure that some voices are heard and

others are not here. Roberta writes, and she is non-published. That does not say anything about

the quality of her words. It just shows that publishing is a businesss like another here. If there is

nobody who will back her writing with money, that in itself does not say anything here. All the

greats have self-published. Back in the old times here. Time to watch Friends, what is up with

Rachel and Chandler here. What are those guys up to? Push the button and let them into ur living

room here.

1014.

311
 Disapproving of reading lists. That will be the title of Roberta’s next book here.

Disapproving of reading lists here. That says it all. Could be fiction, could be non-fiction here. It

will be all about the world of publishing here. A book about publishing, a critique of the world of

publishing. Who wants to piublish what. The discourse of fake news here.

1015.

Jerry Springer on the telly. Notice how only white guys have shows like that.

Sensationalist ones here. White privilege makes yer do stuff like that, catering to the lowest

common denominator here. Gone are the days of Sally Jessie Raphael here.

1016.

Dr Phil. Something about Anthony Bourdain here. A singer now. The one who is married

to this Australian actress who used to be married to Tom Cruise here.

1017

Finally, Friends here. Just as good as the Discovery Channel here. Why do we not have

the Discovery Channel? No food channel, no Discovery Channel.

1018.

77557 words here. Three hundred words here.

1019.

One twenty-three here. 77568 here.

1020.

312
 “Well, I am trying to write books.”-“I did one thing in New York since I graduated.”

These two sentences. Roberta imagines herself in a concversation with people. People she went

to school with. Who are asking about what she has been up to. The problem is, she is not hanging

out with people she went to school with. No fellow students, no faculty, no administrators, no

technician. It is as if she never went to art school. Suddenly that world was over. And there was

nothing to fill her days. She started writing, just fresh outta skool. Nothing was picked up, even

though she marketed her words so very agressively. Maybe too agressively? Then again, not

agressively enough. Those were pre-instagram days here, apparently. What is the timeline 4

twitter instagram facebook? Scribd? The app that you can write on ur phone with? Whattpad, is

that the name here?

1021.

On the telly, Mike and Molly.

1022.

Roberta is up since five in the morn here.

1023.

Four ten. Nigella Lawson has posted a pic of her lunch on Instagram. Medina Café. It is a

place in downtown. Roberta has never been there, did not even know about it. She might have

walked by it, though.

1024.

Four and twelve. Big Bang is on. She is reading Anna Karenina, but it is what it is. A

boring book. What can you do here?

313
1025.

77807 words here.

1026.

Reading thru different things online here.

1027.

A person who calls lit agents. A woman who was published by Farrar Geroux Straus.

1028.

Publishing industry. Yup, maybe that is what Roberta wants to tackle here. The woman

on the insta feed talking about the book that she reads here.

1029.

Her phone is charging, it was quite down here, twenty-one percent, seventeen. Gotta

charge it here.

1030.

77878. 4:16. 185 pounds. Yoghurt and milk and nuts and raisins. Mac and cheese, the

generic kind. Bananabread and coffee with cream here. Two fitness centers. Italian breakfast

sandwich. Tiramisu cup. Food food food and still we are hungry here. Peppermint tea in different

joints in the city. All over downtown here.

1031.

Her words here. Very pedestrian words. Nothing special here. You are no writer here. A

nonpublished writer is a nonwriter here. A writer has to be published to the masses here. An

314
editor has to iron out the glitschez here. 77970. Thirty words and we are somewhere here.

Twenty-two words here. Sun shining outside here. Fifteen words here. Twelve here. Ten.

1032.

Something profound here for a change. Two words. 78000.

Yay ah yay here.

1033.

It is a Friday, where has the week gone? What was achieved? Nothing, it seems here.

1034.

Roberta watches this filmclip on vimeo and it is this talk by this prof out of nyc. The

funny thing is that Roberta has seen him give this talk, exactly the same talk here. It was last

week or maybe two weeks ago. The talk that he gives on vimeo was given seven years ago. The

gist of the talk is exactly the same. So, he gave the same talk seven years ago. No new

knowledge at all. Seems, that this is what teachers do, they say the same things again and again.

It is like watching a Seinfeld rerun. You know what will be said at what time. It is like a

performance of Macbeth here.

1035.

Writing has to be different. Each novel should be different. But let us face it, an author

will just rehash what she is good at talking about. Her preoccupations here. writing the same

novel again and again here. different reincarnations here.

1036.

315
 Big Bang on the telly here. Sheldon Cooper and his insights here.

1037.

Four and forty-seven here. 78188 here.

1038.

1038 vignettes so far here. One thousand and thirty-eight. This better be good, better be

good here.

73208.

1039.

Seven oh two. Evening near here. Silent greyness before darkness here. Rain in the

forecast here.

1040.

Maybe Roberta could work in a chocolateshop. And then write about it. How tough can it

be? The woman that she bought the tiramisu cup from in the morn was of the opinion that the

tiramisu cup with its mascarpone cheese in it is so much better than a Mars bar. Roberta

definitely begs to differ. Their quality control is much better, it has to be. Cadbury’s or Nestle’s.

The small chocolateshop cannot provide the same facilitis, it is not possible here.

1041.

Nine oh seven. Darkness outside here.

1042.

Gotta still look up who manufactures Mars. And on the telly, Diners, Drive-thrus, Dives.

316
1043.

78339.

1044.

9:10.

1045.

78343.

1046.

Btw, Cadbury it is here.

1047.

Ten and fifty-six here. oops, ten fifty-seven in the morn on a rained-in Sunday. No going

to the gym as of yet, just the obligatory trek down to the coffee house. The drive by the old

people’s house and the man who always sits there and watches the world go by here. Today, he

is wearing white which is not what he usually does here. Watches the world go by, kind of what

a writer does anyways, all her life here. Sitting and observing and not participating because then

you cannot really stand back and document what you saw and let it sit on paper for geneations to

come here. The historical documentarian, the documentarian of the everyday here. The banal, the

pedestrian, the lives that we all lead here in between the over-spectacular events here, the once in

a lifetime occurences, the world changing ones here.

The space in the parking lot is way too tight, Roberta turns a tad back, gives way, but still

it is a way too tight squeeze and there will be a problem both going in and coming out, backing

out will not be possible, not with her driving skills here, not with her eyesight which is kinda

317
damaged here. There is another spot in front of the seafood restaurant with the benches, but that

too has problems, so in the end it is driving around and parking in the street, the side street here.

Quite far away, a walk and the hope that there is not too much drizzle to drench us up to the bone

here, well, to the skin here. A jogger, actually, a walker in black with white sneakers, light

sneakers here. A man, blondish hair, full head of air. Thirties. Not very tall. On the way back to

the car, she will see him again, this time jogging. Or maybe he was jogging all the time here.

Maybe it is not even the same guy here. Jogging thru the wilderness, or moreso the secludedness.

Jogging is a solitary confinemet endeavor here. Only you and the empty school here.

Making her way thru the parking lot behind the coffee place, walking by the nail place

that does not sport Jennifer Aniston’s picture anymore. The black and white of Rachel,

oversized, girl next door smile, very Mona Lisa-ish. They took her down just after Roberta

mentioned her picture in the window the night before here.

Inside the coffee place, the woman from the gas station, shy, two spaces behind Roberta

here. A man who knows her and they greet each other here. Not Roberta and the man, no, the gas

station woman and the man. The gas station woman has very long hair, is very young and very

thin here. A little kid is there and can hardly walk, trots around, having learned to walk just

recently, you can tell. She opens her bag and looks inside to see what is in there. Before that, she

holds both her arms in front of her, she seems to just have learned to do that too here.

The seat at the window and Roberta can look outside. Now all of a sudden, there are so

many ah so empty spots there. A myriad of spots there for the choosing here. Then raininess is

happening, or moreso the wetness, then respite ‘tween showers. Saturday at the coffee house. A

quarter to eleven, so many many people here in the coffee house. Latest of April here. Cars going

up and going down here in the city the city here.

318
 The trek back, no gym, just the typing up of what was just seen here. 73960 words, four

hundred on a Saturday morn here. The best words, all of the best words here. Oh wait, no, those

are Trump’s apparently here, so he claims, so he claims here.

1048.

And still another thing here, the weight has to be watched ah watched here.

1049.

A trek outside, the gym, just coming back though, no gym, too rainy outside, better to

just stay put here. Weather is way too drizzly dreary and dark, we cannot handle that much of

odds here. Besides, it is a Saturday morn next to noon here, everybody who is anybody is out

here, the weekend crowd that streams into town here from the ‘burbs, better to just stay in and

type up the master piece here and work some more on reading the other masterpiece here, Anna

Karenina here. This came of off, as if there is any comparison between Anna Karenina and what

Roberta here schwafels around here. Egaging of words of texts here. Oh and btw, today is indie

bookstore day, independent bookstore day, April 28 here. April 28, 2018.

1050.

One could go out and take a walk to the local indie bookstore, but we go there anyways a

lot, they have us on file and we do good business with them, apparently, as did our kids here

because even they are on file here, apparently. And they moved away a long long time ago, but

they still are on file here. The local bookstore, huh here.

1051.

319
 79142 here. 11:48. Rain coming down, a tad wetness here. Could read all thru Anna

Karenina or the Alice book or the Dutch book here.

1052.

On the telly, football. Or soccer as the yanks call it here.

It is very cold in here, chilly place. How can that be, it was so warm the day b4 here. Five

oh one, 79142 here. There is a bookstore in Vegas called Writers Block bookstore. Interesting

huh. Anna Karenina is getting along, part five now and we are reading ah reading. While sports

is on, while the ball is tossed around on the green lawn here. And the sports caster talking

incessantly, and the viewers make a lot of noise here.

1053.

Why is it so f. cold here?

1054.

79340 here.

1055.

Welcome back to where u were 14 minutes ago. Well, at least the interface remembers us

here. Roberta watches this movie with the woman who was the girlfriend of Uncle Jessie in Full

House, Rebekka here. It is a movie about a wedding dress mystery here.

106, 1056.

Three twelve PM. A Sunday. Late April. April 27th, maybe? Who knows here?

Wordcount stands @ 79390 here. This is what we did since January here. Roberta writes a book.

320
A novel. A novel that will be finished come June here. A novel that is written in five months.

Jack Kerouac typed up his masterpiece in three weeks. On the Road. If it was today, he could

easily do that. No need to use a paper roll. Any laptop will do here. Technology makes writing

easy. You can type long long books in a matter of time. Well, you can store it in a file on your

computer even if you never ever print it out and show it to anybody here. Even if you do not

share your work with the world here. Usually authors like to say that they put their work into the

world. Roberta has heard this several times. Authors who talk about the timeline of their writing.

And then I thought it is time to put my work into the word. Basically, they are saying that they

reworked the initial draft and that it is now as good as it can ever be. Which is kind of misleading

because a Maxwell Perkins might be there to suddenly cut away half of your words because he is

of the opinion that you are too wordy for this particular publisher. Nowadays you cannot write a

book like Anna Karenina or like War and Peace if you want to go the route of commercial

publishing here. If you want to be published by one of the big five here. You can selfpublish or

you can put your work online but if you want to publish with one of the big publishing houses

then you have to do what they want you to do or else. They will not back up the marketing of this

book that you just produced. Publishing is a business and some person in a high-rise in New

York City makes up her mind that this book will sell or will flop. The person who backs the

publishing here. They look into the future, they guess what will sell. They do not know what will

sell, they can only guess. And it is actually irrelevant if a book sells or not, the main objective is

that it is good here. After all, it is art. And, I know, there is good art and there is bad art but who

is to say what is good art? The New York Book Review. White haired men in Stockholm? Nah,

what do they know. They speak Swedish after all. How would they know what English language

book is good here?

321
1057.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There was a time when everybody who is anybody held

that yellow book in their hands. The one with the dots. And it was a tome, a long long book. The

writer had passed away.

Roberta is not quite sure what she wants to say here, she just types stuff here.

1058.

Two nineteen in the night. Insomnia sets in here.

1059.

The day here. Eight fifty-two in the morning on a Monday, it feels like anymonday.

There was coffee in the mall, and banana bread here. In the market in the mall. The grocerystore

has this teeny tiny Starbucks in the corner and a lot of tables and chairs. You can eat what you

buy in the deli, you can have your own food that you brought from home and prepared in ur own

kitchen, at ur own stove, stuff that u grabbed out of ur very own fridge here. Coffee and cream

and the banana bread slice without walnuts here.

The purchase of mac and cheese, the woman who asks, no bag? Or commands u to not

get a bag. The lady who is very nice and has a slight head tic, which you would not even notice if

you did not stare or see her a lot here.

After this, it is the gym and the stationary bike and the weight which is 184.0 and then it

is 184.6. 184.8. 184.4 and 184.2 and then 184.0. A complaint to the young person at the register

to no awail here. It is what it is. He makes up reasons for the lack of accuracy. It is a mechanical

322
problem and they know it but those scales are five hundred bucks a pop here. So it will always

stay like this until ten years go by and there will be another overhaul in the Y.

And now it is nine in the morn and it is a rainy day here. Monday Monday after Sunday

and rain rain rain. A wet day here, apparently ah apparently here.

80185 here, nice ah nice here.

1060.

So, Roberta sent out one application and she will send out still another one, later in the

month. Or the next month here. Applications have to be submitted. What sucks, is, if you have to

pay an application fee. Applicating should be free here. This one was free, but the other one costs

fifty bucks just for applying, processing fee. Gotta sleep on this, think about it. We should really

concentrate on typing up the great masterpiece here, all free fall, without any hard liquor. Well, it

is nine forty-seven on a Monday morning, on the beginning of the work week here. Roberta’s

work is reading and writing which is a very solitary confimement endeavor here. A shoot in the

dark, apparently. All actors and musicians and visual artsts, they live like this here. No

guarantee, no safety net. Just doing what you do for the sake of it here. Art for art’s sake. Art as

occupational therapy. Art just for itself. It is something like knitting here, nonfunctional knitting.

The luxury of weaving stuff together. That Garcia Marquez guy said something about writing, all

writing is like carpentry. Very well said here, that is why you rock and made an impact in

literature land. The day is dreary, in nine minutes King of Queens wil be on here. We will read

the rest of Ms. Anna here (Anna Karenina) and after that tackle the Alice Network tome here and

the rest of the Dutch book about the 222 schriveners here.

80445 it is it is here.

323
1061.

Insert.

1062.

THE TITLE OF MY BOOK IS Citylife. I am doing a reading from it. An exerpt. Citylife,

yup, that is the final title here. I named and renamed it but in the end I thought that citylife is the

best title for this text here that I worked on and off since January. It could be even part of a

trilogy, citylife numero uno, dos, tres here. Roberta finished Anna Karenina on May first without

even realizing that it is May first. Mayday here. After Roberta finished the book, she watched the

two clips on you tube that show Greta Garbo at the end of the movie. One is the longer version

and one is the shorter one here. Greta Garbo and the train here.

After that, Roberta watched the telly and then she read parts of the Dutch book and then

she tackled The Alice Network which is really good and highly recommendable here.

Today, May second, Roberta ventured out to the art school and then came back here. Her

weight stood @ 184 point zero, mainly because she overdid it the day before here.

80641 words here.

1063.

11:48 in the morning on May 2, 2018. Citylife is a good enuf title here, much better than

the former working titles, Novel One or The story of Roberta here. Citylife, that sounds good

here. She was inspited by the MA of Urban Design, something you can get at the Parson’s

School of Design. Roberta always thinks about getting still another degree, she scours the

324
websites of different places here. Maybe staying in school is not her thing here. Her thing is

typing up different books here. Novels, so to speak. Would-be-novels, that kind of thing here.

1064.

Later on, she will edit this here, but now it is time to watch Friends and have those two

cholocolate eclairs that she got in Secret Garden. Mini eclairs that are a tad too non-sweet here,

they taste more like butter than anything else. They are pretty though and so is the box here. The

lady was very nice, they always are in Secret Garden. All young students between highschool

and college here.

1065.

Writing, huh. The title “city life” came to her while being in the city. Now the problem is,

is it one word or two words here?

1066.

She was actually looking at people coming out of the train staion and going up from the

platform to streetlevel. Many, many people coming out of the underground train here. Citylife in

short here.

1067.

Usually, she does not do this, she takes the bus or the train at times when it is non-

rushhour. But today she used the bus at a time when people commute to work here. It is a totally

different feel here.

1068.

So many different people, persons. Citylife here.

325
1069.

81029 here.

1070.

Now, Mike and Molly here.

1071.

Two and a Half Men.

1072.

80942 here. Five hundred words here. A five-hundred-word piece. That is her output so

far here.

1073.

Laughtracks and chilliness in here. It is cold, even though the sun is shining outside here.

1074.

Two and forty-nine here.

1075.

80 980 here.

1076.

Three and thirty-three. Gotta stick to your diet here. Though technically we had too much

already here. Banana bread slice and coffee with cream. A piece of chocolate from the chocolate

store in the mall downtown here. A sandwich with steak and cheese and egg. Rice and cheese

326
and tomato here. 1600 calories easily here. Some walking. Walking to the bus station. Walking

from train station to art school. And back here. All in all, must be ten thousand steps here. Walk

from bus station back home though in between walking from station to the coffee shop here. No

more walking because there is something like too much walking here.

1077.

81095 words here. One minute to four. Checking out Girardelli Chocolates. The squares.

Sea salt and caramel. Dark. Or Milk with caramel filling. In the drugstore near here.

1078.

Wednesday, btw here. The middle of the week. Why is it called hump day here?

1079.

Roberta used to pen real novels. With fleshed-out chracters. She has to revert to that, go

back to that kind of practice here. And now. Big Bang here. Billy Bob Thornton.

1080.

Still another episode here. Big Bang. A rerun and they are all reruns here.

1081.

The book How to spot a Hipster. Interesting. Quinoa. What exactly is a fixed-gear

bicycle?

1082.

Four and forty-two here. Roberta ponders: She will not land a publisher for this her text.

Or maybe she will. Who knows really here?

327
1083.

81228.

1084.

Camp Nano Wrimo is over. It was all in April here.

1085.

What is cotillion? Dancing in Vienna?

1086.

So still Big Bang here.

1087.

Five in the evening. Well, afternoon. Evening in Boston, according to the telly here. The

eight o’clock news out of Boston here.

1088.

What to write about here? We described the coffee in the morn, the cream that was put in,

the banana bread. The seat near the window. You can put your laptop on the table thingie. That is

what it is for here. You can look out at the cars. That is about it, after that it is off to the gym

here. And after this, it was the bus. In order to people watch and write about it. Which does not

really work here. Nothing to describe, nothing special here. We are officialy out of words here.

Still 20 000 words have to be written though. Well, today it is all about writers block here. The

description of writers block here.

1089.

328
 81401.

1090.

Yes, we are here.

In the old place where we went to school.

They are getting ready for the grad show.

1091.

So, this is the insert that is a copy and paste from the artschool library computer, the one

that she sent to herself the day b4 but that somehow got lost in cyberspace here. First thing in the

morn in the art school, no, I am not a teacher. Kind of surprising, apparently, we have this

teacher thingie going on here, all without ever standing in front of a class of eager learners that

take notes here. Nice ah nice here.

1092.

183 pounds. May 3, 2018. Weather very nice here. Time: 10:56. Sandwich with egg and

steak, banana bread, java jazz. That, btw, is the name of the truffle from the chocolate shop near

the market and the woman who gave Roberta the chocolate piece was called Hella or Helia or

Helga, Roberta coud not make it really out without glasses, they should write those name tag

names big and strong here. In the coffee house you can see it written in big letters on the apron,

that makes it easy 4 people to see the letters here. That is why Starbucks is Starbucks and Purdys

is Purdys here.

1093.

329
 Writing the masterpiece. Masterpieces are non-written, they are penned here. Penning the

masterpiece in May here, early May here. Roberta ponders if May is a month in which

maserpieces can be penned here? The sun is too bright for a masterpiece, apparently ah

apparently here. Today it was all buses and trains and a person reading a book that we do not

know the name of here. He did not show it to Roberta, just opened it and started reading here. A

tattered book, pages, yellowed, overwrought here. Roth was not right, apparently ah apparently

here.

1094.

Eleven oh three, 11:03.

1095 here.

On the radio, this show about the GE musicals here.

1096.

Roberta did not find the Girardelli squares in the drugstore downtown here, not the dark

ones and not the light ones either here.

1097.

81751 here.

1098.

Twelve and forty-four here. Still Friends. Sun shining outside. Ross playing rugby.

Thursday today here. Weekend so near here. Writing ah writing here. the masterpiece that will

not be apparently here. Nothing to describe except of what is on the telly here. Ross trying to get

into the huddle and not being able to do so. When was this episode filmed? Twenty years ago

330
here? It is the episode with Janis and Chandler going to Yemen here. Hi, I need a fake ticket to

Yemen.

1099.

Mike and Molly here.

1100.

81848 here. 1:08 PM.

1101.

So hopefully this will work here. The formatting of the page numbers here. Carl on the

telly and the Holly Robinson woman here.

1102.

One and twenty-nine here. Roberta feels tired. Hardly any sleep in the night here. And

now, Molly and her publisher here. Mike’s Mom. Apparently, it is the rehashing of the last

episode here.

1103.

Kind of funny, watching people on the telly writing while typing up a masterpiece here.

The process of writing here. The problems with the software here. Preview nite will be on

Friday. Though, technically, the art school has nothing to do with her here. We are a writer now,

not the visual artist of yesteryear here. Writing Novel One or the Story Of Roberta or City Scape

or City Life here. The first book of this year here. Maybe we should revisit Keep the Aspidistra

Flying here.

331
1104.

Two more words. 82001 words here.

1105.

Eighty-two thousand words of nothing here.

1106.

Two and a Half Men. Inserting the page numbers never works here.

1107.

Still Two and a Half Men. Two and twenty-two here. 2:23. Watching paint dry.

1108.

82040 words here.

1109.

Reading up about still another historial novel.

1110.

One by a woman with a Dutch name here.

1111.

2:25.

1112.

4:52. Big Bang Theory. Laugh tracks. A rerun as always. Outside, sunniness here. Today

is the first day of Doxa. Documentaries. For ten, eleven days in town here. Kind of like this
332
book. Documenting the everydays of the writer here. Reporting on everything and anything that

comes her way here. The drama of the regular. The drama of the regular. Now there is a catchy

title here. The drama of the regular. When you repeat it, it starts to sink in here. But she is not

quite sure if repackaging this text will saunter her down into publisheddom here.

The word SAUNTER. It was a lot in this article in Western Living that she read in the

mall in the morning after gym. She wanted to throw the magazine out, there is this place near the

play place where you can recycle. In the end she did not throw it out. Brought the magazine back

to the car, by the swan that sat near the door. Made sure not to tread into swan poop here. The

swans are non white, they are beige and brown. Maybe they are not swans, maybe they are

ducks. Why they live on the roof of the mall, nobody knows here. But they do. And now, the

eight o’clock news out of Boston here. Rosenberg, senate director or president here. something

harassement, the agenda of the day here. White House news now. Stormy Daniels. Why is there

so much trivia on the news? Is there nothing more pressing in this country of 300 million? Mere

trivia? What is this, Jerry Springer?

1113.

Hush money.

1114.

Five oh six here.

1115.

Five fourteen. Not so sunny anymore here. There are all these books, staffpicks. Of this

bookstore outta Williamsburg. Or maybe in another part of Brooklyn here.

333
1116.

Staff picks in bookstores here.

1117.

Five fifty-one. Getting iffy outside. The end of the day. The sky is all cloudy here. The

end of the day, the day letting out, brightness over. This is the right time to hang out @ the

bookstore, sorry, the coffee store, the Thursday people streaming home here. The writer hanging

out over there, down there and then coming down here, back here and writing about what she

just saw. Roberta is not that kind of writer, she thinks that she should be able to work on her

master piece no matter what. No need for a muse. Does a plumber need a muse? Nope, does not.

So why should a writer, a poet need a muse? Is there something non-mechanical about writing?

It is the mere putting together of words here. Like hammering a nail into the wall here. Like

working under the hood of a car. Normal plumbers do what normal plumbers do. Which is

actually what is said on the telly here. What a concidence here. funny huh.

1118.

82544 here. five fifty-nine. One minute and six it is here. Waiting for it, there it is. In

New York City’s war on crime… These are their stories.

1119.

One thousand one hundred words here. The work of a workday for a writer here. How

much will anybody pay for this here? We need poets or do we here? They have to write the right

words, pen the right stuff, have the right stuff here.

1120.

334
 An ad for dog food, one for Greek yoghurt here. Allergies. Lysol. Roachkill. SC Johnson.

1121.

The crime story here. Inside of the police station here. Davidwache. Precinct. They are all

the same the world over. The one in Chicago with Mike and Carl here.

1122.

6:09.

1123.

82669.

1124.

So, back at the keyboard. One day in between keyboard stunts. Maybe half a day. Twelve

hours or so. Sleep, recharging of batteries here. A trek to the coffee house at seven. Parking the

car in the place near the community center. Two hours to go out and go to the gym downtown.

The weight sucks. 183.4. The day before, this stood at 183 lbs correctly. Now what did we eat

that made this into 0.4 lbs more? The BMI has changed, ever so slightly. Gone up. Two hundred

grams or so. That is quite a lot here. Nothing miniscule here. Half a kilogram or so, give or take

some here. We did not have anything fattening. No sugar except for the cubes with tea. Maybe

that is what did her in here.

82803 at ten and two minutes here. She has steak and egg sandwich, from downtown

here. brought it all back hone here on the bus. The person next to her said something, did he want

the sandwich? Sorry, is mine here. get your own sandwich, you bum here.

335
 The writing ah the writing. Roberta looks into the window of the bookstore. Her book

will be there, eventually. Just keep on writing and typing and querying here. Maybe start to make

this into a story here. Try being drunk, poetry books, poems by drunkards always sell. Nobody

knows why, but they just do here. The idea of being out (-side) of this world, in a hallucinatory

state, total exscapism from the worries of this world here.

Today in the eve it will be industry nite at the art skool. Only by invitation, really? Is that

how u play this now here? Nobody wants to look at those works here, none of those people will

make it as an artist. Roberta did not as of yet here, she is still waiting for her big break that will

never come. It seems like that it seems like that here. The big break that seems to avoid her here.

1125.

She needs gas. The tank is getting empty here. Later, tomorrow maybe here.

1126.

Eleven oh five. King of Queens. They are all in a video store. Relict from the past here.

Now cut to Spence and Deacon and Doug on the sofa. Watching TV. Trilogy of Gruen. Outside

weather so so here.

1127.

Eleven twenty-six.

1128.

A commercial for one of those seats that help you go up and down the steps. They had

one of those in this diet place in downtown here.

1129.

336
 The sun is shining in nyc. 26 degrees Celsius. And here the weather is soso, not wet, but

still strong overcast. Temperature 13.

1130.

83120.

1131.

Welcome back. So the software tells yer. You left off eight minutes ago here. Typing up

the master piece here. In-between surfing the web. Looking at a picture of a bike in front of a

storefront. On the telly, the mypillow guy. 83165 words here. Five hndred words here. Five

hundred on May fourth.

1134.

Two Broke Girls in the laundromat.

1135.

Eleven fifty-four. In six minutes, Friends. Bingewatching and the description of

bingewatching here.

1136.

Friends. The coffee place. Coffee shop. Ross and Emily. Chandler. Laughtracks. Before,

there was Paternity Court. Flipping thu the channels. Josh and Rachel. And writing on here

writing on here. Finding inspiration by flipping thru channels here. Gotta go out into the real

world in order to be able to write a coherent story here. Gotta do this gotta do that here. The

surprise party again. Rachel trying to vow Josh here. You know the episode here.

337
1137.

83277.

1138.

Just describing the ads on the telly here. No drama. The sandwich was good, though it

has salsa in it. Steak and egg and cheese and salsa. Or something else that is too spicy here.

Something savoury here. Piquante. Let us name it salsa here.

1139.

Bookstagrams are fun. Let us look thru them. What other people are reading here.

Roberta still has to finish The Alice Network here, some two hundred words here. Rachel and tne

cheerleader costume here. Works every time.

1140.

Rachel is my girlfriend. As spoken by Gunther. To Emily.

1141.

Seven sixteen, nope, seven seventeen here. The news out of Chicago here. Suddenly it

became more sunny outside here. 83393 words here. The writing goes on here. Reading The

Alice Network, still one hundred words left here. Should be done once it gets dark here.

1142.

Seven twenty-four. Just documenting the passage of time here.

1143.

338
 Watching paint dry. The lack of drama, motion here. On the telly a man in front of a map.

Weather ah weather here. Aljazeera here.

1144.

Seven fifty-two. What to write about here? Weather going down, so near to dawn here.

sorry, dusk. The day coming silently to its end here. Scanning images on Instagram, there is a

Franzbroetcheneis in this Eisdiele in St. Pauli here.

1145.

Five minutes to eight here.

1146.

Docu about Mars.

1147.

The sunny day here. Sunny sunny sunny Saturday. What to do but write. Weight pretty

good, 182.2. Wordcount: 83525 here. 83525 words. On a Saturday in spring. 12:41 in the

afternoon. Date: May 5, 2018 here.

1148.

Two thirty-eight on Saturday. Sun shining, Big Bang on the telly. Time to roam thru the

nice weather, much better than sitting in here and typing up the master piece here. Maybe later,

the trek down to the opening. Openings are always fun here. Too much red wine, that kind of

stuff here. Tipsiness in public, in a place where everybody is slightly loaded here. Maybe not, we

can go there at other times here.

339
1149.

Listening in to the valedictorian at the art school. A woman with an Aussie accent, maybe

New Zealand here. Kiwi.

1150.

Writing, writing here. Finished The Alice Network, read about this book that she just

finished here. Apparently, that is how it works here, Roberta reads books and forgets what it was

all about the minute she puts it down here. No good or maybe that is how it should be if you try

to be a writer yourself here. You start skimming what others write here. Just let it work its magic,

kind of influencing the subconscience here In order to be able to spit out all the right words here.

The process of art fabrication is kind of iffy, very fragile, very unordered here.

1151.

83747.

Some two hundred words here. Nothing special. Less than the usual two thousand words

here. maybe she really should venture out again. Mining the world for ideas, for inspirations

here. asking the muse what to do work about here. ah the block of the writer here. always out of

ideas, never outta ideas here.

1152.

Now somebody on the telly talking about the windstorm in Ontario. An eyewitness.

1153.

340
 The only thing we remember here from watching the convocation ceremony on live

stream were the three screams by Rebekka Belcarra. That was funny and rememberable. The rest

just whooshes together here.

1154.

We might still go down to the opening ‘cause, let’s face it, openings are fun. What else is

there to do? Watching reruns? Nah. We do that all week long here.

1155.

Nine twenty-three. An evening in May. The first weekend here. Roberta was at the

opening. Interesting, huh. And tiring. Quite a trek down there. Three hours bus, train and

walking around the exhibit here. Time to go to sleep here. Roberta is up since five in the morn

here. It is now ten in the evening. 83938 here. Four hundred words, that is all of the output here.

Not enuf here. Two thousand is the minimum here. Maybe sitting inside and typing is the way to

go here. Not living life, so you have stuff to write about here. And maybe fiction is just not her

thing, non-fiction is the way to go here. There was this list or moreso these two lists, one for

fiction and one for nonfiction. Characteristics of both. The gist of this comparison of both fiction

and nonfiction was that they are essentialy both the same. Kind of here.

1156.

The day that the marathon was on here. The one on Forty-ninth. Thousands of runners

from 65 countries. But we did not get there in time here. Pics on the news. The blue signs along

the route. One after each kilometer. 4 and 5 and 6 and 7, maybe 8 and 9. The pictures of runners.

The helpers on the bus, all young kids. All looking at their phones. Or talking to each other.

341
Holding signs. The aftermath of the big run. The getting ready for the big run here. The

policeman who says it is on till 4. He was wrong, all is over at ten in the morn here.

The healthy food at Whole Foods. The weight which stands at 180.4 or 180.6. More like

180.6 here. This is what total exhaustion gives yer. Hurting knees and lesser fat here. Yay ah

yay. The BMI, the BMI here. Sunburnedness here.

1157.

One thirty-five here. More words ah more words here. Knees are hurting but we want to

run next year. A marathon here. If we start training now here…

1158.

Five and twenty-seven. May 5, 2018. 84244.

1159.

Two and a Half Men.

1160.

Eight twenty-six here. Twenty-seven. Columbo here.

1161.

The teacher from Head of the Class. The second one. Here in Columbo.

1162.

Five forty-nine. May 7, 2018. Afternoon. Sun shining still, shadows on the greenery

outside. A checkered green world. Green and shadows. Looks as if it is all a green and black

342
world. Not a black and white one, but a black and green one. The white is green here, the lighter

colour is the green instead of the white here.

1163.

The weight is not good, but it has to get better here. Roberta feels like barfing, feels

nauseated here. Her food intake was inadequate here, too much sugary treats. That will make yer

sick eventually here. She walked too much and exercised too much and was online too much

(trying to figure out her phone). Everything too much here. Overdoing it cannot be good,

especially when you hardly slept here.

1164.

84395 words here.

1165.

Four minutes to six.

1166.

Listening to this woman who is doing a reading in the New York Public Library, though

Roberta does not know if it is the building on forty-second street, the one with the two lions in

front. On both sides of the steps, one on each. Yup, that building, the iconic one. We will google

it at a later time, see if the lecture, the talk, the reading, whatever you want to call it, was done

there or in another midtown room here. Location location location, the more famous the place,

the more important the words become just by virtue of association, if you talk about what you

have written in that building, then it follows that your writing must be good or at least good

enough here. She talks about “my character”, the character in her book, madame protagonist here

343
or should we say mademoiselle protagonist here. My character, Roberta ponders who her

character is, she basically writes about herself here. Writer and subject morph into one, nobody

knows where the one ends and where the other starts here.

1167.

Seven and thirty-six here.

84575 words. Some three hundred words, that is today’s output. What with all of the

exercise here. Maybe she should rest more, rest and recover. She feels totally pooped here. There

is no other term to describe this here.

1168.

Maybe having a cheese donut is ok here. A cheese something. It was laying in the display

in the li’l place next to the market down the street here. A cheese slice maybe. Ah, a cheese dish,

yup, that is the name here. Cheese Danish and peppermint tea. This loblaw place is really nice.

Sunniness outside. The chairs are muiticlored. There is a feel of being in a nursery, preschool,

that kind of decor. There are bikes outside, the Vancouver-equivilant of citybike here. so nice ah

so nice. Two women scold a young girl, politely. Scolding nonetheless. The woman behind the

counter has stripes on her sweather. And now it is Friends, Monica and Chandler, Joey here.

Now all the gals are in the weddingdress place here. Monica tries on Emily’s dress here. Laugh

tracks here. Ms. Walton. We are closing. And can I have my ring back? So, we had coffee and

banana bread in the morn, we had tea and cheese Danish in the market. We sat in this place

downtown and had a chocolate piece, in the shape of a maple leaf, beige here. The bookstore and

the new book, two new books here. Reading up to page thirty here. Nice book, it seems here.

344
Glasses from the drugstore, 2.25 here. It is merely twelve and Roberta is awake since eight and

ten here. Birthday, apparently, here.

84844 words here.

Laugh tracks here.

Three hundred words she put down. Somebody will publish these, has to. Beg a lit agent,

market yourself here.

1169.

May ten. Twelve and thirty-six. 84875. 182 pounds. Cold in here. The day before, sun,

now rain. Not quite but overcast. On the telly, Friends. The episode after Ross said, I take u,

Rachel. The aftermath. Still the party, but the commotion. Emily locked herself in but then split.

Ross said my name. (Rachel).

1170.

A new book, How to Stop Time. The day before, this dessert, Fool, in the Espana place

on Denman here.

And the day before.

1171.

12:41.

1172.

84952, the movie at SFU. Part of Doxa.

1173.

345
 Too much food these days, gotta go back to 180.

1174.

Hardly any writing these days here. Casino and airport, bus drives, many of ‘em. Malls,

three of ‘em. New Starbucks here, with a view of the beach. New places, huh, new places here.

That is good for writings or confusing maybe. Too many different divergent stimuli here.

85019 here.

This is where we stand after five months here. Five since January first here.

The life of a writer ah the life of a writer here.

1175.

Monica and Chandler discussing if they still are in London here. I think, u are absolutely

delicious. The woman from Absolutely Fabulous to Ross here.

1176.

Come on, bugger face.

1177.

Chandler and Monica, technically still over international waters.

1178.

Ross and acting. He talks to Chandler. About his career here.

1179.

Viarail and Amtrak.

346
1180.

Tomorrow it will be another sunsplashed day in Boston. Do you have a case of fomos?

Fomos. Fear of missing out of sausage or smoked sausage bun, it is an ad by Dunkins here.

Sunsplashed and fomos, this is what feeds lit here, everything that splashes over the telly here.

Five oh six, sunniness outside here. A Thursday, a Thursday here.

1181.

A player in a man bun.

1182.

Pick up where u left off ten minutes ago. Looking at colorful pics of this glass artist.

Beaut. A watertower made of glass shards. Yay ah yay here.

1183.

A tulip place in Boston. Ok, Rhode Island His accent, Dutch. Wicked Tulip Farm. Tulips

ah tulips here.

1184.

Writing ah typing here.

1185.

Three thirty-one. May eleven. Weight 183 lbs. Had a bananaloaf and coffee. Not the

whole banana loaf though. Read about literature for four hours in the library of the community

college on forty-ninth on the third floor here. Different books. Skimmed thru ‘em. There was

another person sitting at the reading station, behind the partition. There was not much light at the

347
station. A woman was in the elevator who told Roberta that she was up since six in the morn.

Too much information here, lady. Roberta did not divulge since when she was awake in the

morn. Top secret here.

The gym, she did not do anything there. Just weighing, just the step on the scales here

and the bad news. Where did three pounds suddenly come from here? Now we have to skip

meals here, apparently here. It is a Friday, this week, there was too much eating going on here.

On Sunday we were three pounds lighter than this here, on the day of the marathon. Or at least

that is how it felt here. Maybe even on the day of the marathon we weighed too much. The

always changing one. The everchanging weight distribution here. The fat cells that swell and

decrease. Apparently, Roberta has no clue about basic physiologie here.

85444 words here.

Cardiology talked about on the telly here. Heart attacks in young adults. Go see your

doctor. Prevention is key. That kind of stuff here. Whatever happened to no size fits all. Every

body is different. There are people who abuse their bodies and live to a hundred. And others who

watch every bite they put into their mouth and die at age forty. How does this work, how does

this really work here? Cooking with Vera on the telly. Who is Vera here? Vera in Los Angeles

apparently.

1186.

Roberta has to be in here now. Waiting. Till six maybe. After that she can do whatever

she feels like here. Going out again. But, if push comes to shove, she was ouside from eight in

the morn to two in the afternoon. Six hours. Or maybe a tad less. Because when she was in the

mall it was nine thirty. So maybe from nine to two. Not nine to five, nine to two. Five-hour

348
workday, not eight-hour workday here. A writer who runs after ideas, inspiration, that kind of

stuff. It is all about research. But you cannot just do research and not produce anything here. You

have to pen two thousand words per day, ideally here. Read one hundred pages, ideally here.

This week, we did this three-hundred-page long book already and the rest of the other novel here.

But maybe consuming too many novels is not even good. Maybe reading about novels is better.

What the profs have to say about writing. Then again, they just classify what others have done.

Lots of ’em though do both, categorize other people’s work and produce work themselves. All

the Creative Writing programs are peopled with published writers, though this is actually a new

thing here. A very new development that started about 1980. In the last century, yup, the last

three decades here. And we do not necessarily have better writers, we have more timid writers

who cannot really utter anything because they are afraid that what they say might be construed as

politically incorrect. Political correctess and good writing. those two are mutually exclusive here.

At least that is how it seems, apparently ah apparently here.

1187.

On the telly, Modern Family. Seems that there are no laugh tracks which is kind of

annoying here. How can you break out ointo roaring laughter when there are no cues about when

you have to laugh here? Seinfeld and Friends is better, there you know when you have to laugh.

That is why Al Bundy is just better, that is why Married… rocks here. It is all ‘bout the

laughtracks, apparently apparently here. The Office and Modern Family, they are too timid, they Commented [na8]:

do lack the most important thing a sitcome sports. The laugh track here. You need the feel that

you are part of an audience even though it is a made-up audience. The illusion of fellow watchers

here. After all, even the telly is a flat screen, theses are not real people on a stage. Roberta

ponders if she should go downtown and watch a movie, but apparently there is no time here. The

349
doxa films are still ongoing here, somewhere she has the coupon thingie here. The two-dollar

attendee pass. Now, it is The Middle here.

1188.

Four thirty-eight. 85999. 86000.

1189.

Four thirty-nine.

1190.

On the telly, Mom. Ten thirty-seven in the evening here. Roberta had a shot of whiskey

and a shot of vodka here. Or maybe a mere teaspoon of each here. Some cheddar. Meat. And

almonds. A gherkin. Ten and thirty-nine here. Listening to Creedence clearwater revival. They

hail from El Cerrito. Who would have thought. She lived for a year just next to the El Cerrito

Bart Station and never knew who El Cerrito’s favorite sons were. Wow. And then we listened to

Christiane Amanpour and Ronan Farrow. Listened to Norman Finkelstein and his publisher at Or

books. Yup, this is what you can do, sit and be entertained by the laptop and by your smartphone

and of course the telly here. She feels like ice cream. Going down to the market and get a big tub

of vanilla and just dig in here. But, hey, it might be Friday but better to stay in here. Tgif, yeh,

we are not that good at driving in the dark here. Just stay in, just stay put. It is late, yup, way too

late here to venture out. She could read but TV is just easier here.

1191.

86200 words here.

1192.

350
 A book about an art student. A novel. Maybe an accusatory one. A comment on the state

of art education and its shortcomings. An idea for a novel here.

1193.

On the telly, vol au vent. Stephen Colbert here. Chef Daniel.

1194.

Eleven fifty-nine here.

1195.

86250 here.

1196.

After sixteen hours here. Sixteen hours of non-writing and now the rest of the no-story

here. A book about apartheid. She is on page thirty or so. We can walk around the

neighbourhood, a stroll, good for the body here. Or we can type up the masterpiece, two

thousand words of masterpiece-worthy words here. On the telly, Big Bang, the credits at the

beginning. Is it called credits if it is at the beginning, the start-up here? outside, sunniness, it is

the day before Mother’s Day here. Sunniness and shades, four and thirty-four here. For dinner, a

sandwich with cheese, tea, peppermint, the rest of the one from the trip down to the coffee place

here. The gym was not good, back at 183 here. Gotta whittle that extra weight down here. Found

the document after all, after rummaging thru all kinds of nooks and crannies here. In the end

voila, found the easter egg here. That is how it is, an easter egg hunt here. Everytime you are

looking for something misplaced here. Or do not remember the place you put it here. Though in

351
this case, somebody else put it there, so you have to try to figure out where they put it here. Get

into the mind of another person here.

On the telly, Amy, Bernadette and Penny here.

1197.

One day, she will get this snackpack at the coffee place, the one with the cheese and

apple pieces here. The wedges of brie or camembert in there, with the rind and its a tad dried-out

rind here.

1198.

Four thirty-nine here.

1199.

86519 here.

1200.

Five fifty-six. May eleven here. Sorry, may twelve. Evening leaning into afternoon. The

walk to the coffee house and back. Too much on these knees. Thirty minutes of stroll is too

much. Gotta lose weight. A piece of chocolate in the chocolate place. White maple truffle.

Mmmmh. And before that, a mini-eclair in Secret Garden here. Sunniness and lots of people.

Too many really. The village that suddenly is Times Square. So many people in the Secret

Garden. All the people getting a heads-up on Mother’s Day here. Partying the night before here.

And it is a thirteen here.

1201.

352
 We could have wine, but we will not. No wine and no mimosa, no bellini at brunch here.

1202.

Money train on the telly. Columbia pics presents. NYC in winter. Wesley Snipes, Woody

Harrelson, J-Lo. Gotta watch it here.

1203.

Four oh eight on Mother’s Day. May the thirteenth. Not a good day for Mother’s Day

here. Thirteenth. Twelve plus one third of the month here. But it is Mother’s Day. The woman

gave her an extra piece of cake, apparently, they give it to everybody here. The extra piece all

with a pink bow around it that has the name of the place written thereon. “Thereon” is better than

“on it”. Pink bows like that have letters written thereon. Everything in that place is so dainty. So

much more dainty than anyone will ever be. Nobody is that dainty here.

1204.

We will type up stuff here. In the end it will gel into a book. A novel here. One with a

beginning and an end. A middle part. Somebody asked Roberta if this is a “stream of

conscience” work. Not really, stream of conscience is so yesterday. When stream of conscience

was a new thing. Now - it is another century here. This is not the time between World War One

and World War Two. This is the beginning of a new century. Actually, it is eighteen years into

the new century here. Eighteen years. Last year, at this time, they were wrapping up the first

World War. This century is better. No World War. As of yet here. knock on wood. Seems we

have grown up as a species here. There is the Hague, even if it kind of stolpers along here,

stumbles along. It still is working somehow here.

353
1205.

There are lots of different interest groups. Apparently here. Maybe that is what Roberta

should pen her novel about. Life in the 2018’s. The specifics. Not necessarily from a political

viewpoint because politicians come and go. More from a standpoint of yelp and Instagram. More

from a standpoint of Instagram stories here.

1206.

Writing a book. It is what we do here. Everyday bookwriting. Typing up a story or maybe

a nonstory. It is all about pushing down squares on a laptop here. Yup, why not here.

1207.

Five in the afternoon. 87011 words. Weight, maybe 182 pounds. Actually, 181.8.

1208.

Ten forty-three in the nite. Survived Mother’s Day. In one piece here. Woke up @ eight

and it is now eleven in the nite here. Awake since eight and it is eleven. A fifteen-hour day. A lot

of things have happened. A fully packed schedule here. Fifteen hours of, well, nothing really.

Jampacked, that is how it seems here. Gym, another gym, coffee house, reading. Cooking too.

Shopping. Hanging. Watching Columbo. Talking on the phone. A lot. We did not really do

anything here but Roberta’s head is swimming.

1209.

One thirty in the night. May 14, 2018. One thirty in the morning. One thirty after

midnight. Insomnia is gripping her. She will not be able to sleep, not yet, that is. She tried, but

became ever more agitated. Sometimes this happens. There is nothing one can do but give in to

354
what the body dictates here. You cannot fight it, cannot will yourself to sleep when you are wide

awake. Might as well go with the flow here. On the telly, this lifestyle show called THE

GOODS. All they do, is talk nonsense. A very light-hearted morning show that for some weird

and strange reason is now on at one and thirty-four in the night here. Who watches this at this

time here? All the other night owls apparently here.

1210.

Roberta is reading thru her old documents. They are actually quite good here. Well, some

suck and some are good here.

1211.

Two thirteen in the nite. 87260 words. Weight: Who knows, your guess is as good as

mine here.

1212.

87280 words here.

1213.

Two nineteen here.

1214.

Two twenty. These seem to be the main characters of this novel, the days of our lives. Or

more so. The minutes here. Watching time go by and commenting on this here. A mom who has

triplets. An ER physician. This is the third time they show this today here.

1215.

355
 Tales from the ER.

1216.

Getting the yips.

1217.

Not much writing is going on these days here. Some reading, this book about apartheid.

Or, that happens in the aprtheid era. It is a slow slog. And we know how it ends. So that is why it

is kind of a bummer here. That is the problem with all historical novels, you know the outcome

already. It is all hindsight and that is why it is subperboring here. Nothing ever happens here.

1218.

Listened to music on the iphone, which is annoying because it uses up all of the power

here. The weight is great, 181.2. How can we stabilize that here? Gym, coffee house, mall and a

walk around the neighbourhood. Dropping off trash in different bins here. Too much exhaustion,

now we gotta sit in here and just type up stuff. No more moving around, no more motioning

around. Just the typing up of the masterpiece here which is, well, kinda boring here. There are

better things to do. Lots of dishes waiting to be washed and the laundry has to be folded. The

weather is way too nice to stay in and do chores here. Banana loaf and Cheese Danish and tea

and coffee and a piece of chocolate and two or three pieces of potato, the rest of the veggie

medley from Sunday here. One and twenty-nine here, May 15, 2018, 87575 words here. Gotta

pack the suicase, going on a trip here.

In two days apparently here. the day after tomorrow here.

356
 Roberta feels like still one more time go down to the art school to see the grad exhibit but

there is no time and the exhibit will be over once she is back in town here. Ah might as well

might as well here.

1219.

She could keep on writing here and bring this up to ninety thousand words here. Two

thousand and forty words, that is all we need here. She feels like a sugar cookie, maybe later in

the day we will skedaddle down to Butter here and get one. Driving would be better, we have

done the three thousand steps already, easy here. Ten thousand, sorry, that is way too much. That

is for people with a great BMI, not for fatties like yours truly here. There is this guy who always

walks thru the neighbourghood, but he basically just walks a little, not even around the block, he

is way too big to pull it off. Though it seems he is now half the size he used to be here. He has a

tiny dog and walks that one. But is seems as if he was big and now he is regular-sized here, just

slightly overweight here. Over-average. Thinking about weight, our favorite pastime here.

1220.

The writer of this Vanity slash Bonfire book. RIP.

1221.

One and forty-six. 87819. So near to 88 thousand. What to write about here? Roberta

feels hungry, even though we had a cheese Danish from the coffee place in the mall. She knows

one of the baristas, went to the community college on forty-ninth. The other one who gave her

her food, he always has a smile, something is always funny. A happy barista, always happy here.

1222.

357
 Roberta got rid of all the Styrofoam containers and the rest of the Loblaw macarons that

were disgusting here. Now it is mere dish washing here, the doing of the dishes. The poetics of

the dishes. The romance of dirty dishes. The rest of the dishwashing liquid, soap diluted with

water here. Maybe it is not potent enough to cut thru the grease here. Let us see what is on the

telly here. Mike and Molly still here. Roberta listened a lot to music here but it got boring here.

Better to work on the novel here. The novel that crystallizes silently here. A memoir maybe. A

journal. A log.

1223,

Vignettes. Yup, the vignettes of her days. Days of our lives, that kind of stuff here.

1224.

88073 words. It is end of May, well, more like mid-May here. And we did eighty

thousand words here. Technically not quite here, but you, dear reader, get the grift. Roberta

listened to Creedence Clearwater Revinval, Hildegard Knef and others here. In the Year 2525.

Catchy songs. The House of the Rising Sun, boy, does he have a great voice here.

1225.

Two and a Half Men and laughtracks. This is not like the cheque you gave me for the

field trip to Catalina here?

1226.

Two and fifty-one. 88101 words here. The amazing novel in May. Not exactly a novel.

Novels have more than one characters. Not just one person. One fictional character named

Roberta. Her problems with being a writer. Walks to the mall. Drives down to the coffee house.

358
The watching of what is on the telly. Somehow even Roberta knows that there has to be more

than this. Drama, action, that kind of stuff. A quest or something. Three parts, thesis antithesis

synthesis. There are different ways to do stuff, more than one way to ride a horse here. To put the

saddle on the horse. Or whatever the saying is here. Why are we talking about horses anyways

here?

1227.

88218. Two fifty-seven. Near to ninety thousand at three on a day in May here. Chances

are, there will not be a booktour here. Publishers these days. They want stuff sith substance.

More substance than this, apparently here. Some message or something. How do we do this?

1228.

There are writing programs. They teach you how to construct a story. At least they

pretend to do so. But in the end, Roberta here has to do the work. And maybe those writing

programs will destroy her talent. The outcome will be way too glib. Too mechanical here. The

glitches, those are important in art. It is not something you stamp. You are not supposed to cater

to the tastes of the day. To a predictable audience. You are not cooking in a restaurant here. You

are forming something new. Something like that, something of that kind here. Two Broke Girls

here.

1229.

88370.

1230.

Four minutes after three on a Tuesday afternoon in May of 2018.

359
1231.

Han in the restaurant.

1232.

Lars von Trier and massive walk-outs in Cannes. Disgusting film or something here.

1233.

Still dishes waiting to be washed here. Roberta had a gherkin and some meat that she

defrosted. The meat does not taste good here. Ketchup, maybe, mustard. Feta. Almonds. A sugar

cookie would be nicer here.

1234.

The weight is important. The BMI. Body Mass Index here. Gotta stay on 181.2. and go

down from there. End goal: 125 pounds. Yup. Keep your eyes on the ball here.

1235.

Slimness. Health. Slimness et.al.

1236.

88477.

1237.

Roberta had a whole tablet of Rittersport Milk Chocolate the day before. And cheddar.

1000 calories of chocolate here. And still we lost weight. How does this work here? Nobody

really knows here.

360
1238.

88513.

1239.

Still Two Broke Gals here. A rerun here.

1240.

The House of the Rising Sun. She listens to it. Who knew that the lyrics were about new

orleans here? So was Proud Mary. Over X-mas, Roberta was in New Orleans here.

1241.

Three nineteen. 88599. This is coming along here. We will round this up to 90 000 in no

time here.

1242.

An ad. Tylenol. The first chords of the Animals on Ed Sullivan here. And the sounds on

the telly here. All kinds of noise pollution here. My father was a taylor. Sorry, apparently that

was the mother, the father was a gambler down in Nola. The only time he is satisfied is when

he’s all a-drunk. Drinking and music, drinking and writing here. Stories of drunken escapades

here. There was this writer who wrote about her drinking here. Liquor, that is what writers write

about here. Anything out of the ordinary here. Liquor and poetry, liquor and writing. The

romance of that kind of lifestyle, apparently here.

1243.

361
 Hard liquor and writing, and books here. Once more, The Animals. Oh, please, don’t let

me be misunderstood. Gotta get out of this place here.

1244.

The music does its own thing here. Introducing The Animals. Another song. Something

with The City. Gotta get out of this Place.

1245.

If it is the only thing I ever do.

The last thing we ever do.

1246.

88750 words here.

1247.

Somehow the music is playing by itself here.

1248.

In the old times, type writers did not do music here. But this typing machine sure does its

own thing here. The chords we know, The Mamas and The Papas. California Dreaming.

Stepping into achurch… songs from so long ago here. Classics, whatev. Long before people used

to say WHATEVER here.

1249.

88816.

362
1250.

Another Mamas and Papas song. My baby something here.

1251.

TV characters that lived totally beyond their means. And now The Monkees, I am a

Believer. The laptop and its entertainments here.

1252.

18851.

1253.

No more telly. Just the songs on the laptop, the random ones here. Sugar, Honey, Honey.

Well, at least, we know all the songs here. Even though it is not quite clear where they are

coming from here. The machine does its own thing here. And the volume is pretty low, maybe

because all of the oldies have now problems with their hearing apparently here.

1254.

Molly is the singer in a band. Obladi oblada.

1255.

Three forty-eight here.

1256.

Life goes on.

1257.

363
 Desmond and Molly Jones.

1258.

88942.

1259.

Beatles, apparently here.

1260.

I never find another You. (part of a song here).

1261.

88959.

1262.

Four fifteen here. Sunniness outside of here. In here, typing and TV. A commercial for

Ford. Memorial Day Sale. Big Bang Theory here. And an ad for allergy meds.

1263.

Four and eighteen here.

1264.

88996.

1265.

Two more words. 89007.

1266.
364
 One thousand words. That is all we need here. To finish up a day’s work. For her it is

more about the quantity, the ammasment of words, anywords here.

1267.

Wordcount counts. The ability to string sentences together.

1268.

Four twenty-seven here.

1269.

89047.

1270.

Fast words here. Finishing this up. Writing about writing. The Gotham Workshops. The

ones that take you from being a greenhorn up to a full-blown novel writer here.

1271.

Four and forty-six. Reading through a list of most expensive TV-shows. Actors who

make a million per episode. Ah, what is a mil here?

1272.

89102. 89103.

1273.

A hailstorm in Connecticut. Thunderstorm in Boston. So the telly.

1274.

365
 A methlab. Now this Carson Tucker guy here. Fox News, not necessarily what we

usually watch here.

1275.

89134.

1276.

Five oh eight here. Still afternoon.

1277.

Tom Friedman and Anderson Cooper. Tom Friedman has not aged at all. He looked

exacty the same some fifteen years ago here. So did Anderson Cooper, btw here.

1278.

89172 here.

1279.

Cambridge Analytica. T-mobile. Commercial.

1280.

89180 words here.

1281.

A Geico ad. The one with the people who mow. An ad for Claritin. Hayfever time,

apparently still here. An ad for Buick.

1282.

366
 Five fifteen.

1283.

An ad for pistachios.

1284.

MSBNC.

1285.

NYC Weather Forecast: When will the Storm arrive?

1286.

Michael Eisner on Michael Cohen.

1287.

Five twenty-one here. Trying to come up with stuff to write about here. These talking

heads seem to never ever be lost for words here. Politics seems like that here? Though they do

not really say anything substantially here. In between either car commercials or medication ads.

Bayer. A woman in red, more like orange red. Ochre. Salmon. What exactly is the term for that

kind of color here? Roberta is pretty sure that the name of this guy here is Michael Eisner.

Maybe not. Michael Isikoff, sorry, that is the name here. The Eisner guy was Disney. Whatever

happened to him here?

1288.

Michael Isikoff just has a book out called (titled) Russian Roulette.

1289.

367
 THE FISH DIES FROM THE HEAD. Nice idiom.

1290.

89358.

1291.

This woman on the telly is very young. Locks and yellow clothes. She looks like a

teenager. The other one looks very grey and knowledgeable. Grey and yellow.

1292.

Describing the visuals on the telly. Not enough for a novel. Documenting the ever-

changing images. No story and decidedly so here.

1293.

Modern Family. You cannot go wrong with Ed O’Neill. Modern Family. Given, Married

with Children it ain’t, but still here.

1294.

Roberta had meat with mustard and almonds. Not really good. Not tasty at all here.

1295.

89447.

1296.

368
 Drinking game. Alcoholism. They said why don’t they invent a drinking game like this

and the other one said, they have, it is called alcoholism here. Zingers. Zingers we don’t really

get here.

1297.

Five hundred words here. Feed ‘em to da machine here.

1298.

Six more words, three, two one and voila, 89500.

1299.

An ad for Swiss Chalet.

1300.

Mc Donald’s. Sitcoms at dinner time, fastfood ads. News channels at dinner time, car ads

and meds. Insurance.

1301.

89530.

So today, Simon and Schuster published fifteen new books. One of ‘em is called Bullshit

Jobs by an anthropology prof at the London School of Economics. Amazon dot com has two

reviews, given, that it came out today here. One of them talks about the original essay which was

a short essay in a magazine called Strife. He apparently was able to make that short essay into a

three-hundred-page long book. So who actually holds the bullshit job here? Who is the

369
bullshitter? But apparently, he is a good writer and maybe that in itself is enough to cement the

argument here.

1302.

18936. The Times review did not really attack the concept of the book but his marketing

genius. He markets himself and his theory. He could use three words to describe his concept, but

he writes a long treatise to make his point here. Let us face it, Marx and Engels did not need to

pen Das Kapital Volume One and Volume Two, Workers of the World, Unite, says it all.

Roberta is pretty sure that Das Kapital was written by only Karl Marx, but lots of times one can

take liberties here for effect.

1303.

On the telly, a new show with the guy who was Rachel’s boss and who said to George

Costanza, do not double dip here. It is called New Girl. Actually, they are bros and then there is a

screenwriter with the same last name too. confusing, huh here. And he was a coworker not a boss

apparently here.

1304.

89790.

1305.

Six and thirty-six. Evening is coming.

1306.

So, this is how we write here. About trivia. On Trivia, now there is a title for a book. A

trivial life. Celebrating the banal here.

370
1307.

89827.

1308.

Once more, Modern Family. The daughter of the Closets Closets Closets guy and the

realtor.

1309.

89844 words here.

1310.

Six forty-four here.

1311.

89851.

1312.

We could still go down to the coffee shop. Use up gas and fork over some two bucks in

order to get a tea here. Or we can just do it in here. The package from Costco with its 500

teabags. Staying in here. Being outside sure has its plusses here.

1313.

89905.

1314.

Six and forty-eight here.

371
1315.

It is funny, the show. On so many levels here.

1316.

Eighty words and we are done here. all in a day’s work. More like typing though. This is

not writing, it is typing. Said Capote about Kerouac. Ah, you can say that about anywriter here.

Derogative comments. Any news is good news. Any publicity is good publicity here.

1317.

Six fifty-two here.

89976.

1318.

89977.

1319.

So, Mani wants to get into Juillard here.

1320.

It will be so difficult without him. But I will always have my special girl. Sofia Vergara

is all queezy smiles but Ed O’Neill picks up the bulldog. Funny, huh here. 90017, yay ah yay

here.

1321.

372
 Ok, the magazine is called Strike and not Strife. It is a feminist colective that publishes

quarterly. The article about bullshit jobs is pretty good, no doubt about it here.

1322.

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Apparently, we are on a fifty years ago trip here. When

we were a tad younger than today here. If it is a song later than 1970, it doesn’t count here. The

phone is singing here, the telly is on and we are typing here. Bliss. Three screens, interacting

with all three of ‘em here. Normalcy is overrated here. So that is why we all have fomo,

collectively here. Proud Mary now. Apparently, there was a monster storm in nyc but when

Roberta talked to an actual inhabitant of the city, the answer was, what, which storm. There ain’t

no storm here. So much for fake news here. Everything is overblown. What with footage and

everything here. Agrandissement. Instant images that actually seem to do lie here. Sensatizing

everything on this planet here.

Scott McKenzie sings “if you are going to San Francisco”. As he did 51 years ago. And

we were around, yup here. And still alive to tell the story (tale) here.

1323.

Mamas and Papas again.

1324.

It never rains in Southern California. Listening in to the song while typing up stuff here.

1325.

Eight forty-one here.

373
 90250 here. On the telly, Seinfeld. The one with the agent. Seinfeld’s agent. The one that

was on The Seventies Show and on Friends here. Outside, so near to dusk here. Another day of

writing, reading and the likes here. Not necessarily good writing but who is counting who is

scoring. Who is keeping tabs here.

1326.

90307. Eight and fifty-two. Kramer at the airport. Nobody hustles Earl Heffernan.

1327.

90320. 8:55. Hopefully 181.2 lbs still here. If the numbers are right, everything is right

here. Her head sure is swimming here.

1328.

We could sure use a tea here.

1329.

Marathon running on Rules of Enagement here. Ten and thirty-seven here. 90362 here.

Still May 15, 2018. Writing ah writing here. And reading too. Halfway thru the apartheidy book

here. Still some two hundred to go here.

1330.

30 390 words here. Seven more words and this stands at 80400, sorry, 90400 here.

1331.

Five more words here.

1332.

374
 Ten and forty-three here.

1333.

Two fifty-nine. Three and May 16, 2018. 181.4, sometimes, 181.6.

1334.

Three fifty-eight in the afternoon, in the pee em. Typing up the master piece here. Doing

laundry and writing here. A cottage industry. This has to be done in an office building. To give it

the luster of respactibility. Words written in an official building have to sound more official.

Holding up under public scrutiny. Being above reproach here.

1335.

Big Bang Theory. The first scenes. The introductory ones, the ones before the Baremaked

Ladies here. And there it is, Our Whole Universe yada yada yada here.

1336.

90514. Sheldon talking ‘bout Stan Lee. So, a mere one hudred words here. That will not

do it for the day.

1337.

On the telly, Seinfeld. May 23, 2018. Yup, there was a hiatus, but we are back here.

1338.

A long day and a hot one at that.

1339.

375
 Eight fifty-three here. Weight up again here. 185. Pounds, that is here.

1340.

Evening coming on all over town here.

1341.

Ten and fifty-one. Evening leaning into the nite here. The person who types and has not

typed for quite some while here. Seven days it has been here. Leaning in to doing this. Babysteps

here. On the telly Dan Lemon and CNN. Sorry, Don Lemon apparently here.

1342.

90633 words here.

1343.

You have to leave your private life behind when writing. The main character is the main

character and not the writer of the words. The writer has to stay invisible here.

1344.

Robert Muller talks.

1345.

RIP Philip Roth.

1346.

376
 The constitution is basically our user agreement. We just read We the People and click

Accept. So Stepen Colbert. Funny stuff here. He obviously talks about Trump and his lack of

knowledge of the constitution here.

1347.

Vodka and water and lemon. Tonic water apparently here.

1348.

Friends. At 12:53 PM. On May 24, 2018. 185 pounds. So now we have to go back and

lose the five pounds again here. The one that we managed to put on on the trip here. Seven days

and five pounds back onto the body here. Five pounds that obstruct the bloodflow. Five pounds

of all of this food and booze here.

1349.

Reading still thru the pink book which is kind of ridiculous. Archaic premises here.

1350.

One and nine PM. Mike and Molly. The second one of the day here. there was the gym

and there was the coffee hpuse. All of it done here. So now, reading it is and writing it is here.

after the seven-day hiatus. Last week at this time Roberta in the airport. Banana loaf, coffee, mac

and cheese.

1351.

The li’l dog in the apartment. Once more Mike and Molly here.

377
 90871 words here. Today it is all about staying put here. Staying put and typing. There

was so much to see in the coffee house. There always is. Alas, once you are back at home, it has

all but vanished here from your memory. Doing trivia quizzes. Laughtracks. Two and a Half

Men here. 90925 here.

1352.

Here both Alan and Charlie are still pretty young here. Alan still tries to win Judith back

here.

1353.

50947, sorry, 90947 here.

1354.

Outside, sunniness but it is much colder today here. Colder than the hot day before here.

No scorcher, a happy mellow day.

1355.

A mere three degrees less but it is a whole different world here.

1356.

Not many words needed here. Six and we are standing @ 91000 here.

1357.

Two minutes to the end of Two and a Half Men. Alan asking Walden to stay, two months

tops. And then he says, I am back.

1358.

378
 The narrative way too thin here. The life of a writer and nothing more. January thru May

and 90 000 words. The shere number of the words. Nobody knows about the substance of said

words here. They impress by the sheer number and only by the number here. Two Broke Girls.

Yup, three in the afternoon. And now an ad for an electric toothbrush with a round top. Oral B,

brush like a pro.

1359.

91106.

1360.

Three oh four.

1361.

There is this pic of an inkpot that says, stories yet to be written on it. Nice ah cute here.

1362.

Eight twenty in the PM. On May 25th. May 26 maybe. Friday, May 25th, 2018 here. lots

of meandering around, coffee, gym, mall. The movie. Bookclub. Jane Fonda et.al.

Forty pages of American Pastoral. He sure has a way with words. RIP. A gifted writer.

Congestive heartfailure. How can that happen to a person? How can your arteries be congested?

Ah we all will die here. of something apparently here. Roberta is tipsy. Rose and now whiskey

here.

1363.

91212 here.

379
1364.

Eleven forty-five.

1365.

Twelve oh three. A new day.

1366.

Four minutes after midnight.

1367.

12:05.

1368.

It’s a Saturday.

1369.

Doing so many things at once. Well, technically you do them one after another. You flip

thru differing worlds here. The coffee place, the gym, the reading of a book, the writing of a

book. The interacting with the neighbours here. So much, so many different worlds here. Nine

thirty-two, it is nine thirty-two. We were at the coffee place at seven ten here. Roberta is tired

already, this is way too much excitement. There is something RunningRoomy going on in front

of the skating place on East Boulevard, down from the Mackadees here. Running Room, people

in running clothes getting ready to run. People who are healthier than Roberta is what with her

184 pounds here. People who can move their body swiftly up and down, pacing thru the world

here. You can do that once you whittled yourself down to bodymass four and have that instead of

380
bodymass index of thirty-four. There is a difference ‘tween different fat amounts (volumes) that

you pack on your bones here. Short distance between skin and bone, not the massive anmount of

fatcells that Roberta here sports. There was a time she was very skinny though even then she was

just regular and not skinny at all. Just a regular slightly chubby kid of five here. Others had

skinnier wrists, that we do remember here. The bony writs of others on this planet of ours here.

Chubbiness, yuh, it has its pros and it has its cons just like everything else here. Chubbiness will

make the wrinkles disappear and skinniness will profile you wrinkles, make them stand out.

Profiligate ‘em, if there is a word like that. Google it, as a woman who writes for a living, you

can always, always google stuff here.

She will be paid for her words eventually here. She will take her wares to market,

somebody will buy this, yup, and make sure that it is bound and put on a bookshelf in a place

like the Brooklyn Artbook Fair which is on just now here.

1370.

Sunday, May 27, 2018. Ahahaha. Nine and forty-two. Maybe the Brooklyn Art Bookfair

is over already, maybe it was merely a Friday and Saturday affair here.

1371.

Seven forty-seven. Forty-eight. Evening so near. But still sunny outside. That time of the

day. Awake since seven in the morn. Full full day. Gym and coffee and Gastown restaurant. Red

wine. Because the woman brought that instead of Rose. The lady here. Chapters and looking thru

the books. Literary crit books. In ten minutes it will be Columbo time. The perfect end to a not so

perfect week here. Too much of hecticness here but it did not do us in as of yet here. But it still is

way too agitating. If you’re a writer, you prefer to sit still and type. You are used to that kind of

381
lifestyle here. Anything out of the ordinary is agitating, wires yer up here. Makes you

insomniacishly here.

1372.

91726 words here. Seven minutes to Lieutenant Columbo here.

1373.

Friends, the one where Rachel and Ross woke up in Vegas still with the marker signs on

face and back. Outside, reluctant sun, maybe more overcast whiteness. Glaring whiteness, the

sun happily shining behind the clouds, illuminating them from within here. It is a buffet, man.

Twelve and thirty-six on a Monday, Memorial Weekend down in the States there. Here just a

regular Monday after Sunday. Dentist at three. April twenty-eight, sorry, May twenty-eight here.

1374.

91811 here.

1375.

183 pounds, btw, here.

1376.

Phoebe behind the wheel. Yelling at Joey who picked up a hitchhiker.

1377.

Groundcontrol to Major Tom.

1378.

382
 150 words and then this will stand at 92 000. 92 000 words from January thru the end of

May here. Five months and 92 thousand words here. That is what we can show for our time on

this planet. Words typed. A book logging in the days, the moments the minutes the seconds of

writing here. The writing life apparently here.

1379.

91907 words here.

1380.

She just checked it, not much weightloss this year of ours here. Gotta speed this up,

apperntly here. Now, Mike and Molly and they too talk about carbs here. No chubby monsters.

1381.

91943 here. Sixty words, sixty eloquent ones for a change here.

1382.

91955 words here.

1383.

One oh three.

1384.

Pink flowers outside here. Nice. An ad for pizza. A party at the top, Pizza Pizza.

1385.

383
 Twenty words here and then we can wrap this up for this Monday and skedaddle down to

the dentist here. 92000, now, how hard was that here?

1386.

One eleven pee em here. Still Mike and Molly here.

1387.

SIX AND THIRTEEN. In the afternoon. On a Thursday in late May here. Wasted. 750

milliliters will do anyone in here. Btw. May 29, 2018. 183 pounds. All these numbers ah all of

these numbers here.

1388.

Time of Manhattanhenge.

1389.

Eight forty-seven. It is actually forty-six but let us face it, forty-seven is such a nice

number, such a poetic one. The seven versus the six. Even if we vote, seven will win hands-

down here. Ovaltine. On Seinfeld. Mentor, mentee.

1390.

Eight and forty-eight here. A Tuesday in late May here. North Van. From seven to three.

1391.

92118 here. Facebook is complicated here.

1392.

384
 Still another day here at the machine. On the telly, King of Queens. Coffee in the morn

and an extra lunch, a NEW sandwich, apple brie chicken. Quite tasty and only 420 calories. The

weight stands at 183. Pounds, that is, imperial. Some stationary bike, some reading, two books at

once. Da Vini Code and American Pastoral. An appointment at two thirty. Dentist again here.

Eleven thirteen in the morn still, Wednesday. May thirty here.

1393.

So Roseanne was cancelled. Just saying. There are issues more pressing, definitely here.

Hollywood and NBC.

1394.

92218. One hundred words. Already here.

1395.

Coconut clusters.

1396.

Still King of Queens. Spenc and Danny scratching. Fleas apparently here.

1397.

Eleven forty-five. Fifteen minutes to noon. On a Wednesday. Penning the most amazing

novel that ever was. Outside, overcast, reluctantly here.

1398.

385
 Two Broke Galz. There still will be Friends. Till one. After that, we can do the

blowdrying thing. But not before. Airdrying will do for now, should do here. Chilliness is here.

Where is summer here?

1399.

Eleven forty-eight here.

1400.

Two and a half more hours till dentist. Cleaning the house for Monday. Ah, boredom

boredom here.

1401.

92322.

1402.

June One. I:44 after midnite. The TV does not work here.

1403.

Nice talk at UBC Robson.

1404.

92341 here.

1405.

The bookexpo at the Jarvits Center.

1406.

386
 June One, National Donut Day. On the telly, The Price is Right.

1407.

John Kerry at the Book Expo. How old is he, btw here?

1408.

Saturday in Vancouver.

1409.

So taking bad pictures and putting them on instagram. One day, Roberta will write a book

about that. Taking Bad Pictures, a nice enough title for a book. When she was in the mall, she

had another title. If you do not write it down that minute, it vanishes. Life is fleeting, ideas are

fleeting. Roberta had quite the day here. It is now six and twelve in the afternoon, she is up and

running since nine in the morn here. Had a piece of cake with coffee and cream. A sandwich for

lunch. A burger for dinner. Fishburger. Filet-o-fish. Her weight stands at 182 pounds. Slowly she

is getting down to 180 pounds. That was her weight before LA. We managed to gain five pounds

on a six-day-long trip, all the booze, all of the food is getting to yer here. But here in town, we

watch each and every bite. Rigorous eating here, very regulated. We eat everything, but portion

control is paramount. There is this Instagram account about “don’t ask me for salad”, the person

whose account it is, she is rail-thin. She is of the persuasion that you can eat whatever you want,

you just have to keep tabs on the whole volume. The volume of the food intake, that is what

counts and only that here. Eat sugar and fat, have vino, but everything in moderation.

1410.

387
 92614 words. May, nope, June second here. Still the year of 2018 here. This week, the

artist talk, in downtown here. UBC Robson Square. On the telly, Ocean Eleven. George Clooney,

dapper as always. At least when he is coming in, from afar, dapper is the right word to describe a

Clooney. At least from afar, in a suit. In a casino in Vegas, in the Bellagio. Some people are like

that, dapper. And they will always be dapper, until the bitter end here. And then, there is the rest

of us mere mortals here on this planet of ours.

1411.

She should cook soup. A soup good enough for the soup nazi.

1412.

Maybe we just need the recipes that elaine salvaged from the armoire here. Three pounds

of portobello mushrooms and the like here.

1413.

We could cut up an onion here.

1414.

You must rememember this, a kiss is just a kiss… Casablanca. Watching Kurt Browning

in Lillehammer. 1994. He even walks like like Humphrey Bogart, Bogey. Ah, Casablanca. Ingrid

Bergman. And he is wearing a white tuxedo and a black fly.

1415.

Two ten. June third. Ocean twelve.

1416.

388
 Tess and Ocean. The Zeta Jones woman behind ‘em.

1417.

Seven forty-eight. So near to the onset of Columbo.

1418.

Rerun of Big Bang. Bingewatching on a Sunday. And writing ‘bout it here. The books are

read, so now it is just da telly here. Roth and Dan Brown. Da Vinci Code and American Pastoral

here.

1419.

92863 words here. Sheldon and Amy.

1420.

Roaring laugh tracks here.

421. Sorry, 1421.

The show with the red sweater. Seven fifty-four here. 181.2 lbs. June 3, 2018.

1422.

180.2 pounds. Yay. On June fourth. In 2018 here. At eight and thirty-five in the morning

here.

1423.

The Irish Times How to write a Book series. Very interesting. More fun than cooking

which does not seem to go anywhere here.

389
1424.

Friends. The one with the Australian roommate of Joey. Elle McPhearson. And

potterybarn.

1425.

So, the Irish Times teaches yer how to pen a book. Just read the parts of the series and,

voila, you are a writer. Next, the trek to Stockholm, yay ah yay here. Acceptance speech et.al. Or

not.

1426.

Six and fifty-nine. Sunniness. June 4, 2018. Weight: 180.2. The goal has been reached.

How long can we stay at this here? Maybe the best thing is to still go down here. That seems to

be the bestest strategy here. How do actresses do it, ballerinas? Airhostesses? Weightlifters?

Athletes? Maraton runners? The people who have to maintain a certain weight or else, they will

lose home and hearth here. Those ones, yep, those ones here.

1427.

93063 here.

1428.

Ever since I wrote my first novel, I started teaching at this community college near my

house. This is what Roberta will say. Sometime in the future. After her debut novel. But at this

time, nope, this is not happening. No five classes a three credits each. Freshman composition.

Creative writing here.

1429.

390
 Nope, maybe Columbia. Princeton. Oxford. Let’s face it, writing you can’t teach.

1430.

93131 here. Seven fifteen. On the telly, Law and Order. Big men fighting. How do you

call the Japanese sport?

1431.

Seven sixteen.

1432.

Actually, do you have any wine? Seinfeld, the pilot.

1433.

Never get engaged.

1434.

You are engaged?

1435.

You’re engaged.

1436.

Eight twenty-three.

1437.

93180.

1438.
391
 Tony awards. On Sunday. It is six and twenty-four. Afternoon. Overcast. Date: June 5.

2018. A Tuesday here. Weight: 180.4 up to 180.8. According to the scale in the gym here. The

one next to the community college on forty-ninth. Where Roberta studied American lit. Coffee

she had in the market in the morn. Not in the coffee house as usual. The Mexican Consulate. The

sandwich with brie. Lots of people standing in line next to the US embassy.

This was her day as of yet here. Now we could write. The great amazingish novel here.

Wordcount: 93278 here. Finally, in June this seems to come to an end here. Half a year for a

journal here. But no novel as of yet. Somebody was quoted in the Irish Times that you should

read to write. The right words will seep in without you even trying, without you even noticing.

You get the feel for the language here.

Roberta finished the Dutch book the day before here. Put it back on the bookshelf where

it belongs. There is another book that she will start reading. Two, actually here. She does not

need to go out and buy more books here. She still has so many many that she has not even

started. Right here in this room. And the other room. Finish what is on the bookshelves right in

here.

RIP Kate Spade.

On the telly, this dance show with J-Lo. World dance something here. Dancing jumping

acrobatics control over yer body here. Jump up and down, pirouettes here. Healthiness here.

1439.

16:37, sorry, 6:37 PM. 93447 here.

1440.

392
 93450. Still June five here.

1441.

Pretty chilly here, even though it is 17 degrees out there, it really feels much colder here.

Too cold for June apparently here.

1442.

Twenty more words, on any subject here. And then this starts standin’ @ 93500 here.

Five more, four, thre, two, 93500, yay ah yay here.

1443.

Seven fifty-one. Some reading up on the writer of Wonder Boys and Telegraph Avenue.

Chabon published his first book when he was twenty-five. And then there was what he wrote in

Vanity Fair or GQ about writing. What are Chuck Taylors, btw. here?

1444.

Seven fifty-four here. Six minutes till George Costanza here.

1445.

Still World of Dance here.

1446.

The writer in the morning. Freshness outside. A look at the salt desert in Bolivia. The one

that appears on her computer, its image here. Coffee in the morn with a reminder on the door that

this place will be open only till eight forty-five the next morn. And sometime in late afternoon

here. So next day, come here soon in the day. And then there was the gym, 179.8. How will we

393
ever manage to maintain this weight here? Go by all of the temptations of the world. Let go of

the Amos Chocolate Chip cookies in the fridge, so very nice and tempting in its bite-sized

package, red and shiny here. Somebody brought it from a long flight on Lufthansa or British

Airways or Air Canada or whichever flight gives yer Amos Cookies in a small red shiny bag,

portion for one here. That is why people are so overweight in this world, so many bitesized food

items here filled up with sugar and grease here. Chocolate chips that go with everything here,

that will and should cure the blues, that make your day ever so nice, a tad fresher here. Sugar and

spice and all things nice. Though apparently that is a misquote here when describing cookie

dough here. Cookiedough which is all brown sugar, molasses here. Cane sugar. It is seven and

eighteen in the morn, a frsh morn, a sunny morn here. A wesdnesday, 33805, sorry, 93805,

words here, Wednesday, June something, June 6, 2018., to be precise here. Ten in New York

citay, seven here on the westcoast, that is how it is, how it is here. Mid afternoon in Zurich

apparently here.

The different time zones of the world we live in, this planet ah this planet of ours here.

The lowly writer, who writes and types away, even though she, technically has nothing to say

here. She does not have what it takes to be a media darling, you have to be any age under twenty-

five here, twenty-five max, that is what you need, to be the darling of publisherland, of

writerland here. As if being younger is better for the words here. Listen to what this person who

has hardly lived a day has to say here. Nope, senior citizens, the ones that get a senior discount,

they should write books, they have ample amounts of time to share their wisdom, write down

what they have learned in a lifetime of wandering all over this planet of ours here. The debut

roman at age eighty here, ninety, maybe. The debut novel apparently here.

1447.

394
 One more word, 94003, it is here.

1448.

Seven thirty-two here.

1449.

Still June, apparently here.

1450.

Seven thirty-three here.

1451.

Three oh nine. Afternoonish here. A long day apparently here. Two to three malls. A

busride. Trainride after trainride here. Driving too. A piece of sandwich, actually two here. The

giving back of two wine bottles. Ten cents. Ten per piece. Now, the telly, stuff about Michael

Avenatti. Who is that, you ask. Some lawyer apparently here. Three, no, four talking heads on

MSBNC here. All male and white. No diversity whatsoever. The old boys’ club is alive and well

here.

1452.

Three thirty-two here.

1453.

54107 words. 94107, actually here. Still June 6, 2018. Weight: A tad more than 180

pounds here. Roberta went on the scales in the big grocerystore in the other city here. 182 to 183.

Eighty something in kilos.

395
1454.

Kind of chilly for June here. Not outside but inside here.

1455.

Hope your humpday is going well. Next Chris Matthews.

1456.

Chris Matthews and Harry Belafonte. On the day that Bobby Kennedy died. In 1968.

This day in 1968. Fifty years. Wow here.

1457.

The people on Chris Matthews are really good. Lots of differing ideas. Great. Everyone

speaks his or her mind here. A woman and two guys. Two are black, one is white. Different ages.

It is funny, definitely. Everyone has an opinion and is not afraid to share it. That is how TV

should be here. Opposing opinions on the same subject. Look at it from all sides here.

1458.

RFK.

1459.

So, the writer of the book on Bobby Kennedy, well, one of ‘em. Harry Belafonte. Age 91.

How come, people have dementia at pretty young ages and others function perfectly well at age

101. How does this happen here? Differences in health here.

1460.

396
 Eight oh six. Big Bang or Seinfeld? Both reruns, obviously here. Nothing new. Roberta is

reading thru this book that she bought some two years ago here and that she just came upon on

her bookshelf. All essays. Essays about writing. Speeches. Keynote speeches. Acceptance

speeches for Newbury Medals, whatever they may be here. The book is nice and good,

hardbound, hardcover, that kind of thing. It is kind of bulky though, too much of an object. The

writing though is very clear here.

1461.

Both the book by Philip Roth and the Da Vinci Code had very legible scripts, even

though both were paperbacks here. It takes all kinds here. The script, the typeface, the boldness

of the script, how much ink is used in the printing process, all those have a clear bearing on easy

versus hard legibility here.

1462.

Milos. Seinfeld. 94450 here.

1463.

Gene picks. Elaine: Gene is trash. I am Gene.

1464.

Nine oh three. On the telly, Aljazeera. A woman in red and glasses here.

1465.

The day is coming to an end here. though still bright apparently. When will the longest

day of the year be? Ah google it here.

397
1466.

94504 here.

1467.

The last scenes of Diagnosis Murder. Suspenseful music. Trumpet playing, trombone.

1468.

Reading about a book that will be released on the one-hundreth birthday of the novelist

here. City Lights San Francisco. The agent is 97 years old himself. Sterling Lord. These are some

healthy individuals here. Commented [na9]:

1469.

94554. June 7. 2018. 180.8 pounds.

1470.

Chilly in this city of ours here.

1471.

The murderer is found. You did not inject me with amphetamines, it was a saline

solution. No heart attack here. And now this western here, apparently. Friends would be better.

1472.

Two and a Half Men. 2:53. In the afternoon. May 8, 2018. Sorry, June 8, 2018 here.

Weight: 180 and something here. More than 180, but less than 181 here. Lots of food here.

though the main things were banana bread and brie sandwich. The rest is miscellaneous, maybe

four hundred calories worth of miscellaneous here. RIP Anthony Bourdain. Here.

398
1473.

Raininess outside here. Up since five in the morn. It is now two and fifty-eight. Been all

over town here. Coffee house and gym. In downtown. Airport. Some cold cappuccino in the

casino. Car in Oakridge. Changed its space. Because one is only allowed to park for four hours

there. Some rose, and a piece of chocolate with chardonnay and goat cheese in it. Some rice and

curry. Some pizza pop. Some avocado. Only tiny bits though. But altogether it will be four

hundred calories here. Salad in Whole Foods. Eggs, quinoa, green stuff. Red beet. A piece of

pineapple. A piece of pepper, sautéed, orange here.

1474.

Two broke gals here. Three oh five here. Three minutes of stationary bike. Peppermint

tea in Yaletown. Sweet Victory is the name of the place. Sorry, actually it is called Small

Victory. It is ah so great here. So many people all teamworking very politely. The kitchen as

performance here. How does this work ah how does this work here?

1475.

Starbucks has the same concept here. you see the people who prepare your food here.

1476.

She bought the rose and it was kind of expensive for a local wine, 24 dollars including

tax. It is a wine from Summerland which is a city in the Okanagan. Or a region. Google it ah

google it here. On the bottle it has sayings by Brigitte Bardot. Hmm. Naja.

1477.

Still reading thru The View from the Cheap Seats. Very good aha here.

399
1478.

94913 here. Ninety words and we will stand @ 95 000 words here.

1479.

Rain in June. What a weather for mid-June here.

1480.

4937, nope, 94940 here.

1481.

We are full here, what with all of the aromatic tea and the chill cap here. The sandwich

too here. You tend to eat more when you diet. In order to fill up. Voluminous stuff here. Weird,

huh, here. Lo-cal but high volume. It is a whole production, definitely here. Athletes do it. Think

about training and eating here. Roberta walked a lot here, it is exercise apparently. She does not

wear one of those contraptions that count your steps, but she knows that she has put in some

seven thousand steps or so. Hopefully here. Maybe here. You have to pace yourself. Not overdo

it here.

1482.

95050 here.

1483.

Just five hundred words in one day here. Not enough apparently. Whatever happened to

two thousand words each and every day here?

1484.

400
 The more she reads thru this book by the writer, the worse she feels about her own

writings here. Maybe talking shop is just plain counterintuitive. Just do it, famous words by the

Nike corporation here. Do not overthink it, ever, in art here. As an artist, you just have to supply

the work her and nothing else here.

1485.

She gained one pound in the last three days. Stop this right now here. Go down again.

Not up.

1486.

Welcome to Junuary, BC. So the weather report here.

1487.

Vanilla ice cream and yoghurt here. Do not go near the fridge.

1488.

3:33 PM.

1489.

The weather network. Junuary.

1490.

Seven fifty-two. Remembering Anthony Bourdain.

1491.

401
 Ten twenty-six. 181 pounds. Though on second try it is 180.4 pounds here. June 9. 2018

here. On the telly, a glacier and people on the glacier. A red airplane behind ‘em. Again, snow.

Ice. Fluffiness. Who are these two guys? One has a beard. Alaska, apparently. National park

here. 95244 words here. Alaskan summer. S’mores, camp fire. The film is over, credits rolling

here. music.

1492.

So this is coming to an end. This book here. Roberta will start up the Sedaris book. The

thick one. She finished the neil something book, which was a pure delight here. Non fiction

books here, two in a row.

1493.

Tomorrow, there will be the Italian day on the Drive. Spaghetti and pizza, apparently

here.

1494.

So, the rose would have been best paired with the curry dish here. Roberta had the

currydish, finished it before the rose. They had six different curry dishes, no difference in the

rice here. This one is the yoghurt veggie curry here. The rose has notes of gewürztraminer

therein. Roberta like to write about food, everyone can relate to that here.

1495.

Pizza pop too, the deluxe kind here. Gotta watch your waistline here.

1496.

402
 Writing a book. While sitting at the type writer here. And while the telly is on here.

While the sun is shining outside here. Too much food here. Curry and rice. Pizza pop. Vanilla

icecream with yoghurt. Gotta do the portion control thingie here. Gotta put some distance

between the fridge and oneself here.

1497.

95447 here.

1498.

Six seventeen. Evening in June. Coloring outside. White, purple. Green. How so very

nice here. Sunniness. TV. Pink red flowers on the other side. Like sitting in a botanical garden

here. Full bloom. Five hundred pages of SF. Speculative fiction. Science fiction. The professor

teaches at Bard. The author of this book here.

1499.

Nine five and then some. What to have for dinner? Not too much, not too little. How to

structure the rest of the day here? What to write about here? She has this bottle of rose in the

fridge, it is opened. It is kind of bitter, bitter instead of bein’ fruity. So, maybe not, we will let it

stay there, get flat and then throw it out here. Get ten cents back, for the bottle. Rose has to be

fruity, citrussy, not spicy. Too much gewürztraminer in there, apparently here. So this is what we

write about here. What is in the fridge. Vanilla icecream. The generic kind. Nope, not Lucerne,

but Sensations. Compliments, Sensations, Lucerne. The three brands that are market specific

here.

403
 Writing should be better than this here. Not just descriptions of products here. High

opinions. Philosophical ones. Moral ones. Ethics, you know, that kind of stuffi-muffi here. 95657

here.

1500.

The book, the story. Anystory will do, should do here. Roberta and her book here. The

one that is slowly inching to its end here. What will we do after this is finished, once it is over

here? A new book here.

1501.

We all soup. These are short, very short you tube movies by Campbell soup. Nice.

1502.

One could still go out for a walk. Or read the book about Amsterdam here. The one that

describes the three years the author spent in Amsterdam here.

1503.

95747. Eight fifty-six.

1504.

Sunday, June 10, 2018.

1505.

95757.

1506.

404
 181.4. In pounds here. On the telly, CNN. Eight ten here.

1507.

Outside, too blary sun. Kind of interfering with penning the bestest words here. In the

morn, the parking near to the market. The mall that is not open as of yet here. The walk by the

brickwall. The bridge, the market and the coffee. The woman who cleans the tables, wipes ‘em

down. Does not wipe down the one that Roberta is sittin’ at. After that, the walk back to the car.

By the brickwall here. The gym. The weight that is way too high here. 181.8 or 181.4 here.

1508.

People that run. People that bike. The early morning Sunday people here. The ones that

sit behind a desk and then exercise vigorously two days of the week. Exertion versus total

stagnation here. Apparently not good for the system here. Bodies like evolution and not

revolution here. So the story goes apparently here.

1509.

95916 words.

1510.

Ninety words and this stands at 56, no, 96 thousand here. She will wrap this up and start a

new one here. The second half of the year here.

1511.

Eight thirty here. A morning on a Sunday here.

1512.

405
 Still some more here.

1513.

Eight thirty-one here.

1514.

Eight thirty-three here.

1515.

All about numbers. The antidote to words here. The space that the cumulated words here

occupy. The sentences in the world here. Li’l letters that make up words that make up sentences

that illustrate life here.

1516.

96008 here.

1517.

Words and numbers. Letters and numbers. Reflections thereon here. philosophical

musings here. On the telly, still Anthony Bourdain here.

1518.

The constant noise on the telly here. The bombardment by the spoken words here. Music

in the back. Words plus music. Different sounds that you have to decipher here. Today, the

Italian day on the Drive. It is too long a trek to get there. Three buses. Or bus and train

apparently here. Better to stay here and type this up here. The masterpiece, yup, that one here.

1519.

406
 Page 406 of 412.

1520.

So many indents here. Too many, maybe. They make up for still one hundred pages

more. The negative spaces here. The empty spaces, the ones that lack words here. Later we will

explain this here.

Words versus non-words. The technicalities of the text. How you group up all of these

words here on the page. The formality of the arrangement of words on paper here. Is it really

different in print than it is in an online text. Not really. The word-doc is just like print, arranged

the same way. The spoken word is different, audio. Reading a text here. The words in the world,

in the room, in the space here. The resonance of the words. How they sound in a room, how they

reflect off the vertical walls here and then go back to the ears of the listener and even to the

person who speaks the words here. The theatrical, the performance here, the time-based stuff

here.

1521.

96266 here.

1522.

Eight fifty-seven on a Sunday morning here. Sunniness, apparently here.

1523.

Writers, their lives. What they do all day here.

1524.

407
 That is what she will write about here. Lives of writers. The boringness. The production

of two thousand words here. The bricklaying. You know what we are talking about here. The

putting up of bricks so that in the end there is a wall. One brick after the next. One entity in the

end. And you can see each of the bricks and can decipher how they all are parts of a bigger thing,

a new entity, a wall. They all are in place, none of them is protruding. They all make up the final

thing, the wall. That is how the words should be in a book, in any text. They all are in the same

place and none of them tries to outdo the next one. The orderliness, that is what counts here.

Films are like that, all of the scenes together. All in one geographical space here. That is how art

works, paint in one place so that it is in the end a Vermeer. One that you can decipher from a far

here.

1525.

You could drink wine but that is not what you will do in the morning of a reluctantly

sunny day here on the westcoast of northamerica. Wine, rose, that is what you have later in the

day, at this time, you either have a bellini or a mimosa here. You cannot have scotch, not if you

want to be part of civilized society. After all you do not want to end up in a facility somewhere

on Vancouver Island, a place, where all the drug addicts are living out their lives in shame or

something. Recovery ah recovery here. Just do not do it, just do not start. Let the wine bottle stay

in the fridge here. Let it silently and slowly decay. You opened the bottle and the rose was not

citrusy enough here. Way to spicy, twenty seven percent of Gewürztraminer and it shows here

apparently ah apparently here.

1526.

96619 here, nine and fifty-six here apparently ah apparently here.

408
1527.

We could read stuff. Or watch stuff. Saved by the Bell seems to win out here. Who wants

to watch Harry Potter, two or three hours of a plot that is kind of boring? Saved by the Bell

makes yer feel young, a blast from the past here.

1528.

Maybe we will pen four thousand words here. The finish of the book here. Then we will

start a new one, one with a plot. So tough, to have a plot here. That is not how we roll here. How

Roberta rolls. Roberta merely decribes what she sees. She does not lie for a living here. She does

not have what it takes here. You can learn how to do this. There are Creative Writing programs

all over the place here. All over the world here. They teach you that online her. How to make up

stories, tales, how to describe stuff that does not exist in reality. Persons that are all imagined

here. Their size, their eye-colours. Fictional names, fictional personas, fictionl interactions.

Today is Sunday, at eight in the eve it is Columbo. Murders that did not happen. A lieutenant

who wears a rain coat. The fictional character, the detective that does not in reality work for the

LAPD here. And now Mister Belding on the telly, the Mister Belding in the fictional Saved by

the Bell universe here. Laughtracks here.

96871 here. It is ten tenty-nine here and this is working out quite nice here. Roberta woke

up at five and now she has this many new words here. Two thousand words maybe here. Roberta

is not quite sure when she woke up, she really should write it down, document it, keep a log here.

Everything mushes together, if you do not keep tabs here. Just like David Sedaris says in his

book, when you do not document it, you suddenly have three different diary entries with the

same date here. It all becomes fictionalized. Your whole life becomes a non-reality here.

409
1529.

So write some more here and then this will be over here. You can go out for a walk and

walk by houses here, because that is how the ‘burbs roll here. It is so verydifferent fom life in the

city here, apparently ah apparently here. She had ice cream and mac and cheese, she read thru the

inscripts on the winebottle, the rose bottle here. All quotes by the likes of Mae West, apparently

this particular very overpriced wine is geared toward the female of the species, the ones that like

to fork over twenty-four bucks Canadian for a bottle from a dreamy place called Summerland

deep in the Okanagan. Deep in British Columbia here. Wineries and rose, nice glassesthat you

have on the porch. And there always has to be a porch and nature, wine is like that, it is not what

you drink in a smokey place. A Kneipe, a Spelunke, when you start to groehl in the middle of the

nite or in a driveway here. Roberta knows that what she says does not really make sense, she has

to translate what she means, make it perfectly clear to the uninhibited reader here. That is where

the language stolpers and does not do what it is supposed to do, carry on what the person who

types is talking about, what she means here. It is tough to be a writer, to pen your debut novel

when you are no Phillip Roth here, when there is no name rcognition as of yet. How can you be a

poet in a country that only listens to towering male creatures here, white or other kinds here? The

ol’ boys club, the ones that will make or break ur career here. The Harvey Weinsteins of the

world here. Hashtag me too, who started that hashtag? Boys, obviously. The ones that rule the

airwaves here. When will there ever be a change of the guard and do we even want a change of

the guard here? Is diverse voices what can be achieved here? Most diversity is stifled anyways,

you cannot really change anything here. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Apparently, ah apparently here.

1530.

410
 97337. 10:39 AM.

1531.

97339. Ten and fifty-six after edit here.

1532.

So, it is now twelve and twenty-five. After noon. Afternoon. The house is way too chilly

for mid June. Definitely, Junuary. Cold and chilly. It would be much better to be outside and join

the living. The weather is nicer outside, sunny maybe. The sun behind the white clouds. You

could wear a T-shirt and let go of the toque. Inside here, even the wooly hat does not keep you

warm, no insulation whatsoever. Even the one layer of turtleneck is not enough, you are still

freezing down to your bones. But maybe this is a good state for a writer, maybe, suffering makes

you type faster, better. At least you are doing something, typing as exercise here. To get the

blood flowing here. She did the reading thing, this book about Amsterdam by this writer from

Melbourne. The one who made fun of Zadie Smith. His first name is Sean and he said to her that

maybe he should be written Zean in order to make a name for himself. You know, like writing

your name in an exotic, over the top way, not in the traditional way, so in order to stand out from

the maddening crowd here. Zadie Smith did not appreciate it, him making fun of her, people are

like that, they do not take lightly to mockery, apparently here. But Roberta here might have it all

wrong, maybe, those were other people in this anecdote, or maybe he did not put it like that and

besides, Zadie will always be written with a Z if it is a silent S here. Not a sharp S-sound, a

hissing sound here. 1533. She could still write some more here, Roberta, that is. She had ice

cream and wine and yoghurt, all mixed together into one nice concoction of tipsy gelato, she had

a li’l bit of the low-fat Campbell soup just straight out of the can here. Soup of celery or cream of

411
celery here, nondiluted, very thick and salty and not creamy enough because of the low fattiness

here.

Icecream, boozy one and soup in cold and chilliness of the place here. She penned this

story about a woman named Miranda, the start of her first novel. The Miranda woman who went

to Bard and who now pens her masterpiece in an unnamed city in Germany, in the northern part.

It used to be Itzehoe, in the former incarnations of that story, this time, the woman has a name,

and the city does not have a name. the curtains of the coffee place are still white, though, and you

can see the street through the curtains here. 77, no, 97788 words here, the novel that is coming to

an end here, to an end here.

1533.

Trondheim. Or Bergen. Utrecht. You always should situate your story in a place that you

have never been. After all, you are making up a reality. East egg, West egg. These places in

stories, they do not exist. The London in a story is different from the real London. The St.

Petersburg in Tolstoy’s book is a different one than the real one. It is a fictional place here. The

New York of a story is not the one that exists in reality. Chelsea in a book is just different here.

1534.

A different Meatpacking, a different Midtown. A different Bloomingdale’s. You get the

grift.

1545.

People are fictional and places are fictional. These are things that never ever happened.

Even historical stories are made up. History, herstory.

412
1546.

Reality does not even exist here, definitely not the reality of a writer. Insanity, pure

madness here.

1547.

The books, she is reading these days, they definitely have a bearing on what she is

writing here. This book by some guy named Neil and now this guy named Sean. Before. this guy

named Dan. They write differently than Roberta here does. First of all, they are all native

speakers of the language, they did not learn it in fifth grade by listening in to Frau Kruse. But

that is another story completely here.

1548.

How do you construct a plot? This Sean guy, the one from Melbourne, he says that he is

retelling real life experiences of himself, he is retelling his life in Amsterdam around the year

2000. The other guy, the one who is exceptionally goodlooking and teaches at Bard, that one

claims that he lies for a living. He makes up stories about Norse gods and flying dragons. He

tells science fiction though he prefers the term speculative fiction, apparently. Fantasy. But what

he says in the book is all very clear and profound, no science fiction whatsoever. It is a

nonfiction book, so maybe that is why it all rings true. Both of ‘em are good with the language,

they manipulate the elements of the language in very good ways. One of ‘em is a Brit, the other

an Aussie. The Dan guy is American. The Brit and the Aussie are much more poetic than the guy

from the US. Then again, Phillip Roth was American, New Jersey-borne and bred and he sure

knows how to spin a yarn or at least how to write a sentence poetically, virtuoso-like here. Being

413
a poet does not need the perfect vocab here. Maybe it is even better if you know less words, you

have to be innovative, try to do more with less here.

Literary criticism, that should be her field. Roberta’s field here.

1549.

She really likes scribd. You can look up what you wrote even if you lose the text on your

computer. Scribd will put it out into the real cyberworld here, you can store it there indefinitely,

apparently, here. Where would we be sans the young minds of Silicon Valley here? These are

good times, ah, good times here. You do not need a locker on the fourth floor of the north

building, apparently, apparently here. A floor model in the painting studio of the old art school

here.

1550.

See, it is fiction, there were no four floors in the north building here. Poetic license, ah,

poetic license here.

1551.

12:59. 98730 words. Cold outside, chilly ah chilly here.

1552.

Still some more icecream with yoghurt and rose wine from the Okanagan here. She

writes it rose, but it is rose with an accentegue on the E but at this point she does not know how

to type that, which button does she have to push to make the accent appear above the E here? If

this was long hand, it would be easy but like this, typingish, it is all complicated here. Anyways,

anyhoo, the second portion of boozy icecream and cream of celery goop here. Some three

414
hundred calories easily here. We have definitely some 1200 calories here, now we should just

concentrate on typing up the great novel here, American or otherwise here. On the telly, Evan

Solomon and Jasmeet Singh, after the landslide win of Rob Ford’s bro in Ontario here.

1553.

One and fifty-seven. Chilliness. Loneliness. Writers have to be lonely, they are workers

after all. Like plumbers, apparently here. Just tinkering around in their respective garages. Ok, so

technically, the analogy stinks here.

1554.

She will write her next novel about Santa Monica. Something like the song by the woman

who was the girlfriend of the cyclist who had to give back his medals because he was accused of

cheating here. Santa Monica and boozing. It is the boozing capital of California, after all, by far.

It was very apparent when Roberta was in Santa Monica some years or so ago. Everybody was

drunk at ten in the morning. The debauchery so near to Hollywood. The divide between the

races. The whole shebang. Santa Monica and its drugproblems. But it seemed more just plain

boozing. People finding happiness at the bottom of a bottle. The boozers were just regular folks.

Working men. And they were all guys. People who would work in construction. Bluecollar guys.

And they were all guys. There was a division along race lines, but it seemed that that was

inconsequential. You will come upon all races and all genders in boozing. Not necessarily all

ages though. They tend to be younger, but not very young. Fifty seems to be the cut-off line,

after that they all sober up and become responsible or they run for office. He never drank, very

commendable, but boy, can he talk bullshit even though sober here. You know what I mean here.

1555.

415
 Yup, you are an easy target if you look like that, just saying here.

1556.

Page 415 of 421 pages. She writes and she reads here and on the telly there is a woman

talking about her book at the hay festival in Wales here. She is wearing a red dress, red kind of

going into orange here.

1557.

Reading about all the writers of this world here. So many many writers here. People who

try to make a living with words here. How do you do this? How can you here?

1558.

Three and fifty-five here. In the afternoon, a chilly one here.

1559.

588, sorry, 9879, sorry, 98880 words here. This is what she did this summer. Then again,

it is not summer yet here. The first half of this year of ours here. Some long slog of a book here.

Maybe this will be finished at the end of the day here. The whole book, it will stop at word 100

000 here, randomly.

1560.

Three and fifty-nine.

1561.

416
 Fifty-seven words and this will stand at 99000 words here. Donald Trump in Singapore.

It is Monday over there here. The key players are there, arrived. Airforce One has landed. And

whatever the Korean counterpart is here. Both men are already here. Photo op.

1562.

Twelve words more here.

1563.

Seven words.

1564.

Four words and one, 99000 it is ah it is here.

1565.

Maybe we just should type up some one thousand words here and call it a wash. Call it a

day. She ponders, if one could say “call it a wash” and if it has any kind of meaning in this

sentence here. This is what she does, she struggles with the language. Moreso than she struggles

with the plot. Because she made up her mind that she will never be the writer who is good with

plots. Her readers should like her words and not the story. Because there is no story, even if you

look for it here.

1567.

How can you write and have a social life? It seems impossible here. She wanted to ask a

question but forgot it because she was typing up her thoughts. You cannot do it or can you? In

the old black and white movies that showed newspapermen, and maybe even women, but mostly

men, you saw these open offices that were totally messy and men in crumpled trenchcoats and

417
crumpled hats with cigarettes dangling from the right side of their lips or maybe the left, anyhoo,

they would pen their words, their work while all hell was getting loose, breaking loose around

‘em. So, we should be able to do this too here. Writing under the sword, under the gun, under the

clock, under whatever, deadline loomimg here. The words have to come out, fast and furious

here, and they should always be publishable, no editing necessary. Good at the first try here.

There is no second chance for rewording this here. The way a teacher does it in class, just speaks

without “Netz und doppelter Boden”, as they say in German. Doing acrobacy without safety net,

it has to be perfect or else, you will lose your life here. Will break your neck, apparently, here.

1568.

99311. Now more, now more here. Seven hundred words and the work of half a year is

finished here. We can send this out to every publishing place on the planet here. Every agency on

the planet. Lit agents, huh. Somebody will take this on, or maybe they will all reject it. This is

what we do, apparently, gather all of these rejection slips here. Seven thousand rejection slips.

Some famous writer got 7000 rejection slips and then he published. Roberta does not really

remember who it was, she can google it. Foster, Dulles, Wallace, a name like this here.

1569.

Five thirty-nine here.

1570.

Six hundred words here.

1571.

418
 Roberta had cream of celery. So very filling here. Soup is just basically way too filling

here.

1572.

99438.

1573.

The day is coming to an end here. So near to six in the evening here. At eight it will be

Columbo time, the most important time of the week. The culmination of the week. Or the

beginning of the week. Maybe more the culmination. For a writer, something like Columbo is

just mere and shear high art. A totally made-up story and everybody likes it. There is not even

any mystery, you know who did it, from the get-go, but you are still fascinated, are still watching

this here.

1574.

Hollywood and Santa Monica, Venice beach. Her new place where her next novel will

unfold, has to unfold here.

1575.

The BBC on the telly, Saudi Arabia and driving or something like that here.

1576.

Politics on the telly, it kind of interferes with her writings here. She is not that kind of

journalist in a black and white movie from the forties, she is not able to tune out the noises

around her and write the bestest work, the bestest novel ever here. Besides, they were all guys

here. Somebody apparently told JK Rowling, that she should use JK as her first name, (the

419
initials) so that nobody will know her gender. Though that is actually kind of silly, Agatha

Christie was a woman and had all the readers in the world here and still has here.

1577.

Five fifty here.

1578.

99673.

1579.

Five fifty-three here.

1580.

Gotta find a story and run with it. That seems to be the main aspect of writing here. Gotta

commit to one story and commit to it. It does not really matter where the story takes place. It is

more the description of the artist, more a diary. The struggles of the writer, the struggles of the

maker of stuff. Can be a nusician, can be a plumber. Or a writer, yup, why not here. There should

be quite a lot of watering holes here, coffee shops, bars, pubs, the like here.

1581.

On the telly, Two and a Half Men, a perfect ending to a perfect book here. Sitcom galore

here, laugh track galore here.

1582.

Six and thirty-six here.

1583.

420
 In the pee em.

1584.

Six thirty-seven here.

1585.

Chilliness here. Junuary here.

1586.

99820. 120 words and this will be done here. The end of the novel that really never

became a novel here. Never ever made it and never will. She could copy and paste the one

opening that she started in the morn, the one about the writer from Bard in an undescript city in

Germany here. But maybe that is a case for still another book here, maybe at this point we just

stick to Roberta and her inability to produce the rightest words here. This has to do here,

apparently. Five months in writerland here. Five and then some here. June ten, Sunday, in 2018.

Weight: 180 and then some. Writerland ah writerland, gonna miss yer here.

1587.

How will this end here? Going out with a teeter or with a bang here? Definitely bang,

bang is always better here.

1588.

Some forty words here for the epilogue, the conclusion, the finish here. Something

profound that will pull this all together here.

1589.

421
 Fifteen words and then we are done here. Save and spellcheck, spellcheck here.

1590.

100 000.

1591.

Yay ah yay here.

1592.

100 007 words here. 100011.

422
423
424
.

425
426
427
428