50 Tries

New Blog Site

2004-11-16T18:51:00.000-05:00

I'm afraid I've moved 50 Tries to another blog host. All the original content is there.

I just couldn't create the configuration I wanted at Blogger.

Please visit http://kiersten.connersax.com if you'd like to continue to read what I'm doing.

Thanks,
Kiersten

Why I Chose the New Yorker

2004-11-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

Gina Smith, who keeps an incredible blog on a broad range of subjects, also keeps a record of great excerpts from recent New Yorker articles. It definitely helped remind me why I'm doing this.

My Version of the Mainstream Media

2004-11-10T10:28:00.000-05:00

It's sad how much more accurate I find the Onion and The Daily Show than, say, the Today Show or CBS News.

Hmmmmm.

2004-11-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

This survey is from 2002, but it doesn't bode particularly well for me. Or something.

08 - Democrats Anonymous: The 12 Steps

2004-11-09T17:23:00.000-05:00

I really amused myself with this, anyway. Premise: the election went the wrong way, and we can’t can’t can’t get over it.

So now for the bigger question: who am I? Should I be two people? Should I try replying to the rejection message that I received?

It’s a different e-mail address.

Can’t believe I haven’t done this until now, but I just spent some time googling to try to figure out who the Shouts & Murmurs editor is, or anything about submitting. No dice.

I think I have to try the new e-mail address, as me, and just believe that they meant that thing about “evident merit.” I’ve got that Groucho syndrome, and never believe that my writing is good enough for any publication that I’d actually be willing to read. Whatever; all they can do is be really mean to me in e-mail, which has already happened from strangers on account of this blog.

So…do I then submit this essay to the regular e-mail address, as well, perhaps under another name?

Enough of my whining. I’ll try the new address first. Then decide about the standard address in a day or two.

Ugh, I want to crawl into a hole and die.

Rejection as Recognition

2004-11-05T01:33:00.008-05:00

Came home from chemo today to find this in my inbox:



Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:17:59 -0500

From: "Shouts, TNY" 

Subject: RE: Submission, re: Modest Proposal for GWB's re-election



To: Kiersten Conner-Sax 

We are unable to accept your submission, despite its evident merit. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

Of course, my first reaction upon seeing the sender and subject line ( Shouts, TNY, Re: Submission, re: Modest Proposal for GWB's re-election) was one of excitement, mixed with dread. Dread immediately proved the right choice.

However, this is the first time that they have contacted me, so perhaps my evil plan is working, and they're getting to know me, getting to know all about me. Although that response sounds an awful lot like boilerplate.

Which brings me to an overwhelming question: do I change personas now?

My first reaction was yes, now they're aware of you. But Adam pointed out that they say you can send two per year. So what does it mean that they haven't responded until the sixth submission? Should I assume this is the first they've noticed, and continue with my plan of not changing until 10? Why do I feel like I'm talking to a delphic oracle?

Anyway, since I'm jacked up on steroids and the whole house is asleep and the leaves are falling outside, I'm going to choose to see the rejection as recognition and keep on going. Though maybe seeking that particular kind of recognition has always been my problem...no, that sounds really good and insightful, but I think that's someone else's problem. I'll try to come up with someone later.

07 - Stranger Things

2004-11-02T17:35:00.000-05:00

Oh, I screwed up. Really really screwed up.

I was using the last e-mail message I sent to the New Yorker for the e-mail address, and forgot to change the subject line. Editors HATE it when you resubmit. I once submitted a short story to a big deal editor at the Atlantic, who actually sent it back with encouraging words and a few criticisms. I revised it and sent it back, but I must have accidentally re-sent the same cover letter or something, because he sent back a scathing note about how I’d already sent it.

So, I just sent this submission twice, once with the old subject line, once with the new! Fantastic then.

Other than engendering more hatred from what I suspect is only an e-mail filter sending anything sent to the shouts@newyorker.com address directly to the trash, it probably doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t feel this is my best work, and it’s late, and it’s about the Red Sox, and strangely, no one actually seems to think that them sweeping the World Series is a big deal. I doubt it’s going anywhere.

But I still firmly believe that the Red Sox winning was a truly historic event! They gave me hope, which I’ve had more and less of lately. A few weeks ago, Adam saw that I’d bought a Red Sox hat, and asked what happened to the Yankees cap I wore two years ago. I told him that maybe I’d bet on the wrong horse last time and (just to really mix that metaphor) that the Red Sox seemed like the patron saints of lost causes. So if there’s hope for them, there’s hope for me.

But my hair hasn’t fallen out yet, so I’ve only worn the hat once, while gardening. I don’t know what that means.

I’m five days behind with this submission, due to a wedding in Chicago and a nasty cold. The nasty cold is still in effect, but I’m going to try to get caught up. It’s just that right now I’m trying to neither pass out nor have “bukies,” as Kylie likes to say.

I'm a Bad Person

2004-10-26T19:29:00.000-04:00

I was excited to see that Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist had cancer, until I read Dahlia Lithwick's report that "thyroid cancer is both treatable and eminently survivable." The guy's 80 years old! I wish him ill. So long as Kerry wins.

Work in progress

2004-10-24T19:47:00.000-04:00

Just read a Times Magazine article on Alice Munro that made me feel like a complete hack. I remember when I wanted to write emotionally compelling dramas that left you feelink like someone had just ripped your heart out, examined it very closely, and then shoved it back in.

Instead, Adam, Kylie, and I went to Crate and Barrel today to look for new kitchen furniture! I want to say something sarcastic now about abandoning my authentic artistic aspirations for a bourgeois life full of mass-produced furniture, but it was a cold gray day, and it was bright in the mall, and Kylie threw pennies in all the fountains. If watching your kid make wishes isn't one of life's great joys then I don't know what is, and soon we'll have comfortable kitchen furniture.

06 - Modest Options to Consider if George W. Bush Is “Re”-Elected

2004-10-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

Okay, at least I think the writing is going better. I might even be proud of this one. Even the word count was where it was supposed to be.

Still no e-mail message saying “Stop sending us submissions, you ridiculous hack.” Maybe that address is just a black hole no one ever reads, so it’s just some kind of “Waiting for Godot” sort of thing. I could write something about Russia; then maybe David Remnick would read it. If I hear nothing after ten submissions, I’ll create a new personality. I guess something that sounds like a middle-aged man would be good.

I’m not as disappointed every week, though. Now, this is just what I do. Sort of like going to chemo and not liking my hair.

Anyway, the premise this week is that if GWB is “re”-elected, things will be so bad that a lot of people will want to flee the country. Which I think is completely true.

Had a second opinion from a renowned oncologist on Wednesday. He didn’t have a magic bullet, and I didn’t realize how much I’d been hoping for one until I realized he didn’t. He said that the whole thing is game theory: sometimes the cancer advances, sometimes we push it back, but we just have to keep me on the field because it’s plausible that they could have a cure in the next five years. I’m not sure he understands what “game theory” is (he seemed to be talking about football, and I was thinking more like prisoner’s dilemma), and I don’t really agree about finding a cure that soon—maybe within ten or fifteen years. He had a lot of advice, both about non-toxic treatments and keeping MSK honest. But he seemed like a very kind man.

We came home to a message to call my GP, and I knew he was about to tell me exactly what he told me when I got him on the phone: I’m positive for BRCA-2. My GP has ADHD (I’m serious—he wrote a book about it) and so he started talking and talking: “So what does that mean? Should you get your daughter tested? Yes. Should you get your ovaries removed? Yes. Should you have a prophylactic mastectomy on the remaining breast? Yes.” Normally I let him go, both to be polite and because he’s usually entertaining (once he told me about how his friend tried Viagra and was up having sex all night, then paused and said, “Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have sex all night. I’ve got kids, I’ve got patients…”), but this time I cut him off with questions, and just kept thinking, Kylie, Kylie, Kylie.

I’m trying to decide whether this was the worst moment of my life, but there’ve been three, four, five standout really bad moments now, still including my junior prom, so it’s a hard choice. While Bruce was talking, all I could picture was bashing the phone receiver against the desk until it broke. I hung up the phone and told Adam I was going for a walk. He asked to go with me and I said no. I was only gone a few minutes. It was cold, and I saw a family coming toward me, with a kid on a bike, and I wondered whether anything awful had ever happened to them and turned around. Adam tried to talk to me when I came back in, but I collapsed in a corner of our room with the phone, still wearing my coat. I told him that I needed to call my shrink. He said I could talk to him, and I told him no, that I needed to say things that I never wanted him to hear.

Adam was trying desperately to do the right thing this whole time, but he finally left. I took my coat off and pulled it over my knees and called my shrink on his cell phone. I talked to him, sobbing uncontrollably, for about half an hour. He said a lot of true and useful things, then said that he wanted me to take some Xanax and write down a list of things I’d done for Kylie or good things about Kylie or something (I wasn’t really listening because he should know by now that I don’t do the earnestly writing things down* routine), and call him back in fifteen minutes. I told him that I’d be all right, but he said that he’d appreciate it, so I said fine.

I hung up the phone, curled into a ball on the floor, pulled my coat over my head and sobbed. It may seem strange or overdramatic, but when I was a kid I liked to hide in closets or behind the Christmas tree. Or not so much hide as just sit. It was quiet and private and no one could find you, and I liked the fabrics of the coats and the smell of cedar.

I looked at my watch after crying for a while, since I didn’t want my shrink to freak out, and realized that I kind of liked it under my coat. It’s an expensive and stereotypically Westchester suburban mom kind of coat that I bought after the second or third chemo treatment, when I was high as a kite on steroids. My theory about these kinds of things is that they’re like a secret handshake. Most people don’t recognize them, let alone the authentic from the fake, but for some reason it’s important to get it right for the five percent of people who do, as a silent signifier that you understand the norms and belong where you are. All of this flashed through my mind as I stared at the plaid lining and felt kind of comforted by it, even though it hadn’t offered me any protection. If you’re wearing the soccer mom coat you’re supposed to have the soccer mom life, right? And the soccer mom’s life is full of babies and dogs and mommy and me classes, not doctors and catheters and scarred veins. It’s like I got the heroin addict’s life only without all the yummy heroin.

After another few minutes I got up and took the Xanax and called my shrink back and told him I was all right (I was scheduled to see him the next day). Then I curled back up under the coat, and eventually went downstairs and pretended that nothing had happened.

* Yeah, I know, I’m writing about it now, in a postmodern meta-memoir David Foster Wallace kind of blah blah blah way.

05 - John Kerry, Feel My Pain!

2004-10-15T17:58:00.000-04:00

Well, it’s done and sent. Too short. I could only get up to 510 words. While physically I’ve been all right this week, it’s been VERY difficult emotionally, and my friend Jen’s daughter stayed with us Monday and Tuesday, and then on Wednesday I had to have a heart scan, culminating in chemotherapy yesterday. Today, my mother chose to make lasagna with meat sauce. Sometimes I feel like the support I’m getting is just phenomenal.

I’m seeing the oncologist in Brooklyn next week. Read lots of depressing things about cancer today. Drugs or not, it’s no wonder I feel like throwing up.

Work in progress

2004-10-12T16:32:00.000-04:00

This once a week thing is hard.

Obviously, I haven’t heard from the Times. I was convinced, again, that I’d nailed it. I can’t believe that I’m only four pieces along, feel massive rejection, and yet am terrified of anyone reading any of this.

There was good news, of a sort, last week. I met with Dr. C— , who looked over my scans and my charts and felt that I needed more personalized attention. He said he would call his contacts around the world and ask whom I should speak to. Apparently, there’s an oncologist in Brooklyn who makes up custom concoctions, and doctors at Columbia working on vaccines. He also confirmed that Sloan-Kettering just puts you on whatever protocol they’re working on and hopes for the best. He said he would have information and to call him tonight, and I have, but didn’t speak to him.

I’m a little bit nervous about what his recommendations will be. He said they could burn the tumor off my liver with a laser, but that some cells had also traveled up to my skull. That the disease progressed like this in only two months continues to baffle me. At the end of the visit I asked whether I could still be cured, and he said yes, and I asked if I were cured, if I could still have children, and he said “yes, but let’s get you well for your husband and the one you have first,” and I felt relief for the first time in about three months.

He also didn’t charge us. “When you’ve reached a certain age, you just want to help people,” he said, and while normally I’d be cynical about that, I believed him. Maybe it’s because Dr. R— sent us. Whatever the reason, I’m no longer planning to buy gifts for Kylie up through her eighteenth birthday, so that Adam could give them to her once a year after I’m gone.

Anyway, I’m working on something about how raising taxes on the top two percent of Americans would be hard on them. I think it’s funny, but only about a third as long as I need right now.

04 - Killing Me Softly

2004-10-05T16:06:00.000-04:00

A bold move. I definitely had a premise this time: using “soft” supporters in the town hall debate was a bizarre conceit. Due to the timeliness issue—the debate is in five days—I decided to send it to the Times first. This has the added benefit of knowing within the week whether they’ll use it or not.

Feeling much, much better today. The weekend was sort of miserable. No digestive complaints, for which I credit the 16 capsules of Green Vibrance per day, but I definitely felt nauseous and weak. The CAT scan on Wednesday showed everything going as well as could be expected (chemo is working, metastases significantly shrunk), but I wanted them to say “Huzzah! You will be cured!” and needless to say, there was no huzzah. So I’m still struggling with, you know, fear of death. And the idea of chemo forever, which we discussed. I’ll do whatever it takes, but when even the good news is bad news, it can be hard to keep your head up.

October 5, 2004
No word from the Times. I’m in another one of my “how can they possibly not accept this?” phases, which I accept is crazy. I can’t imagine how I’d be without the Xanax.

My actual oncologist called today (he’s been either vacationing or lecturing in Belgium for the last two months, so I’ve seen the chair of the department instead), and I felt more positive afterwards. I may not be on chemo forever. We’ll just do it for as long as it shrinks the tumor, so if it keeps shrinking, hurray for chemo.

However, my plastic surgeon misscheduled my appointment this morning, so that was a trip into the city for nothing. As I dropped Kylie off at school, she asked me where I was going, and when I told her the doctor, she actually asked, “Which doctor are you going to see, Mommy?” I told her that it was the plastic surgeon, then realized on the train that this was perhaps not the best choice, as she is repeating everything right now and god knows what she says in preschool. I don’t really want the other mothers to think that I’m the type of woman who’d be going to the plastic surgeon at 33, but since I’m sort of thinking about getting Restylane, maybe I actually am that type of woman.

03 - Concerning the Gaps in My Record

2004-09-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

Really struggling again to come up with a topic. I had two entire false starts before coming up with the nursery school idea, and while that has a New Yorker feel to it, I may have too much of the mommy perspective.

Anyway, the conclusion I came to is the same one I started out with: it’s all about the premise. For next week I need to choose what I want to say, and then find an amusing way to say it. Just trying to be amusing isn’t enough, and I’m not sure how I keep losing sight of that.

I went to the salon where I’d had my hair straightened in July ($500, natch) to ask them to buzz it all off. I couldn’t take seeing it anymore. The kindly receptionist talked me into just cutting it really short for the time being. I think it was the right thing to do. Even though the hair stylist told me that her cousin and her aunt had had vasectomies, and then leaned in and told me that she’d had a boob job, so she had a really good doctor if I needed a vasectomy, too, she was a very kind woman and I think she did a good job. Anyway, it’s giving me at least another week without a wig, and for that I’m grateful.

October 1, 2004

So I’ve decided I’m going to push my luck, and send it under my own name again. I mean, what are they going to do to me? If they get livid and tell me not to submit anymore, I’ll either a) tell them I might be dying or b) go back to my submitting under a pseudonym plan.

Still not sure if these are funny enough. I think I am going to turn this into a blog. I think the feedback (if it’s positive) might keep me going. The disappointment is tough, especially right now.

Had a CAT scan yesterday that showed significant improvement, that the chemo is working and things are coming along as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, it’s one of those “the good news is the bad news” situations. Yay! The cancer’s no longer leeching the calcium out of my bones! And hey, guess what? I might be on chemotherapy forever! I really hope I place something soon.

I think Kerry kicked Bush’s grimacing, squirming little ass last night. There’s a song in my heart.

02 - Oops! My Mom Called the Lawyer Again

2004-09-24T14:53:00.000-04:00

Very, very tough coming up with this. I’ve had a cold and it’s hard to concentrate, and I don’t want to focus on the war/don’t think it’s funny. But if I give up the second week I’ll just be a cancer patient, so I’d rather write about Britney’s mariage, which I’m sure will be over by the time this book is published.

Now—what to do about this pesky only submit twice a year thing? Use my own name again to try to stand out, or save it for later so as not to arouse suspicion?

September 25, 2004

Okay, submitted under my own name, more out of exhaustion than anything else. It’s ridiculous, but I’m now checking my mail compulsively and feeling rejected by the lack of response. I was hoping this would lead more to a feeling of hope than disappointment, but I’ve got to stay with this. Fifty times, that’s the point.

My hair is still coming out in every-larger clumps, and my cold is still dragging on. Chirley seemed freaked out yesterday and told me that if my fever spiked above 100.4, that I had to call. I was too busy trying not to cry to ask her what would happen then.

Anyway, the under-a-hat wigs I’ve ordered have arrived, if I have to go get my head buzzed tomorrow. I ordered a Red Sox cap this time. Sort of a patron saint of lost causes kind of thing. Or something.

01 - Upcoming Reality TV Pilots

2004-09-15T22:02:00.000-04:00

An odd moment of elation and despair. I’ve submitted my first essay! I think it’s funny, yay me! But also: the web site submission guidelines are as follows:

Submissions should be sent by e-mail to the appropriate department, as indicated below:

Fiction: fiction@newyorker.com
The Talk of the Town: talkofthetown@newyorker.com
Shouts & Murmurs: shouts@newyorker.com
Poetry: poetry@newyorker.com
Newsbreaks: newsbreaks@newyorker.com

We cannot accept submissions that are sent as attachments, so please send your work as part of the body of an e-mail. No more than one story or six poems should be submitted at one time; poetry submissions should include the poet's name in the subject line. We prefer to receive no more than two submissions per writer per year, and generally cannot reply to more. We do not consider simultaneous submissions or material that has been previously published.

Upon reading this, I fell into despair: the foundation of my project had been ripped right out from under me. I then decided that accepting only two submissions per writer per year was unacceptable, and remembered that I have really rather superior computer skills, and should be able to create a wealth of e-mail addresses should the need arise. I am hopeful, however, that the Shouts & Murmurs editor will either a) contact me after my second submission to say, “we haven’t had room for you yet, but you’re funny, keep trying,” or, b) just print the damn thing.
The essay was submitted at 3:00; at 3:42, my inbox displayed a message from the New Yorker—with the Subject line, “Enter to win a fabulous NYC Getaway.”

A Note on the Text

2004-09-08T16:51:00.000-04:00

For the reasons described above, I really, really, really want to publish a “Shouts & Murmurs” piece in the New Yorker (though I will settle for the Op-Ed page of the New York Times). While I may be wrong, I think that I have often written funnier things than regularly appear in either venue. But since the Carnegie Hall method (practice, practice, practice) isn’t enough to get me in, I decided to do a study of Shouts & Murmurs.

This study was thoroughly unscientific. As my husband, Adam, always claims that he wants to read the New Yorker when I’m finished, there was a mountainous stack of issues on his bedside table. I took them and scanned all the Shouts & Murmurs (and the Back Pages that weren’t cartoons) into my computer, then printed them out and put them in a notebook. I then drew up a chart and performed an amusement analysis on each one, getting about two thirds of the way through before I got bored and just wanted to get started.

Here’s what I learned.

1. The pieces, (dating back to March 24, 2003), were frequently less topical than I expected, riffing on the media, the absurdity of everyday life, or, often, issues of concern to the middle-aged man. One, “An Appendectomy on the Bakerloo Line,” was simply incomprehensible to me.

2. Many of the pieces, including “Appendectomy,” were written by really famous people. Graham Chapman, Steve Martin, Paul Rudnick—my name’s not exactly going to leap out from amongst theirs, not to mention that they’ve got the middle-aged man thing going for them. Many of the other writers were New Yorker regulars.

3. As with all humor writing, not a whole lot of women authors.

4. Lots of riffs on small news items quoted at the start.

5. Word count generally between 600 and 1000 words.

What did I get out of this? Well, the word count thing is important, and there were at least a few author’s names that I didn’t recognize, so conceivably my goal is attainable. But I kept coming back to something told to me by Andy Borowitz, himself a very funny New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs contributor.

There’s a difference between an idea and a premise.

I met Mr. Borowitz at a humor writing class I took through Media Bistro, in Manhattan. As the possessor of an MFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, I had made a solemn vow never to cross the threshold of a group therapy session disguised as a writing class again; besides, I was already a humor writer, as the readers of Computer Shopper well knew. But this class started two months after I’d had a baby, it would get me out of the house, and promised real-world contacts. So I took it, and met a lovely group of aspiring humorists, a few very strange authors, and Mr. Borowitz.

What he explained was that for humor writing to succeed, it had to have a premise. “George Bush looks like a monkey” is a funny idea, but you’re not going to get 600 words out of it (besides, it’s basically just a fact). “George Bush is too busy picking nits out of Dick Cheney’s remaining hair to satisfactorily prosecute the War on Terror” is based on the premise that, as a man with the appearance and the intelligence of a monkey, he is incapable of leading the free world. Andy Borowitz made me understand what I like about humor: if something causes you to laugh, you fundamentally agree with what was said.

Or maybe I just like getting attention. Anyway, thank you, Andy Borowitz.

So, what I’ve learned. I have little hope of becoming either a middle-aged man or extremely famous. I need to figure out 50 things I want to say, and make them so damn funny that no one, not even the New Yorker, can possibly disagree with me.

(Why 50? Even though there are 52 weeks in a year, I’m allowing for double issues and unanticipated events. And I reserve the right to, no more than twice, submit absolute tripe to the poetry editor.)

A Note to the Reader

2004-09-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

I always said that if I wrote my autobiography, it would begin with the words, “I’ve had a hard life for an upper-middle-class white girl with an Ivy League education.”

This isn’t an autobiography, but the words pretty much ring true. I'm privileged in many ways: an incredible husband, a house in the suburbs with an honest-to-god white picket fence, and a perfect daughter. But then there's the rest: abused as a kid, shattered family, strange joint disease that made my hands swell up like Minnie Mouse, and then, at 31, breast cancer. And not “we’ll do a lumpectomy and a little radiation” breast cancer, full-out, hard core inflammatory breast cancer, complete with chemotherapy, radical mastectomy, and six weeks of daily radiation. Stage 3B, to be exact (translation: you might be screwed, but you might not).

Why are you telling me this? You may be asking. Is this a satirical site or not?

Believe me, I completely understand. Throughout this ordeal, I’ve had many concerned parties, personal and professional, suggest very earnestly that I write about it. I try to explain to them that I’m a professional journalist and write for publication, and why would anyone want to read about this? The questioner would then usually mutter some twaddle about it being my own writing, which often prompted me to ask whether they derived therapeutic benefit from their own teaching or their own corporate real estate litigation, which generally ended the matter.

All this leads to the simple summation of why I'm writing this blog. My friend Jennifer came with me to chemo one day, and we were discussing how I was afraid that I might die in surgery and didn’t know whether I’d left any mark in the world or anything for my daughter to be proud of—blah blah blah. While I published a book about the Internet and had some fledgling success as a movie critic, my career wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be. What I had always wanted to be was a humor writer, and I told Jen that day that I thought I was good enough to get something published in the “Shouts & Murmurs” section of the New Yorker. And that I had a plan that, once I was healthy, I’d send in one submission per week, and after a year I’d know whether I was good enough or not.

“And you could collect them all,” she said, “and sell it as a book.”

“Oh,” I said. “Huh.” It was a much better idea.

Needless to say, when I did get healthy enough (about a year after I finished radiation treatment, as chasing my toddler tended to tire me out), I started a chick-lit novel instead. I wanted to write something I could finish, so I was committed to the novel being bad if that was what it took to get it done. And I had made some good progress on it when the cancer came back.

This time, it’s Stage 4 (translation: you’re pretty much screwed), and I’m back on chemo, and the doctors think they can put it into remission. So what my daughter eventually thinks of me is even more important to me now, and I’m on chemo once a week, which realllly sucks, and may be the game plan for the foreseeable future. Which, unfortunately, may only be five to ten years.

So, one essay per week seems a little more manageable than a novel, a bit more like bite-sized pieces. Novels, even bad ones, require sustained attention. And publishing a humor piece in the New Yorker seems like credential enough to say, “I’m a humor writer.” I mean, I did write for my college humor magazine, the Jester, and I wrote the humor page, Checking Out, for Computer Shopper magazine for the few months that the column ran. But maybe when I’m gone my daughter can tell people “My mother wrote for the New Yorker,” and I’ll feel like I’ve left some kind of mark in the literary world.

And, partly to keep me going, partly to get attention, and partly just because, I'm posting my progress here.