Salon Columnists

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am about 60 pages into my first novel, which was going swimmingly, and then a month ago, I moved to Copenhagen for advanced study in a scientific field. I'm having a wonderful time and found an exciting new lover, but I can't seem to find time to write fiction anymore. I'm afraid that if I let it sit, I won't return to it.

Worried

Look at your calendar. Where the giddy whirl of your social life starts to thin out, write in some appointments with your novel. Three hours the first week, and six hours the next week, and nine hours the week after that. Place the appointments in the part of the day where you are most productive. Keep your appointments. At a minimum, you can give six hours a week to it. In Copenhagen, people spend six hours just eating dinner on Friday night. Skip a few meals and pursue your novel.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My best friend has recently stopped chasing after his childhood sweetheart who he's been pining for for the last dozen or so years. He and I had a drink together and I confessed that I had been pining for him for nearly as long. I was summarily (although not unkindly) rejected. What's wrong with me? Is it the fact that I own power tools? That I use big words? Should I still be friends with this man, or just write a novel about him?

Always a Buddy, Never a Bride

You don't dump your best friend just because you lunged at him and discovered he isn't in love with you. You laugh at yourself over this failed seduction and you look elsewhere for romance. There are men who long for a woman who can use power tools and big words. Me, for one. My wife can whip out a drill and put screws in the wall in 10 seconds flat as words like "eleemosynary" and "indehiscent" spring from her lips. Find a tall gloomy guy like me and show him your stuff.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I've been a technical writer for several years, now am an editor, but I'm finding myself overwhelmed by the urge to write creatively. Should I chuck the editorial career, or will the stoic practicality that grounds me hold me back?

Confused in Cincinnati

My dear Confused, you should resist the urge to write creatively and embrace your editorial career. That is the advice your mother would give you, and I agree with her. Keep that green eyeshade on your forehead, the No. 2 pencil clamped in your lead-stained fingers and prune those sentences. If, one morning, you wake up and the Muse is lying next to you in bed, murmuring endearments, biting your ear, then write whatever she tells you to write, but we do want to see her teeth marks on your lobes.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am a journalist who enjoys regular hours, good pay and a caring employer, but what I write about now is truly deadening to me, compared to previous jobs where the hours were crazy and the pay and benefits were poor. What do I do? I am a family man with small children. The jobs that keep my soul alive are, by their very nature, irregular and time-consuming, and the jobs that are best for a family man make me shrivel from their blandness. Help!

Torn Between Two Lovers

And on a similar note:

Mr. Blue,

I used to be happy as an overworked and underpaid newspaper reporter and now I am miserable as an overpaid and underworked technical writer. I hate producing boring and meaningless drivel. It's a life not worth living. How do I break out? Will any newspapers have me back? Will I have to swallow a major pay cut and lifestyle degradation? What should I do?

So Damn Bored

Dear Torn and Bored,

Many an advice columnist would say that you made your bed and now must sleep in it, but not Mr. Blue. I say stay where you are as you plot your escape. Only you can assess the height of those prison walls, but be assured that there is a whole green world of freedom beyond them. There is a route from here to there, and you can't traverse it in one mighty leap, you must scheme it out. Meanwhile, you really should look at this deadening, boring, meaningless drivel you're producing and try to do better work.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I have been married for six years to a woman I fell in love with in high school. I am the sum total of her romantic experience, and she is damn near all of mine. I love her and respect her more now than ever, and I sense no diminution in her love for me. Nevertheless, I have been increasingly obsessed with the idea of having an affair. Will my faithfulness deprive me of one of life's best experiences? Or should I hope that this itch never needs to be scratched?

Fido

Your letter seems to fold up at the word "nevertheless." Up to that point, you write strong declarative sentences, and then everything turns wobbly and flabby. "I have been increasingly obsessed" is like a cloud of fruit flies compared to "I love her and respect her more now than ever," which is a well-planed beam. You seem to be in the midst of one of life's best experiences right now. What you are toying with is the idea of putting a torch to your house to see what it looks like when flames burst through the roof. We all have such thoughts -- we look at the plane in the sky and think, "What if it blew up right now?" -- but we don't take action to bring about the disaster. So don't.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I have a difficult time getting through anything by Thomas Pynchon and fear being in a social situation where I might be asked to comment on "Mason & Dixon" and not being able to say more than "I liked the talking dog." Am I an idiot?

Pynchon Challenged

I don't remember the talking dog at all. Was it in one of the parts I skipped?

Dear Mr. Blue,

I've met a woman who thinks I am a wonderful writer. She has just returned from a three-week trip to Paris to visit her boyfriend, a sculptor. She says she thought about me while she was away. During her absence, all of my writing ceased inexplicably and in the eight hours she's been back I've been full of ambition. Though she is an attractive young woman, I haven't thought of her sexually. Nevertheless, the feeling of being reunited with her has been powerful. I can't decide if it's her or how she helps my writing that I love.

Bemused

This sounds like a crush to me, harmless if it's played for laughs, but you seem to be trying to work it up into a major motion picture. Three weeks when your writing simply ceased? Really? Well, I guess you are going to pursue a romance with her, aren't you -- yes, you are, and you will soon be thinking of her sexually, and if, during this courting ritual, your writing blossoms and burgeons, I guess you have your answer.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My wife and I have been married for 10 years, a marriage lacking in passion, though we are very good friends and do well together. But I have this sensual side that finds little release. I've contemplated having affairs, but haven't. I've contemplated leaving her, but can't imagine life on my own. We've tried working on our sex life, but nothing seems to come of it. I guess that on some soul level, I've decided friendship is more important than sex. By the way, I'm a writer and my writing life is going pretty well.

Frustrated in Virginia

Sex does not easily lend itself to being worked on. You take off your clothes and sit on the bed facing each other with the manual open to the chapter on foreplay and somehow inspiration flies out the window. The videos are faintly embarrassing, and the therapists even more so. Sex works better in the dark, and usually there is one person who instigates it, and since you're here, let's say it's you. Try bringing your sensual side to bear on your wife as if you were contemplating having an affair with her. You're a writer, you have an imagination, so use it. Construct a plausible fantasy in which she is a mysterious woman who appears and excites you, a fine respectable woman with a secret sensuous side, and play this out (keeping the fantasy strictly to yourself), and seduce her. If rebuffed, try again. If the fantasy wears out, create another one. You can create one whose power to excite will amaze you. Imagine you're another man having an affair with your wife. Whatever. And let me say one more thing, in case you may have forgotten it. Languorous delicious oral sex. No home should be without it.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I met a woman at a writer's conference this summer, we spent a marvelous weekend together afterward and (I thought) fell wonderfully in love. But since then, nothing. We live seven states apart and my heartfelt letter to her received only a tepid note. The comment of one of the writer's conference faculty rings in my ears: "The men at writer's conferences are average looking and hard up; the women are beautiful and fucked-up. Don't get involved." Must Cupid's arrow clash with the Muse's pen?

Just Curious

You have been dismissed. It doesn't mean she's crazy or that you shouldn't have gotten involved, only that she isn't in love with you. Write a story about it and move on.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am a writer with a close platonic friendship with my ex-husband five years after I left him. After the divorce, we tried to patch things up and failed. Still, we are close and have shared most of our adult lives with each other, and I feel loved by this man. He helped raise my daughter, though he's not her father, and for the past two years he has supported me while I took time off to write. Now, after five years of self-imposed celibacy, I met a man I like and we are going out. Hearing this, my ex-husband has suddenly become interested in me romantically again. I've known the new boyfriend for two months, the ex-husband for 15 years. The boyfriend is promising me the world. The ex-husband isn't sure he can give me what I want, but he doesn't want to see me disappear into another man's arms.

Perplexed

Dear Perplexed,

You are indebted to your ex-husband for his help, and for that reason, as well as your obvious affection for him, you ought to let him court you, and hear his appeal to your heart, and if that means sending the boyfriend to a cold shower for a few weeks, so be it. If your heart is not moved by him, then tell him so in a kindly way and go dancing with Mr. World.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am doing well as a freelance writer, but I still have a problem meeting deadlines without an editor holding a gun to my head. How to be more efficient?

Lazy

Me too. So maybe it is the passage of deadlines and the feeling of cold steel against our temples that stimulate us to get the sentences marching across the page. You can go be as efficient as you like, put stuff in color-coded folders, keep your pencils in a neat row, draw up a weekly work schedule, create flowcharts, surround yourself with clocks and timers, but it won't necessarily put wonderful stuff on the page, says me.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My wife is a wonderful, bright, beautiful woman with a need to write. Her problem is that she is too sensitive about my opinion of her work, and my every hesitation, shrug, raised eyebrow and suggestion creates deep insecurity, and now she no longer shows work to me.

The Writer's Block

Stop raising those big hairy eyebrows of yours, mister. Shrugs and raised eyebrows suggest you don't care enough about writing to be critical, so you're merely sarcastic: You shrug, you roll your eyes, you sigh, you push the work away and say, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's a little long." This is death on writers. This wonderful, bright, beautiful woman deserves better than a shrug from you, and you don't have better to offer, so she's withdrawn her work from your dry gaze, and good for her, and boogers on you.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am a third-year undergraduate at a college in the East. I came from a small town in the Midwest and have spent the last two years more or less drifting through everything -- classes, money, friends, majors. I need a "calling," but nothing particularly excites or challenges me. I've been told I'm a skilled writer, but I haven't explored it much. Lately I've been drawn to treks abroad and "rushes" like skydiving and whitewater rafting. I tell everybody I like adventure and unpredictability, but way too often I find myself alone at night, unwilling or unable to face reality. I can't seem to force myself to follow through on anything. All this stuff scares me. The paths ahead that everyone else sees are shrouded in fog to me, and it doesn't seem like there are any guides. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Any advice?

Dismayed in D.C.

You seem to be at a bad turn in the river, Dismayed, and I sincerely suggest you find yourself a good and kind therapist who will listen to you for a few hours a week. You don't need advice, you need to talk things through with a caring professional. You sound quite rational and bright and eminently likable, and a therapist could help you through this troubling stretch and save you some anxiety. Decide if you'd prefer to talk to a woman or a man, and get a recommendation from your college counseling office. It's tough being young and alone and scared. Let someone help.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am a writer, a single-minded one, and when I'm working on a story, I get completely wrapped up in it. So I've had some very productive periods. But whenever something or someone else becomes the focus of my attention, my writing completely falls by the wayside. Six months ago I met, fell in love with and moved in with a terrific man. We are very happy together, plan to get married, and love to spend as much time together as possible -- and as a result I haven't written a decent sentence since I met him. Isn't there some way I can make room for both passions in my life?

Fixated in New York

See the advice to Worried above. Your single- mindedness is to be envied, though, and if that method, total immersion, has worked for you, then you might have to consider training this terrific man to adapt to the cadences of your writing life. You might propose an escape clause in your marriage contract that allows you, at your absolute discretion, to disappear for a few days, weeks, even a month, to go off and write, at the end of which you'll return to him, blazing with passion. I daresay that most men, especially terrific ones, could learn to live with that.
SALON | Sept. 22, 1998

Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue.

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