Q: You seem a little down today.

A: Reading through COMING OFF, THEN GOING BACK ON SABBATICAL was a downer.

I collected the poems I wrote over a two year period.

I put a short description of the book, from the catalogue raisonné, as a chapter heading, and then put the poems in that book, after the description of what I was doing, in the book.

What I was doing was trying to figure out how to become self-sufficient as a writer. How to sell the book I had just written, or what to write next, that would sell. That's what the poems were about.

Also, what happened to what I sent out. And how I felt about that.

The books, and the poems, were about what my life as a working writer was like.

My hopes and plans for moving forward.

Q: This is not what books are usually about. Although sometimes OLJs and blogs are about that.

A: Right. It's things publishers don't want to know, or don't think of as the proper subject of a book.

But I think people, aspiring writers and the loved ones of failed writers, are interested.

Q: They very well may be. But that's not a large audience. The general reader isn't interested in that. Your niche is too small to be commercially viable.

A: Could be.

I didn't see why a book about writing and publishing, underground writing and publishing, couldn't cross over, like Kitchen Confidential, or Inside Baseball.

Anyhow, none of them did. So I wasted two years writing about the subject.. Like a paranoiac returning to his obsession.

And towards the end of the second year it began to sink in that the major victory I had scored, getting a book I serialized on the web published as an ink-and-paper book, and taking a year off to try to sell it in bookstores and at writers conferences and book fairs, was not going to make a difference in my circumstances.

When I spent all my money I'd be back in the same place I was in when I started, only out the money I spent.

Q: Bummer.

A: Yea. It bummed me out. Reading about it.

Q: Well maybe you and the publisher you sent the manuscript to can just pick the poems you like, and leave out the descriptions of the books they came from and the poems you don't like, and make the book half as long.

Exercise choice. Editorial judgment.

A: Yea.

Q: And you can make this book about your high school class and bluegrass music, and leave out your writing career to date and having to look for a job when you finish writing the book.

A: Yea.

Did you know that one of the reasons Oprah picked James Frey's book in the first place--I'm sure she liked the book--is Jennifer Anniston controls the film rights, and Oprah took the book to get Jennifer on her show. As a quid pro quo.

Q: Did I know that money is about money and books are about books?

A: Something like that.

Q: Just write the best book you can and don't worry about what happens to it. What happens to it is out of your hands.

A: That's my plan.