This photo was sent to me by photographer extraordinaire Greg Watermann. The image file is titled: "PullEmDown." Thank you, Greg, for allowing me to republish it.
I feel like I've been neglecting this blog, for some reason. Even though that isn't really true. I'm working, and when I'm not working, I'm working on the novel. I'm editing and revising and rewriting it. Recently, I hit a bit of a slowwwwww spot. I had to reintroduce my antihero, and I had to rewrite a scene on a porn movie set that was my definitive flashpoint in my personal reality, and I had to re-present a character who used to be me, which was tricky, as you might imagine.
So far this week on the XX Factor, I've written about stilettos and Spitzer. I like writing for Slate. It stretches my braiiiiiiiins.
I like my editor there very much. Her name is Hanna Rosin. I like her because she is a smart cookie, and a great writer, but also because she's about the only editor I've ever met who seems to see me as something other than ... a ... sex writer.
In the not too distant future, I may do some longer features for Slate. And Hanna asked me what did I maybe want to do, if I do that, and I sort of told her what I had in mind, and then she said something back to me that made me think, Oh. That's what I meant.
I told her I want to write about The New Manliness, and manhood in the 21st century, or something like that, and she said something about updating "the Susan Faludi book," by which she meant Stiffed, and I thought, Yes, well, that, exactly.
There's a place I want to go as a possible start for that project, somewhere in Kentucky. So maybe this will take me there. It's too soon to tell. But almost more interesting is the idea that although I'm knee deep in Porn Valley at this moment, it may be that when I'm done with this book, I'll be done with that subject, and then I can write about something else. Which sounds both wildly attractive and totally impossible. Who knows what 2009 will bring?
