It's that time when critics in magazines and newspapers declare their picks for the ten best books of the year. As a writer, I certainly have my opinions on that subject, but since so many books come out each year and I've only sampled a relatively small proportion of them, I'd rather keep out of that debate and instead focus on what made 2004 so important for me: The Top Ten Lessons I've Learned about Getting Published.

1. Getting published doesn't change how you see yourself, but it does change how other people see you, though only for five seconds.

I still scribble my first drafts in the same spiral notebooks I used as a teenager in high school. I still sit in cafes and stare off into space while trying to focus on my work as I did in college. And I still worry about what I'm going to do when I grow up. However, now that I've been published, when other people ask me what I do, I can say that I'm a writer and have an answer ready when I they ask the inevitable next question, "Have you been published?" Yes, I have been published. Generally, the response is, "Oh, wow! That's great!" That's how long you are guaranteed that getting published will change how other people see you, because then they'll have heard of your book or they won't have heard of your book, which leads to all sorts of complications.

2. Memorize how to answer, "So what's your book about?" in 25 seconds or less.

Because books get so little attention in the media, it's more than likely that people you meet will not have heard of your book and then they will feel bad for you. To be polite, they may ask what your book is about. You should tell them, but spare your audience the university lecture. Give them a quick hook and then make an end of it, or else you'll experience eyes glazing over. It's like a little test. If you can't sum up the book in less than 25 seconds, then your book must be a meandering mess. No one will say that, of course, but that's what your friend is thinking.

3. There's no use in asking a writer, "So how's your book doing!!??"

If the question needs to be asked, then it has no real answer. Does anyone ask Toni Morrison or Philip Roth, "So how's your book doing?" (How would they respond, I wonder. "Well, the Nobel was nice, but I'm waiting for another Pulitzer." Or "Only fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list this time.")

When people ask this question, they're wondering about two specific kinds of success: sales and critical reaction. But these two areas are not only the least important for a writer in the long run, but also the two areas least under his or her control. Success is about finishing your book and putting it out in the world, crafting sentences and characters you're proud of, realizing your vision, expressing ideas, seeing your book in a store, reading to an audience who gets your jokes, and so much more.

Sales are important because they increase your chances of being able to continue to write with fewer obstacles, and that's it. (This may be a hard lesson to remember.) If sales were the ultimate goal, then Dan Brown and Hillary Clinton deserve the Pulitzer Prize for the next three years.

Critical acclaim is nice too, but as an occasional critic myself, I know there are times when I get a book that simply isn't to my taste, or when I'm grumpy that I have to read something and comment on it in a witty insightful way even though my mind would rather drift elsewhere, like the fight I had with a friend or a problem at work. I've gotten wonderful reviews and reviews that complained I chose the wrong subjects for my book, or that I wasn't as good as Hemingway or Nabokov. Who's right?

If you're a writer, and people ask you how your book is doing, tell them, "Great! I'm so happy with the way things have gone." Throw in an anecdote of something nice that's happened to you because the book has been published. Or not. Either way, you'll feel better and increase the positive vibrations in the ether about your work.

4. The two appropriate things to say to a writer who's just published a book are: A) "I'm going to go right out and buy a copy!" or "I read your book and I loved it." (Also acceptable is, "I've just bought your book and I can't wait to read it.")

If none of these three statements are true for you, then do your writer friends a favor: lie to them. I've had people say to me, "I think I saw your book somewhere." (As if the book were a long-lost orphan who'd been sighted on a milk carton in Idaho.) I've also gotten, "I'm waiting to find your book in a used bookstore." "I'm waiting to get your book at the library." "My friend bought it and as soon as she's done, she's going to loan it to me." "One of these days I'm going to get your book, if I happen to see a copy of it for sale somewhere."

What these statements sound like to a writer is, "You're a nice person, but not nice enough for me to waste my time supporting your career by going to a bookstore and picking up a copy of your book, or even to spend 2 minutes and $24.95 or $12.95 to order your book on-line." Maybe that is genuinely how you feel, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what good does it do to tell this to the writer?

Similarly, if you did read the book and didn't enjoy it, why let the writer know except to punish him or her for torturing you for a few hours out of your life? As the author Frederic Tuten once told me, there are enough people out there who will tell writers what is wrong with their work. I can say from personal experience that I am indeed fully aware of every conceivable objection The View from Stalin's Head could have earned and I expect when Faith from Beginners comes out I'll hear about that too. Unless you're a close friend (and even then, you might want to consider your words closely), just lie. Or say something about an aspect of the book you did like. "The setting was great." "I loved the character of the mother." "Great word choice on page 73." Saying nothing is somewhat less preferable because writers are needy sensitive creatures who will interpret silences as damning.

The worst thing to say, by the way, is the maddeningly non-committal, "I read your book." Or "I have a friend who read your book." How is the writer supposed to respond? Imagine if you invited a friend to your home for dinner, and at the end of the meal she said, "I've eaten your food."

Just lie.

5. Start working on something else

It takes a long time, sometimes years, to publish and edit a book. By the time it's out, you get a three-month window in which you're not expected to have done anything else because you can be described as "just having been published." After that, you're left with nothing.

As soon as that final manuscript is delivered and accepted, celebrate for a day or two and then get to work on your next project. It's also a good way to stay somewhat dispassionate if something unfortunate happens with the publication of your book.

6. Try to set the bar higher with each new book.

Why do the same thing twice? You've proven you can tackle third person? Try first person. You've written an autobiographical memoir? Go for a book about something that isn't so close to you. Take chances. Stay fresh.

7. Have a life.

This is almost impossible for writers, but try to develop and maintain other interests besides writing and books, and then talk about them with your family and friends. Save the neurotic yammering about the state of literature for your diary or your therapist.

8. If you're asked for a favor, do it if you possibly can.

We have enough assholes in the world. Success breeds success. Kindness breeds kindness. Don't worry that someone might get a leg up on you if you help him up the ladder. You may need help from that person yourself someday.

9. Read and buy books

Support your friends and your community by buying their work, even if you don't read it. This is an important business we're in, and we need to keep it going. Replace the time you waste watching that rerun of "The Golden Girls" for the eightieth time by reading for half an hour. You'll like yourself for it.

10. Be proud of what you've achieved!

As Anne Lamott and so many others have pointed out, getting published won't take care of all your problems, but is an extremely nice thing to have happen to you. I feel tremendously blessed for the publication of The View from Stalin's Head, the way it was put out, the way it was received, and the way it's changed my life. I could have had more, but I could have had less. It's like that for every writer. Even my idol E. M. Forster lamented that he hadn't accomplished enough. Writers are gifted at being miserable. Take some time to be happy for what you have. You deserve it.

Please Don't Bother to Entertain Me

Ever since I was aware of literature, I've wanted to read Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, mostly because the title sounded so, you know, like, cool. First of all, I had never met anyone with the mysterious name of Jude, a name that sounded to me as if it were Jewish, even though I knew it was Christian. Then there was the "the Obscure" part. How could someone with such a lofty, regal-sounding name and title be "obscure"?

Even though I'd read some of Hardy's other work and enjoyed it, I stayed far away from Jude. I'd been warned off by English teachers, professors, even my sister-in-law, that the novel was dark, depressing, twisted, heavy, dense. A good read if you enjoyed uttering Satanic chants or tearing wings off butterflies in your spare time, or a chore to complete for school. Definitely not something to read for fun.

Recently I was in a bookstore and happened to see the intriguing title once again looming in front of me. I felt old enough, brave enough, experienced enough to handle the tortures within its covers, so I picked it up and began reading.

After finishing the first few chapters, I noticed the experience I was having was much different from the one to which I'd become accustomed when reading fiction, watching movies, looking at art, even riding in the subway. At first I couldn't put my finger on what was so strange about the book. Then it hit me. I wasn't being entertained.

Today, it seems as if not being entertained has become impossible. Life is now the ultimate spectator sport, underscored by constant commentary and scores from other games around the world. The news is now accompanied by flashing lights, music, subtitles, and a constant crawl of headlines to keep your eye moving. Picking out groceries is now a performative-theatrical experience. It's no longer enough for a food to be strawberry-flavored, for example. It must be strawberry-kiwi-boisenberry flavored, with silver packaging and a free toy inside, or a diet plan, or an easy, quick, delicious low-fat recipe. Also, it must be bite-sized and come in bright colors like hot pink and sky blue. Waiting for a movie to begin is now a chance to be entertained by songs designed by corporate executives who've learned which chords and melodies appeal to the largest common denominator, or by snippets from TV shows about waiting in line for soup, or on-the-set "exclusive peeks" from made for TV movies featuring B-movie actors. Everything we see lights up and flickers, comes with extra features we've never asked for but accept, because, A) they're free, and B) most importantly, they're new. As soon as we wake up in the morning, we're being entertained by something. And if something doesn't entertain us, like a friend's over-long illness, the genocide in Sudan, or modern dance, then we dismiss it with the ultimate of damnations: boring.

Indeed, a new crop of writers, perhaps feeling the heat from their multimedia cousins on the internet and in film, have declared their aim to thrill, to entertain, to join in the Roman circuses instead of offer a refuge from them. Their stories are chock-a-block with cliffhangers and climaxes, thrills and spills, more fun than a day at Six Flags.

Of course entertaining audiences isn't new to literature. Just check out Ben-Hur or the novels of Charles Dickens, who wasn't above writing a scene of spontaneous combustion or two.

What's new is that we live in a time when we don't need literature as an escape from our boring, drab, gray lives. If anything, life offers too many vehicles for "excitement" these days. What we need from literature now, more than ever, is a jolt us back to reality and out of our constant state of caffeine-rush alertness to the latest over-the-top news headline on our computer, the latest Hollywood exclusive (available to millions of viewers in the English-speaking world), the latest internet porn fantasy.

Unfortunately, many of the writers who aren't trying to thrill us are putting us to sleep. I'm taking about authors of literary fiction whose characters putter around the house and in the yard waiting to be struck by an epiphany that their lives have been a waste, though it's too late to change and it's all so pointless anyway. These "slice-of-life" stories are in their own way as much removed from reality as the chills-and-spills approach.

Jude the Obscure is not so much a slice of life as it is a slice out of life. Its mix of Biblical references and antiquated rustic slang can sometimes be impenetrable; the characters' hemming and hawing can be infuriating; the bleakness of their world is overpowering. As readers, we don't know quite what to make of Hardy's vision. We become angry, uncomfortable, and best of all, confused. In other words, we feel alive.

And what's wrong with that? In this age of you're on my side or you're against me, what's wrong with a little uncertainty? Are we so insecure in our selves that we can't handle being provoked, unsettled, and even upstaged by a work of art?

We have artists today who make deliberately confusing work. That's easy. What's hard, and what's so admirable about Hardy, is that he writes novels that seem almost understandable, which is what makes them so lifelike. He veers back and forth between naturalism and surrealism, riveting action and obscure, repetitive scenes in which nothing seems to happen. We as readers feel we ought to understand it all, but when we finish his work, we come away scratching our heads, angry with ourselves for not knowing what to think. We become more skilled at living with uncertainty, a skill we're in desperate need of more and more.

So who else is teaching us this lesson now? Who is our Thomas Hardy today? I'm open to suggestions, if you have any.

The Literary Meaning of the Election of 2004

In my writing classes, my students often like to deflect criticism of vagueness in their work with the mantra, "But it sounds good." In response, I tell them it isn't good enough for words to sound good. They have to mean something as well.

Unfortunately, the relationship between word and meaning is becoming a radical concept, an outmoded value. We live in a country and a time when musicians lip sync and call it "singing," when museums exhibit bicycles and Armani dresses and call it "art, when performers preen for the camera and call it "acting." Evangelical preachers support the death penalty to promote a culture of life; bacon, raw fish, and candy bars are marketed as health food; people appear on reality TV shows as "characters."

At last this country has found a president to match our predilection for falseness and inversion, our ongoing project of divorcing word from meaning. In 2004, we re-elected a president who goes to war to keep peace, who imposes democracy on other countries so their inhabitants can express their free will (under the watchful eyes of our troops), who builds a case for war on the grounds of "weapons of mass destruction," and when that evidence is disproven, takes no responsibility for the falseness of those words, but instead changes the grounds for the war. Now we are fighting to spread democracy. The words about WMD, peddled for months by the president and his cohorts, don't matter because they are only words. They sounded good at the time, but their meaning is fundamentally unimportant.

It will probably strike future generations as more than a little odd that a president with such a penchant for falseness is so beloved for his honesty. But then, we as Americans on both sides of the red/blue state divide have lost our ability to judge and interpret language. Many of Bush's supporters like him because they think he sounds honest, not because they have spent five minutes parsing his words to see if he really is honest. Many of Bush's detractors compare him to Hitler, and especially to the terrorists themselves, but these comparisons are unfortunate exaggerations that obscure the real danger of Bush's presidency.

The problem is not that Bush is a terrorist. A terrorist is an individual or a member of an organization who cannot be held accountable for his actions by the citizens of a state. The problem is that in his careless disregard for words and their meaning, Bush uses language in the manner of a terrorist because terrorists revel in doublespeak. They fight holy wars by the unholy method of slaughtering women and children. They fail to distinguish between civilians and soldiers because distinctions are useless when you want to paint your message in broad swaths of blood. Unfortunately, our president has as little use for truth in language as our old vanquished foes, the Communist dictators of Eastern Europe.

Sadly, this is the level to which we as Americans have sunk long before "Black Wednesday," lulled by our Ipods that play music only we can hear and video games in which we score points for committing vile crimes that don't matter and "healthy" chocolate covered energy bars that satisfy our cravings for sugar our body doesn't need. In such an atmosphere, can anyone be surprised that we've re-elected President Bush? (I say "we" to include myself in the decision because we are all responsible for the outcome of the election, however we voted.)

In 2004, we said to our enemies: we in the free world think just as you do in the land of shackled. The ideals of our Constitution, of our two hundred year old democracy, those are mere words, easily sacrificed in the name of "security" on the streets of Baghdad, in Abu Ghreib, in Guantanamo Bay, and in the halls of our own Congress when the Patriot Act was rushed into law. Might makes right. We do what we do not because we should but because we can. And in sacrificing our ideals, we believe, we have made America safe. We have also lost a little of what "America" used to mean.

And so in November 2004, we sent our message loud and clear to the terrorists, the jihadists, the religious extremists and petty dictators who wish us ill. We should not be surprised when we hear their response.

THE LIFE OF AN "ESTABLISHED WRITER"

Shortly after The View from Stalin's Head came out, I received a kind email from an appreciative reader who asked me to write her back because she thought it would be good for her to hear from an "established writer." My first instinct was to look around the room to see if there were any established writers nearby who could send her a reply.

If publication makes you an established writer, then I suppose I am one. Still, I can't help feeling like an imposter, that somehow I have pulled the wool over the eyes of my editor and my agent, as well as the editors of every magazine and anthology where I've been published, every contest judge who's given me a prize, every teacher and critic who's said something nice about my work. I doubt I'm the only writer who ever felt this way. Flannery O'Connor once compared the experience of reading your own work to chewing on the carpet.

I suspect that part of the reason I don't feel established is that my day to day life looks nothing like I'd imagined it would after achieving the magical goal of publication. For starters, I'd always thought an established writer would spend each day of the week laboring industriously and faithfully on his laptop, only breaking off typing long enough to take a phone call from the editors of The New Yorker, troubling him for a column or story for their very next issue. Or perhaps the call comes from his agent, to tell him which literary prize he's been nominated for this week, which bestseller list he's hit, or which foreign publisher or Hollywood producer is begging for a sneak peak at his newest work. The phone rings again, this time from the New York Times. They're interested in another feature for the Arts section. (That makes three this month!)

Once a week, the established writer hails a taxi and rides up to the local University to teach a graduate workshop in fiction, not because he needs the money, but simply because it amuses him. Also, it gives him a chance to shape the future of fiction, as if his widely-read novels haven't already done so. On weekends, the established writer attends literary gatherings in swank cocktail lounges or in some important person's living room, where he sips champagne and munches on crackers spread with goat cheese and arugula.

There may actually be some writers who live this way, but I do not. First of all, though I try to write every day, it's never in any kind of continuous time frame. My work tends to come out in a series of disconnected spurts. A half hour on the subway home from work. Fifteen minutes between giving in to the constant temptation to check my email so I can delete the latest span from 1-800-Flowers.com. Okay, I'm ready to focus, get back to work. Except that it might be a good idea to make a cup of tea first so I don't fall asleep while typing because I've been up since 6:30 am. While I'm at it, I'll grab a quick granola bar just to keep up my strength, and then a glass of water because I'm dehydrated from the tea. I'm typing again, but oops, now I have to go to the bathroom because I've had the water and the tea. While I'm up, I'd better check the news.

Somehow I manage to produce work this way, and occasionally people give me money for it. Fifty dollars here. One hundred there. Sometimes more, but not often. And then there are the book advances (minus agent's fee, minus taxes), which I'm very glad and thankful for, though they have yet to reach quit-my-day-job proportions.

I teach, because I love to, but also because I need the money to live. And, though I'm eager and happy to serve my students, when I'm done for the day, I'm sometimes so exhausted from performing for a crowd (because teaching really is a constant performance), I don't want to turn on my computer or open my notebook. I just want to close my eyes and hear absolute quiet.

I do socialize with other writers, but we tend to avoid swanky lounges because they're expensive and none of us have that much spare money. We teach English to immigrants or composition for state schools, coach girls' field hockey, work as personal trainers, tutor children from wealthy families, work for magazines and publishers and caterers and on and on. Never once has Ethan Hawke, Bono, or Salman Rushdie appeared at any of our gatherings.

And yet, though my life as an established writer has not turned out as I'd expected, I still consider myself extraordinarily blessed. My days are interesting and varied. I get to learn about subjects I never would have otherwise gotten interested in. (For my current novel, set in Berlin, I'm studying physics, pregnancy, the German language, as well as Colette's Claudine novels and Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions.) I spend a part of each day doing something I love. And my work is out in the world. People read and even enjoy it. Occasionally their lives are touched by it, like the woman who came to hear me read in Detroit because she'd been moved by an essay I'd written about the late Janet Frame, or another woman here in New York who came to a reading just to tell me how much she'd loved my stories. Those moments are wonderful.

Then there are moments that aren't wonderful, like when you get a bad review, or when someone says to you he's been trying to get through your book, really he has, but he simply has better things to do with his time, like staring at his toenails. As an occasional critic myself, I know how easy it is to lapse into tearing apart someone's work. If you want to write, you have to accept that such criticism is part of the price you pay to be in the game.

There will always be times you go unnoticed, unrecognized, rejected. Or when you'll wait centuries to be paid and feel embarrassed to send that politely nudging email that basically says, "Um, I lived up to my part of the bargain and did the work. Can you pay me that hundred dollars you owe me?" And worst of all is writers' block, when you're staring at a notebook page and the only thought that comes to mind is that you've managed to fake out the world this long, but no longer. You really are an imposter and a cheat and guilty of every writing sin your worst critics have accused you of. You ought to get out your checkbook and issue refunds to anyone who's ever wasted a tin nickel to read something you've written.

Becoming a writer in reality (as opposed to my fantasy) has taught me that a writer's life means giving up control, which is no different than anyone else's life, except that I can say that I chose my fate, that I had a dream and I followed it where it led me. The only thing I can control is my attitude. For example, now I'm thankful for some of the rejections and criticism I've gotten. I wouldn't want some of those stories published today, and the criticism, even when I didn't agree with it, made me stronger, made me fight harder, made me more certain that this was the right thing to do with my life because I didn't allow those critics to convince me to quit.

You can cry and rail against the editors of the magazines and publishing houses and the whole literary world, but if you're really indignant about where you've ended up as a writer, the best thing to do is write a novel or story collection to prove to the world how wrong it is for not recognizing your talent all this time. But be careful, because even if you do manage to create a work of genius, the world may not be ready or even in the mood to pay attention. There might be a war or a terrorist attack, an election, or even the debut of a new TV reality show hosted by Alan Thicke overshadowing your accomplishment. No time for art.

So the life of an established writer has turned out to be pretty much the same as the life of an unestablished writer, just with a few new wrinkles. And a few perks, like seeing your book in a store occasionally. Also, now people don't ask me what I'm going to do when I grow up. Instead they want to know if they can buy my book in a real store or if I can give them a free copy.

In this blog, I plan to document what it's really like to be a working, perhaps "established" writer. I hope that my example demystifies the writer mystique for general readers. I also hope that it's something for writers of all stripes, including those who feel that they aren't established but long to be, to identify with as well as take heart from.