We were at a waterpark in Orlando. I was five, or six maybe, and my brothers were I don’t know where, sliding down things that would only ever give me a rash. So, my mother and I walked to the tidal pool at the other end of the park, or, rather, we sat beside it, because it was summer and it was hot and there were many soggy toddlers. We can be honest about this much: superabsorbent polymers are only going to keep in so much pee. Still, this was our moment of relaxation, and we took it in together—the real palm trees, the fake waves, all those tiny bodies rising and falling inside their shape.

And that’s when it happened: a man walked towards us—nearly brushing into my mother—clad in nothing but a Speedo: the skinniest piece of thin, black fabric. And he was covered—no, I mean, covered—in tiny, crescent-shaped, wiry hairs. Even ‘covered’ isn’t right, because that is to put it mildly. Too mildly, I believe. To say this man was, in fact, closer to our evolutionary origin is perhaps scientifically invalid—I can hear my scientist friends now, saying, “Amy, that’s impossssible,” saying, “Amy, you can’t be serious,” as they do when I suggest that aliens are A Thing or we’re on the cusp of discovering time travel or gravity cannot be real because what do we make of hot air balloons?—but it does the work I want it to. So picture him primate-like.

Do you see him on his knees, scrounging around as he picks up berries?

It was grotesque, is all I mean—a gratuitous amount of hair that any other human being would simply shave off, or wax to oblivion, or attempt to remove by ingesting one of those Japanese medicines advertised on late-night infomercials that make your skin red and flaky but the hair disintegrate. Perhaps I’m being cruel. But the point is simply this: he was a gross, gross man, and my mother—an otherwise perfectly grounded, reasonable, polite and affable woman I have always admired—looked at me and said, “Amy, whatever you do: when finally of that age, marry a man and not a monkey.”

I think about this memory now and find it startlingly out-of-character. It is the only memory I have of my mother, in fact, where she’s being judgmental, perhaps even cruel, looking down on this strange and shaggy man as if a pion from her throne of perfectly kempt hair hygiene. But even now, I’ll admit: my mother was fucking right. A monkey is not a thing I want. Really, it is the very last thing I desire when I roll over in the night, moonlight pouring in like liquid and casting glows across an afghan in what I’ll admit is my Romantic Vision—this image that I go to when I admit that I am lonely. My Romantic Vision is the reason I do everything: why I loofah, why I buy expensive soaps that contain hand-picked Provencal lavender, why I still dabble with OkCupid despite the many “hey wut up”s. And what I do not want, more than anything, is a handful of thick, brown hair mucking up my Romantic Vision.

I do not want to have an ‘extraction process.’

There should be no work involved.

My future mate does not have to be strong, exactly, and he can have some jiggly bits, because what I care about most of all is his soft, warm, doughy flesh that I can run my fingers across and press my lips against and whisper into, very softly, “This is a space meant just for me, and you’ve shaved it because you care.”

Of course I know that for many, hair’s a problem. I’m not naïve enough not to know that. As human beings, we are inherently flawed, bound by the biological container we arrived in, and I know a great many folks who go to great lengths to shave their hair, or they wax it, or they sit there on a blind date, embarrassed about their forearms. And perhaps if I were a better woman—less judgmental, more accommodating—what I would be saying is not, Ew, but, It’s okay to be who you are, or, Some of us have hair. But my mother’s advice was specific and it was meant for me and only me—as if she knew who I’d become—and I find myself grateful for it even now.

But what of you? And what, again, of me? Last week I turned another year older, and I find my Romantic Vision is fulfilled now only by the great many pillows I press against, as if a body. But sequins and paisley prints can only do so much. Her advice, I’m beginning to realize, is simply not enough. I want more: a whole inventory from that tidal pool memory—a guidebook, if you will—for the men I should and should not date. It would save me so much time. Dating, as it turns out, is so much more complicated than a man’s hair-to-no-hair ratio. Hair, lo and behold, is likely the least of my concerns.

Because I’m all about justifying my behavior, I’ve read lots of studies lately that assert that 30 is the new 20 for men. The economy, the oversaturation of college graduates, the kick-assery of females everywhere—whatever the cause, men are increasingly delayed in terms of financial success and maturity. I’m not saying all of them, of course, but certainly many of them. Things are taking longer, and so things are taking longer to acquire. Mature relationships, for example.

I cannot tell you how many relationships I’ve already endured at my young age—some for an embarrassingly long amount of time—where I’ve found myself putting in nearly everything while my partner puts in nearly nothing. Look, I want to say, I’ve been up all night reading your short stories and I made you this home-cooked dinner and, later, I’ll make us brownie sundaes and we can watch this old film I rented because I love you and I care.

But they have beers to drink. They have rambling alleyways to walk. They are pensive and they are moody and they have so many things to do.

This is not to say that I am perfect. I am often consumed by want and I can get obsessed with my aloneness and I am deathly afraid of spiders and I will judge you if you voted for Romney. Nor am I saying that I have given up on men entirely; I’ve simply begun to look for them in other places. I have a very good feeling, for example, that my next boyfriend will be a good 10 years older than me, likely more, and this suits me even now. I am very into the idea of responsibility and maturity and perhaps the wisdom that comes with age. I am into you not drinking. I am into you admiring me for my clean and nicely-scented home, and how you realize it’s not my duty but a thing I choose to do. Is your house lined with vintage bookshelves? Do you maybe own a car? These things get me hot and bothered. For whatever reason, my deepest and most private fantasies now involve making a man a roast chicken and then sitting beside him on a couch as we watch documentaries about deep space, or black holes, or old black-and-white movies while he doesn’t drink a million beers but instead asks if I’ll share my blanket.

“God damn,” I’ll say, “of course,” and the sweetness I’ll find within that moment will seem so gratifying I might explode.

“Like a death star,” I’ll joke gently. “Like I’m evaporating into the fucking cosmos because of how satisfied you’ve made me.”

What I’m getting at, I guess, is that wouldn’t it be great is if we could somehow bypass all of the nonsense that comes before we meet the person we’re actually meant to be with? If—in that waterpark that afternoon—my mother could have told me everything? 

So here’s an addendum—a list of the many things my mother didn’t think to list, likely because they’d be inappropriate and anyway, I had no notebook. Here, instead, are the things I’ve learned only by going on dates with men who ‘dip,’ men who refuse to take off their bicycle helmet—first in the restaurant and then the bar—men who tell me I should “just let it happen,” men who tell me sexy stories they’ve repressed about babysitters. I’ve dated men who eat only sausage and others who pry bread from toasters with metal forks, and men who treat me as if I’m a book—bend my spine a little bit, then shortly thereafter, put me back, and later tell everyone I was your favorite and that you learned an awful lot from me.

“She was the best,” they always say, as if it’s some weird, strange, sad sort of pride: how they treated me like garbage.

Once, I dated a man who donned a ski mask and let himself into my apartment in the middle of the night, and what the fuck is that? Isn’t he supposed to love my face? Isn’t he supposed to be kind and big-hearted with weathered hands and framed artwork?

So, a supplement to my waterpark memory—a list of Dos and Don’ts. These, dear readers, are what my friend Rachel calls “non-negotiables.”

1. Do not date the man who only ever wears Christmas-themed boxer shorts. It is not a “passing phase.” He is not “asserting” anything. It may seem cute to you at first—how you’ll stock up at Gap at Christmas so you can gift him with a reindeer print in June—but it’ll grow tiresome with age.

2. For reasons I cannot explain, walk away from the man who mentions Bob Dylan on your first date. I will defend this only by saying that I, too, think he’s great. But for whatever reason, this is a sign. “He’s, like, my idol,” he might say, or, “He got me into writing,” or, “He got him into love.” “He’s kind of like my Jesus,” he’ll say, and you need to roll your fucking eyes. It doesn’t make any sense, but this seems a universal shortcut I’ve worked out so you don’t have to.

3. Do not date a man who tells you your “future selves” are incompatible.

4. If he fetishizes poets.

5. If he’s never left the state.

6. Trust him if he’s good with dogs.

7. And especially with kids.

8. Never, ever take back the man who once took you to look at Christmas lights and then broke up with you beside a cornfield. The drive home, remember, was awkward, and he broke up you because why? Because you reminded him of his father. It was December, for Christ’s sake, just two weeks before the holiday, so no matter how much he begs—no matter how fiercely he claims he’s changed—do not let that man back in. You know enough to know: a man who dumps you while looking at Christmas lights is kind of a shitty, fucking person who is not worthy of your love.

9. Be especially dismissive if, years later, that man writes a “fictionalized” account of said-dumping for a literary journal in which he takes on the persona of the wounded, troubled man, jaded by childhood ambivalence in a house with line-dried clothes. He was doing you, he’ll write, a favor.

10. Most especially peace the fuck out if that man doesn’t tell you about that story first, and instead you must read it for yourself in a public bookstore in New York City, and you’ll do your best not to cry, but you are you, after all, and it ruins the sleeve of your favorite sweater. It had little turtles on it, even.

11. Do not date the man who tells you it’s unsexy that you drink beer and like to watch football on rainy Sundays. It’s the Lord’s day, after all, but most of all, “it’s awfully masculine.” Be a badass and watch that game in absolute defiance of ‘femininity.’ A real woman does what she wants.

12. Be wary of a man whose Dinner Making Ratio is greater than 3:1. You should never, ever make a fourth meal until your date’s cooked one for you. (Note: it doesn’t particularly matter what he makes—grilled cheese or peanut butter spread over crackers—because the point is he did the work. The point is consideration. Helping someone with their life. Being an active, contributing person who considers others’ needs.)

13. While we’re on the subject of ratios, note the Writer-Reading dynamic should be no greater than 1:1. Do not read his manuscript unless he offers to read yours. Otherwise, you’ll eventually find yourself reading his novel five times in a row, making line edits and drawing hearts, drawing smiley faces over lines you love, and he’ll only ever steal your notes and never read your four page essay. And you can forget about “Acknowledgements.” Your name will not appear.

14. If he’s a writer—and of course he is—do not fall in love with him as a narrator. They’re often markedly different people.

15. Do not—if you’re listening to me at all—date the man who fears emotional intimacy, because intimacy is the most important thing and you know this and you have known this since you were five years old in that muggy waterpark, watching that man with so much hair embrace the woman who loves him most. Do not lose faith in love just because you’re getting older, or because here is yet another birthday, or because you’re spending your days with pillows and a box of Snyder’s pretzels. Do not give up on the Romantic Vision. Love is special, and so, too, is intimacy, and it is scary but no less necessary, and forming a genuine human connection is the most important thing.

And if—by some stroke of luck not even your mother could predict—you find a man who meets these qualifications, or even if he doesn’t meet all of them but you’ve decided he’s an Okay Egg, love him with all your heart. Make him dinner and read his books and pull him close to your beating chest. Put your running sneakers away. Learn how it feels to feel at peace. Then let yourself imagine it: first the porch with the splintered floorboards and then the dog everyone thinks is stupid, and then the Sunday mornings spent in the sunny living room that is lined with vintage bookshelves, texts of all different colors, the photo albums of your life—like still-frames from a movie—and allow yourself to see it: those doe-eyed, eclectic children, standing just before those bookshelves, running their fingers over the smooth, flat binding, and see it as it happens: how you bend down until you meet their level, how their faces are aligned with yours, and how you look at them and say, It will take a lot of time, say, it will take an awful lot of failure, but don’t you think—for just one second—you didn’t deserve this from the start.

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Listen to Amy read her essay:

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Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

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I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I’ve written some books, most of which I no longer like. I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be put just as much in the luck basket as the effort basket.

That said, all people should be so lucky. We can’t all be grand visionaries. We can’t all be Picassos. We want to make our business, make our art, sell it, make some money, raise a family, and try to be happy. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure. For every Mark Zuckerberg, there are 1000 Jack Zuckermans. Who is Jack Zuckerman? I have no idea. That’s my point. If you’re Jack Zuckerman and you’re reading this, I apologize. You aimed for the stars and missed. Your reentry into the atmosphere involved a broken heat shield, and you burned to a crisp by the time you hit the ocean. Now we have no idea who you are.

If you want to get rich, sell your company, have time for your hobbies, raise a halfway decent family (with mediocre children), and enjoy the sunset with your wife on occasion, here are some of my highly effective recommendations.

Procrastinate. In between the time I wrote the last sentence and the time I wrote this one, I played (and lost) a game of chess. My king and my queen got forked by a knight. But hey, that happens. Fork me once, shame on me.

Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you’re doing. When you procrastinate as an entrepreneur, it could mean that you need a bit more time to think about what you’re pitching a client. It could also mean you’re doing work that is not your forte and that you’d be better off delegating. I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that. In my first business, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head the first time I delegated a programming job to someone other than me. At that time, I went out on a date. Which was infinitely better than sweating all night on some stupid programming bug (thank you, Chet, for solving that issue).

Try to figure out why you’re procrastinating. Maybe you need to brainstorm more to improve an idea. Maybe the idea is no good as is. Maybe you need to delegate. Maybe you need to learn more. Maybe you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Maybe you don’t like the client whose project you’re working on. Maybe you need to take a break. There’s only so many seconds in a row you can think about something before you need to take time off and rejuvenate the creative muscles. This is not for everyone. Great people can storm right through. Steve Jobs never needed to take a break. But I do.

Procrastination could also be a strong sign that you’re a perfectionist, or that you’re filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. It’s your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.

Zero-task. There’s a common myth that great people can multitask efficiently. This might be true, but I can’t do it. I have statistical proof. I have a serious addiction. If you ever talk on the phone with me, there’s an almost 100 percent chance I’m simultaneously playing chess online. The phone rings, and one hand reaches for the phone while the other hand reaches for the computer to initiate a one-minute game. Chess rankings are based on a statistically generated rating system, so I can compare easily how well I do when I’m the phone compared to when I’m not on the phone. There is a three-standard-deviation difference. Imagine if I were talking on the phone and driving. Or responding to emails. It’s the same thing, I’m assuming: phone calls cause a three-standard-deviation subtraction in intelligence. And that’s the basic multitasking we all do at some point or other.

So maybe great people can multitask, but since, by definition, most of us are not great (99% of us are not in the top 1%), it’s much better to single-task. Just do one thing at a time. When you wash your hands, hear the sound of the water, feel the water on your hands, scrub every part. Be clean. Focus on what you are doing.

Often, the successful mediocre entrepreneur should strive for excellence in ZERO-tasking. Do nothing. We always feel like we have to be “doing something,” or else we (or, I should say, “I”) feel ashamed. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all.

Out of silence comes the greatest creativity. Not when we are rushing and panicking.

Fail. As far as I can tell, Larry Page has never failed. He went straight from graduate school to billions. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few others. But again, by definition, most of us are pretty mediocre. We can strive for greatness, but we’ll never hit it. So it means we will often fail. Not ALWAYS fail. But often.

My last 16 out of 17 business attempts were failures. I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I’m almost embarassed to recount them. I remember one time I was trying to pitch Tupac’s mom a website for her dead son. I had a CD (what’s that?) of all my work. I went to Tupac’s manager’s office and he said, “Okay, show me what you got.” The only problem was: I had never used a Windows-based machine. Only Macs and Unix machines. I honestly had no idea how to put my CD into the computer and then view its contents. And I had gone to graduate school in computer science. He said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

It was a $90,000 gig. It would’ve met my payroll for at least two months. It was a done deal until I walked into his office. I left his office crying while he was laughing. When I came back to my office, everyone asked, “How did the meeting go?” I said, “I think it went pretty well.” And then I went home and cried some more.

Then I bought a Windows-based PC for myself and learned how to use it. I don’t think I ever bought a Mac again, actually. It’s possible to learn from successes, but it’s much easier to learn from failures. Ultimately, life is a sentence of failures, punctuated only by the briefest of successes. So the mediocre entrepreneur learns two things from failure: First, he learns directly how to overcome that particular failure. He’s highly motivated not to repeat the same mistakes. Second, he learns how to deal with the psychology of failure. Mediocre entrepreneurs fail a lot. So they get this incredible skill of getting really good at dealing with failure. This translates to monetary success.

The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliché “Keep going until you hit the finish line!” The key slogan is, “Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail.” That’s persistence.

Be unoriginal. I’ve never come up with an original idea in my life. My first successful business was making web software, strategies, and websites for Fortune 500 companies. Not an original idea, but at the time, in the ’90s, people were paying exorbitant multiples for such businesses. My successful investments all involved situations in which I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. I wrote a TechCrunch article on this titled ”My Angel Investor Checklist.” One hundred percent of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the ugly bastard child that results. The child that was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing! Twitter: combine internet with antiquated SMS protocols. Ugly! But it works. eBay: combine e-commerce with auctions. The song “I’ll Be There”: combine Mariah Carey with Michael Jackson. If Justin Bieber sang John Lennon’s “Imagine,” it would be a huge hit. I might even listen to it.

Exercise poor networking skills. I’m that guy. You know, the one at the party who doesn’t talk to anyone and stands in the corner. I never go to tech meetups. I usually say no to very nice networking dinner invitations. I like to stay home and read. When I was running businesses, I was often too shy to talk to my employees. I would call my secretary from downstairs and ask if the hallway was clear, then ask her to unlock my door, and I’d hurry upstairs and lock the door behind me. That particular company failed disastrously.

But many people network too much. Entrepreneurship is hard enough. It’s 20 hours a day of managing employees, customers, meetings, product development, and “the buck stops here” sorts of things. And then what are you going to do? Network all night? Save that for the great entrepreneurs—or the ones who are about to fail. The mediocre entrepreneur works his 20 hours, then relaxes when he can. It’s tough to make money, not a party.

Do anything to get a “yes.” Here’s a negotiation I did. I was starting stockpickr.com and meeting with the CEO of thestreet.com. He wanted his company to have a percentage of stockpickr.com, and in exchange, he would fill up all of our ad inventory. I was excited to do the deal. I said, “Okay, I was thinking you would get 10 percent of the company.” He laughed and said, “No. 50 percent.” He didn’t even say, “We would like 50 percent.” He just said, “50 percent.” I then used all my negotiating skills and came up with a reply: “Okay. Deal.”

I’m a salesman. I like people to say yes to me. I feel insecure when they say no, or even worse, if they don’t like me. When I started a company doing websites, we were pitching to do miramax.com. I said, “50,000 dollars.” They said, “No more than 1,000 dollars, and that’s a stretch.” I used my usual technique: “Deal!”

But the end results: In the first case, thestreet.com had a significant financial stake, which gave them more psychological stake. And in the second case, miramax.com was now on my client list, so my next client, Con Edison, had to pay a lot more. I’m a mediocre salesman and probably a poor negotiator, although I try to learn from the best. But consequently, I get more deals done, I get the occasional loss leader, and ultimately, the big fish gets reeled in if I get enough people to say yes. It’s like asking every girl on the street to have sex with you. One out of 100 will say yes. In my case, it might be one out of a million, but you get the idea.

Be a poor judge of people. The mediocre entrepreneur doesn’t “Blink” in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. In Gladwell’s book, he often talks about people who can form snap correct judgements in two or three seconds. My initial judgement when I meet or even see people is this: I hate you.

And then I veer from that to too trusting. Finally, after I bounce back and forth, and through much trial and error, I end up somewhere in the middle. I also tend to drop people I can’t trust very quickly. I think the great entrepreneur can make snap judgements and be very successful with it. But that doesn’t work for most people.

At this point, when I meet someone, I make sure I specifically don’t trust my first instincts. I get to know people more. I get to understand what their motivations are. I try to sympathize with whatever their position is. I listen to them. I try not to argue or gossip about them before I know anything. I spend a lot more time getting to know the people who I want to bring closer. I have to do this because I’m mediocre and have a larger risk of bringing the wrong people into my circle.

By the time I’ve decided to be close to someone—a client, an employee, an acquirer, an acquiree, a wife—I’ve put a lot of work into thinking about them. This means I can’t waste time thinking about other things, like how to put a rocketship on Jupiter, but overall, it’s worked.

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“I thought being mediocre was supposed to be bad,” one might think. “Shouldn’t we strive for greatness?” The answer is: “Of course we should! But let’s not forget that nine out of ten drivers think they’re above the median in driving skill.” People overestimate themselves. Don’t let overestimation get in the way of becoming fabulously rich, or at least successful enough that you can have your freedom, feed your family, and enjoy other things in life.

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

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Rumpus original art by Liam Golden.

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Click here to purchase a “Write Like a Motherfucker” mug.

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Failure is front and center in Rumpus interviews editor Rebecca Rubenstein‘s new short story at Used Furniture Review. Read it right here.

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THE RUMPUS: We’ve all heard the sexy story of the 20-something know-it-all who gets an MFA from Colombia and—poof!—puts out a bestselling first novel. But most working writers follow less sexy routes to publication. Tell us about your apprenticeship. Why did you persevere when nobody gave a fuck?

JONATHAN EVISON: I wrote six unpublished novels, and too many unwanted short stories to count, before All About Lulu was published. I physically dug holes and buried three of my novels in the ground—salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there again. And I loved every minute of it!

I never bothered doubting the occupation, because nothing was going to deter me from doing the thing I loved more than anything else in this world (besides drink beer). Throughout my 20-year apprenticeship, I did virtually every conceivable menial job you can think of, from roadkill hacker-upper to “hot talk” radio jock (the former being infinitely more rewarding). And I’m still drawing from all of these experiences, which is more than I can say about the time I spent sitting in classrooms. Having my work rejected time and again was a minor annoyance, at most. I had the work. I just kept licking envelopes and collecting form rejections as a form of due diligence. If nobody ever published any of my work, and I died in complete obscurity, surrounded by feral cats, I’d be writing novels up until the end.

RUMPUS: That’s quite a visual: you, literally burying your own novels. I’d imagine there’s catharsis there, but also some grief. You’re ambitious on the page, and in such ambition, an artist has to be willing to chance conspicuous failure. Did you worry about that when writing West of Here, a book that meanders between the 19th and 21st centuries, with a sprawling cast of characters?

EVISON: Oh God, yeah. I knew that West of Here stood a great chance of being a stupendous failure. After all, the narrative lens of the novel was conceived as a goddamn kaleidoscope! But I had to go for it I love the challenge. If I’m not pushing myself, the entire process becomes dull—like playing in the fourth quarter of a blowout. What amazes me—and what I would’ve never believed, had you told me four years ago—is that more than one commercial publisher would view it as something with blockbuster potential. Holy cow!

But that’s what I mean by discovery. As I got deep into the book, I realized that it was the characters and the place that were making the novel work, in spite of any grandiose formal constructions I was employing to challenge myself. The story and the themes became so much easier to access when it’s flesh and blood.

RUMPUS: It’s the only honest way to put a story together. But that takes guts, right? Writers need guts. What else do aspiring writers need to crack into this surreal game?

EVISON: You need a shitload of stuff, above and beyond raw talent. You need audacity, faith, savvy, luck, but mostly discipline, to my way of thinking. A lot of sitting in a chair at uncomfortably early hours of the morning, and getting lost inside your imagination. Getting to that place consistently is nothing less than a discipline, not unlike yoga (as much as I abhor yoga). The road is riddled with distractions, self being a big one. It’s a difficult thing to forget yourself, to put your whole life on some back burner, to forget anything exists outside your imagination, and give yourself to your characters. But that’s what you’ve gotta do to get the job done convincingly. Or, at least, that’s what I have to do.

RUMPUS: I know you used to play lots of dirty rock and roll. How does music affect your writing? I tend to like my literature like the best kind of punk/indie—sloppy, vibrantly alive with its flaws, thrumming with the severities of life… Are you a rock-and-roll writer?

EVISON: I’m a rock-and-roll writer in the sense that I like to destroy a hotel mini-bar and fill the bathtub with ice. But as far as the actual rhythm and pulse of my writing, I’d say it varies. Lulu was a rock-and-roller. West of Here is more of a big, stringy orchestral piece. I would characterize The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving [Evison’s forthcoming third novel] as a soul ballad, maybe. The book I’m writing now is more of a country song. But most of all, I love green M&Ms and mini-bars and bathtubs that hold lots of ice.

RUMPUS: How much time do you devote to a manuscript once you have a rough draft completed? I tell my students that the hard part of writing a novel is the amount of work after draft one. Do you agree?

EVISON: I’m obsessive. My first draft is about a tenth draft. I reverse-engineer a lot, so I’ve re-invented the beginning and the middle by the time I get to the ending, making the whole concept of drafts rather liquid, from where I’m standing. The fucking things are just never finished! Either I have to bury them, or an editor has to pry the damn thing out of my hands in the twelfth hour, before I can bring myself to let them go. And once I finally let them go, I have no misgivings or regrets with them, because they’re like my kids by that point. I just hope the world will be kind to them.

RUMPUS: Last question. Let’s say a writer-friend of yours needs a pep talk. She’s struggling to see the quality of her writing. What would your speech be to help fire her back up?

EVISON: Well, first I’d say it’s probably a good sign that she’s being critical of her work. The best writers are often the ones who are toughest on themselves, and hold themselves to the highest standard, even if that standard is unrealistic. You gotta keep yourself honest! You gotta be humbled by the game, just like a ballplayer, who is gonna fail seventy-five percent of the time he steps to the plate.

Just about every time I go through one of my manuscripts with a red pen, I think it sucks, at least in large part. But when I’m done, it usually sucks less. That’s the goal, right there, and a damn noble one: to suck less. We can all do that, with a little elbow grease.

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