The publisher's bedside table

Reading manuscripts, one gets a feeling from the first word--either yes or no.

It's fun yet merciless business, based on fallible instincts.

No outweighs yes at least 1000 to 1.

Some solicitations are returned unopened; there was something wrong in the look and feel of the thing, the address written in a hand that shouldn't be writing by hand or a rubber stamp in red ink, the heft either too much or too little.

The excitement of the receipt of new, unopened work: not unlike visiting Paris for the first time, where a vague but highly charged romantic expectation threatens to be overwhelmed by dread. Walking through the neighborhoods of paper, between the poles of exhilaration and exhaustion, that which is good shines ever more brightly. Sometimes something interesting emerges, as if popping up out of a Metro station spontaneoulsy. 

And the personal aspect: the fact that another human being is reaching out, seeking to understand and to be understood.

Writer, know this: he to whom you have reached out is often wrong, often lazy, and has arrived a point in his life where he considers ambivalence a blessing.

Reading other people's writing, one so easily gets tired of oneself and so gets undressed for bed, happy to retreat to a pile of books and journals of which others have made all executive decisions.