Dear Mr. Blue,

No, people will not believe your dog is a baby if you dress it up in human clothes. People dress animals in human clothes all the time, and no one thinks the animals are human babies. I agree with your assessment: a child can be as potentially destructive as a dog, but really, who has more destructive potential than a mature adult person? Some tools in your toolbox (that a dog lacks) are chainsaws, matches, spray paint, and hydrochloric acid. If you really want to drive home the point to your landlord, why not trash the place?

The reason you need to get permission/bribe the landlord to have a dog but not a human baby is more complicated. This is due to the supremacy of human culture. Really, when you think about it, it doesn't really make sense that only one species on the whole planet has evolved a true culture. Chimpanzees and whales might show signs such as tool making and language, but whether this is culture or not is still open for debate. The only good explanation for this is that we as humans have an instinct to kill any species that gets too advanced so that we can be the only ones with all the good stuff like words and screwdrivers.

So, what do you think happens when people in large numbers keep dogs in apartments? Such dogs have no access to yards or nature, and in the absence of these influences they begin to rapidly evolve. Before long they are using simple words; after that, they're carrying around rudimentary tools made from things found on the floor like hangers and soda cans. Who knows what comes after soda cans? Maybe chainsaws, matches, spray paint, and hydrochloric acid. This is not a good situation. It can rapidly escalate into a dog vs. human scenario. At this point, the choice is to either kill all dogs in an unpleasant dog massacre (even as overlords they are soft and furry) or to just avoid the whole problem of apartment dwelling from the beginning.

Blurbing is fun. I think that any good blurb should have one or two swear words in it. I will blurb a book when several things come together in a rare convergence--someone asks me to do it and I have time and/or remember. But that usually doesn't all happen.

The diss factor of not blurbing someone is hard to measure--all that stuff usually happens through publishers and agents and an author doesn't necessarily even know who their book has been sent to.

The mention of "compassion" is usually found in jacket copy (rather than in blurbs by fellow authors) and is publishing code for "feminine but not chick-lit." A compassionate author is usually an authoress who writes about women, girls, and family life; and even though most male authors also write about this stuff, they are hardly ever called compassionate, nor is their prose called jewel-like, probably since they are being called brilliant and ambitious instead.

I'm a little better Liam, thanks for asking. I've had a hard year with a lot of back pain but I think the worst is over now. My great aunt died yesterday and I'm sad about that. She was very cool and smart.

Oddly, I had a dream about you last night. You were walking down an alley wearing a blue t-shirt. I gave you a hug but I didn't see your face. It was very maternal. I felt very encouraging. You go, Liam!

It’s all about fear, Emma. For grown ups, making art is fraught with fear, as is love. There’s a lot at stake, like your sense of yourself as smart or worthwhile or interesting or useful. Writing is also really hard, and who wouldn’t rather go spree-shopping now and then? It’s better than the possibility of discovering that you suck, or are a fraud, or boring, or empty, or (as I suspect is the case with you) that you are very talented but are screwing up and/or wasting your talent. That’s not pretty. Who wants to look at that? I know I’d rather do Jager shots by the pool.

Fear is strong. It does not like to be messed with. It doesn’t want to be conquered. I’ve found that it doesn’t even help that much to remind yourself that writing is your dream or life goal or calling. I mean, it’s good to know, but in the end, I think you have to sort of leave the fear where it is and flow around it. The methods for doing this fall into two categories. The first involves the inner self. You voyage into your inner self and trick the fear. Trick the fucker! One way is to recall a time in your life when making things was uncomplicated because you were just playing around. Back then, you wanted to make up stories because it was so fun. Remember? Sort of? Back when you didn’t worry about anyone judging you? See if you can go with that.

The other way is probably easier, and also probably works better, and I learned it from watching the show Obsessed on TV. You’ve got to see this show. It’s about people with OCD—such as the lady who brushes her teeth for an hour a day who has to walk around with corn in her teeth, and the handwashing girl who is made to touch the seat of a porta-potty—because apparently, the most effective therapy for OCD is to just make people do the thing they’re afraid of, over and over, until they can do it without freaking out. They’re still afraid, kind of, but they just do it anyway until they get bored and stop treating the fear with reverence. According to this method, you have to write everyday, or most days. That’s all. No thinking. You pick a time and do it. Since you’re busy, you should try to pick a relatively small amount of time, like one hour. One hour is a lot if you don’t do anything else. Even 45 minutes is good (but it’s hard to focus in less time than that). Sometimes less time is better, actually—the thought is less daunting, and you’re motivated to concentrate. Leave the internet alone. And though it’s terrible to contemplate the early hours (I can’t do it), many people find their self-critical mind is not yet up and running first thing in the morning, and you can use up all your good brain power before your day job sucks it out of you.

Also, you don’t have to always write fiction (or whatever it is you write when you’re being a writer). Sometimes it’s easier to write notes, observations, sketches, outgoing answering machine messages, descriptions, memories, or plans for things you want to write later. It might get you going. Plus, it counts as writing.

Finally, smoking; ah, smoking. Did you know that nicotine isn’t actually bad for you? Cigarettes are deadly but nicotine is benign. What if you allowed yourself one piece of nicotine gum every time you sat down at your desk? Then you can combine the most addictive substance in the world with writing! If that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to stick you with a cattle prod.

Hi Liam. I haven't noticed this trend since I don't watch children's shows very often, though I once tried to watch Hannah Montana. Boy, did that ever suck. But she's a plucky heroine, right? And I don't think Bratz exists anymore. Didn't they lose a lawsuit and have to be pulled off the market or something? So I don't know, really. I've only heard about the prosti-tots secondhand. I'm not sure I believe it--that it's new in some way. I mean, you should have seen the clothes girls little girls wore in the seventies. Tube tops and hot pants, cha cha cha.

I think everyone wonders about those drugs--the idea of a happy pill is alluring. But in my experience, they're not really happy pills, they're more like anti-desperation pills with unpleasant side effects. I've found they sort of redirect my brain from the deep end to the shallow end so that instead of thinking about pain and death all the time, I think about shopping and decorating and pain and death all the time. They don't mess up my writing, they don't change who I am in any way, which is a bit disappointing. Still, they're serious drugs that scramble your brain and everyone reacts differently to that. I know some people who say they're much happier, or don't feel like themselves, or feel flat, or don't want to have sex anymore, or couldn't live without them. My opinion tends to be that if you're doing okay, you probably don't want to scramble your brain--but it's really up to you. For me, it has more to do with chronic pain, which fucks up your brain chemicals, than normal depression, though there may not really be much difference, in the end, between pain-depression and depression-depression.

69 is not a bad score. You can make longer words by looking for double letters, er's, ed's, re's, un's, ing's, and other assorted prefixes and suffixes. S's are very important. I would also advise that you experiment with one of two strategies: if you're a very fast typist, try to get as many short words as possible. If you're an average typist, look for long words, since they give you more points. But eventually, if you want to crush your opponents like eggshells, you will have to find the long words.

Please be careful with the game. I've quit smoking, I've given up sugar, I've walked away from various addictive street drugs without a glance back, but I cannot stop playing this stupid online word game. I don't exactly like it but I can't stop. I will choose the game over almost any other activity, including smoking crack and peeing. The only way I've been able to stop is to have my internet use restricted by content-blocking software designed for parents who don't want their kids to see porn. So good luck, Liam. Good luck.

Before it folded, I used to subscribe to the great magazine Nest, the strangest, most confusing decorating magazine ever. It didn't usually show houses. Instead it had lush layouts of decaying schoolrooms in Kazakhstan, Bedouin tents, underground bunkers, abandoned apartments, things like that. I spent a long time trying to find a weird, Soviet-schoolroom-green paint color for my office, and I did find it. It was a Disney color called Christopher Robin's Swing from Home Depot.

Then I subscribed to Elle Decor for a year but it annoyed me. Mostly I like to look at vintage decorating books from the fifties and sixties, if I look at all. Many people don't realize that the urge to paint, repaint, redecorate, decorate, move, and buy assorted throw pillows is actually a side effect of SSRI drugs, particularly Lexapro. Really. I swear. Ask your friends. Since I haven't taken it for years, I now have trouble concentrating on paint chips.

I will say, "I'm very sorry but I simply can't imagine taking my book oral on such a beautiful day." And then I will leave.

Hi! Could be worse, but only slightly. How's it hanging for you?