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Q and A

Aug 27, 2011; Fantasy Mole Asks:

Do you have a preferred blackboard surface? Could you compare the vertical writing surfaces of three institutions? Have you ever had a truly superior blackboard experience, one you might describe as dreamy? What's your earliest memory of writing large enough to be seen publicly? What's your handwriting like?

Stacey answers:

I don't know. I'm not sure I've ever even written on a blackboard once. But I fantasize about elaborate presentations I'd like to do someday with an overhead projector. Does that count?

Aug 27, 2011; Psued O. Nym Asks:

Ms. Richter, are you aware of the advice columnist "Sugar" who is featured at the online mag The Rumpus? Don't you think that something along those lines would be a great gig and a natural fit for you?

Stacey answers:

No, I didn't know about Sugar. I just read a couple of her keening, earnest columns and sort of want to kill her. She's so nice...but she cut off her father! Then she told another girl to cut off her father! Folks at home, don't do this--no, no. If someone asks, I'll explain why.

Pseud, thanks for thinking of me, though I have mixed feelings about the trend here of brainstorming a way for me to be professionally rewarded for this forum. I'm touched that you bother, particularly since it would mean less attention and fewer personal answers to all of you (both of you?). Maybe. But I don't really want to. I'm writing the pirate novel! Also, I'm pretty sure Sugar is making a dollar fifty a column, more or less, and there's nothing like low pay and a firm deadline to make me want to eat worms.

Aug 17, 2011; Tom Hancock Asks:

Hi Stacey! How has your summer been? Any progress on the Pirate novel?

Stacey answers:

Hi Tom. My summer's been okay, thanks for asking. A little progress on the pirate novel but mostly staring at it. Might start typing all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy for a while and see what happens.

Aug 11, 2011; anon Asks:

Thank you.

Aug 09, 2011; anon Asks:

Dear Stacey, This one's a doozy. My boyfriend is the perfect boyfriend, and I love him completely. Our relationship is perfect. Except for one thing. He's in the army, and so he has no control of his destiny. The government has all the say in that. And they're all "surprise!" we're sending you to Afghanistan for a year! We already did one of these deployments, to Iraq. And in the year in-between I've been deluding myself that somehow we can make a life and a family together. Also you should know that I love my career--it's promising, and fulfilling, and tied to one city. And I really really want to have kids. And it seems like all three of these things--him, career, family--cannot possibly co-exist. At the bare minimum, I'd have to give up my career, and raise his children alone every-other-year, while he gets jerked around to whatever shitty, pointless war we're fighting then. We survived one deployment together, and it took all the strength I had. The thought of doing it again is just overwhelmingly exhausting and depressing--I don't know how Army Wives do it! I think believing in God and America (neither of which I do) must help. Alternately, I could keep him, keep my career, do the long-distance thing forever, and give up on having a family. But no, I really, really want that! More than either of the others, maybe. I want fat, toddling babies that I can pontificate to all day long. What the hell do I do, Stacey? Did I mention that I love him! I fucking love him! He's fucking perfect in every way, okay?! Except that he loves the fucking stupid fucking army! AHHHHHHH and I don't want to be that bitch that makes him choose between me and the army. But I'm almost there, Stacey. I'm almost ready to bring it down to that. To an ultimatum. Huh. Like any good life together ever started with an ultimatum. I just can't figure out a way for us to be together without one of us being miserable. Being without him would be even more miserable. He is 100% my favorite person in the world, and the only person who can make me smile after a long, shitty day.

Everyone else around me gets to sleep next to their husband every night, and they're all having beautiful, precocious babies, and I'm so fucking jealous. I'm just trapped. Any way I go will fucking suck. Fuck. Help me, Stacey.

Stacey answers:

That's easy. You already know the answer: marry him, have the babies, do it now, don't wait. Your relationship may suck in several ways but it's more than most people ever have and you're lucky to have it. And you're not trapped--I doubt that your Army man thinks of you as trapped--you're just in a situation where you're never, ever going to get everything you want. I'm disgusted to sound like your fourth-grade teacher, but honestly, in life, there's really no chance of actually getting everything you want. You can nurse a dream of it, and fight for it, but those are fairy tale dreams rather than real goals. Even when it looks like other people's fairy tale dreams have come true, they actually haven't (two words: Diana Spencer). If you're stuck on your dreams of a perfect future, consider this: it's common enough to find a man who will sleep next to you every night, but it's a rare thing to get a chance to marry your great love.

Here are a few things that might make you feel better: everyone does not get to sleep next to their husband every night and sometimes when they do, they don't want to. Life is long and people get sick of each other, even people who love each other deeply. There's something to be said for taking a break. I know a year is too long but it might help the two of you cherish the time you have together in a way that bored, old couples don't even consider. Because eventually you will be a bored old couple. Also: Skype. And: get him to give you something major, huge, and painful. Put your foot down. He has to give you something if you give him this, otherwise you'll be tormented by resentment. This will erode your love. You can't be the only giver. Even though it may feel loving to be the main giver, eventually you will start to hate him, in ten minutes or ten years, so you can't do this. Got it? It can be money to help with childcare when he's away, all his extra money (because you don't want to be raising the babies all alone), or a promise to quit the Army by the birth of child two, or to stay home a year with the babies himself in the future. He wants a good family life too, right? He's going to have to work for it at some point, to give something up, even the Army. In five years, six--is there any amount of time that seems reasonable to him? (Don't wait for the babies to look and him and cry, hoping that that will do it. Because if it doesn't, you'll be extremely angry). Get him to make a plan now.

If he really won't give up the Army, ever ever, figure out if there's anything else that will satisfy you. (Also, please remind him that no one is going to love him forever if he always calls the shots unilaterally--no one loves a tyrant. Except his dog). Maybe you could have a non-monogamy clause for you, just you. You get to have a boyfriend on the side and he doesn't get to, ha ha ha. A diamond ring every year. Or, my favorite, you let him be in the Army if he says yes to you about everything else. Honey, want to take a walk? Yes. Want to change the baby's diapers? Yes. Want to go to the Katy Perry concert? Yes. Oh, we forgot milk. Will you go back to the store for it? Yes, yes, yes.

Jul 25, 2011; Wag Asks:

Hey Stacey! I haven't looked on here in a while, and I was surprised to learn that I was your only friend from "meatspace" who posts on here. Come to think of it, I have known you for a long time; even before people would communicate via electronic mail and portable telephone systems! Okay, here's a question: How do you feel about the closing of "Borders"?

Stacey answers:

Yo Wag. I have confused feelings about the closing of Borders. On one hand, the Borders across the street from me sucks so bad that I don't care if it closes, as I wasn't buying stuffed animals and flowered journals and James Patterson books anyway. On the other hand, I'm worried that this means that people no longer read. Maybe there will now be more room for independent bookstores, the kind where you ask the clerk what to read and she hands you a really great book you've never heard of before. A silly dream? Perhaps Wag, perhaps.

Jul 11, 2011; Pickles Asks:

Do you find that the internet is as diverting as it ever has been, with new sites and blogs still inciting and inviting, fascinating and delighting you, or do you now have less use for it than you used to?

Stacey answers:

Pickles, Pickles, Pickles. I still find the internet distracting, shiny, amazing, learned, and almost utterly irresistible as a method of procrastination. Therefore I still use child-control (otherwise known as porn-blocking) software to limit my internet use. Actually, the whole deal is that I have one computer I write with--without internet, with email--and another old laptop that I use to connect to the internet. This is pathetic but necessary.

How I use the internet has changed over the years. Mostly I look up crucial information such as the names of character actors I've forgotten and what breeds of rabbits are the most personable (the Flemish bunny is very docile & nice but so huge that it shits like a linebacker) and what cave paintings are the prettiest and which kind of ironing board cover is the best. I now can't imagine life without access to this kind of information, and in my fantasies of going back in time/repeating the most fucked-up parts of my life, I always want to take Google with me. I'm less likely to read blogs compulsively or lurk on social networking sites, though I do do both things and I'm especially amazed and happy to see pictures posted by my friends, acquaintances, and people who like to dress up as sexy clowns and have sex (klowns).

Also, if you're a writer, the internet is amazing for research. You can find out how to do all sorts of things--even illegal ones--with just a few clicks. Though I've never been able to find the precise recipe for the quickie method of making crystal meth out of cold medicine in the backseat of a car--oh wait. I just Googled it--nope, still didn't find it.

Jun 21, 2011; Tom hancock Asks:

The Day Of The Locust is an incredible piece of work. Have you read anything else by Nathaniel West?

Stacey answers:

Just Miss Lonelyhearts. He died at 37 so he didn't really write much.

Jun 20, 2011; littleshirlybeans Asks:

Hi! It's been too long! I've eaten five chocolate chip cookies and a small package of red vines today and nearly hurled at roller derby practice this evening. I suddenly remembered that you once wrote that sugar was evil. Perhaps you didn't use those exact words, but I was under the impression that you don't eat it. Have you always avoided sugar? Could you give me your history with sugar? p.s. I love the semicolon, too!!

Stacey answers:

Hi littleshirly. I bet the roller derby girls would be impressed if you hurled in practice. In fact, I bet they'd try to get you to do it again for a match. Yeah, I probably said sugar is evil. It is very sad, I know, because it's so good, but I try not to eat very much of it. This all started a few years ago when I began to read books about food and diet (because my stomach hurt--it actually turned out to be a manifestation of my back pain probs., but we'll talk about that later, in our rocking chairs). I became a big fan of the science writer Gary Taubes, who wrote a thick book about the history of dietary science and recently a thinner one, explaining how we all came to think that the fat in our diet gives us heart attacks, diabetes, and makes us gain weight, when the best evidence seems to indicate that it's actually sugar and unrefined carbs that do these things (by raising our blood sugar and releasing a shitload of insulin).

Long story short, we evolved as hunter/gatherers (agriculture was only taken up in earnest about 10,000 years ago). Therefore our bodies are adapted for hunter-gatherish kinds of food, like bugs, bone marrow, decaying bison meat, and starfish. Yum.

Jun 09, 2011; Shittin', Fuckin' and Dyin' Over Here . . . Asks:

My, how the little Q'n'A has grown up, huh? It does seem to be trending more blog-like . . . How does that square with your original intentions for this forum? Is it ever a little scary in here for you, maybe like the end of Day of the Locust? Do you have a favorite novel of Hollywood? Is there any punctuation or typographical gesture you love as much as I love ellipsis (a.k.a. dot dot dot)?

Stacey answers:

No way, I love the ellipsis too! I've only recently come to love it, however, after reading style guides over and over (I do not recommend this. After a while, you'll be writing dry, crisp, style-guide sentences and hating yourself for it). I love the semicolon too and use it way too much; someone once told me it was pretentious, which only encouraged me. I would have to say that Day of the Locust is my favorite novel of Hollywood also, as well as one of the novels I've probably read the most times. I might add some Raymond Chandler though I'm not sure if that really counts.

I would be happy to make this more blog-like, without the narcissism/tediousness, with more chance for responses to my answers, hostility and love, tipsy typing, etc....I would, but I'm too lazy, but wait, I have a web friend who liked martinis, maybe he can help me. You know Shittin' & Fuckin', I'm not sure what my original intentions for this forum were. I only knew that as far as authors and authorship, I hated readings, hated going to readings, but loved Q and A's and wished for more of that. This forum has far surpassed my expectations. It's fun, it's strange, it has it's own momentum. The questions are so smart and funny! You guys are doing a great job. Thanks.

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