Yeah, that's why it's important to always be pretty.

I think Hemingway would agree with her.

Truman Capote would have something to say about this.

@CodePink: Or to have a nice apartment. Or a constant supply of cans of Diet Coke. This is the shit I expect to be judged on when my life is through: accessories. Not my WRITING. Writing's gay.

"But if you absolutely MUST have energy, spritz some Red Bull onto your forehead, do a line of coke, and take a pen and pad onto the ledge of a nearby three-story townhouse in Prospect Heights. Inhale the whimsy of Brooklyn, write the great American novel, buy a horse and spread manure all over the Great Lawn in Central Park. It works every time!"

Fortunately for her she was able to pump out about sixteen trillion books before the well dried up. You could do worse...

@CodePink: Or perhaps she eats too much soy. Soy's gay too, and gives you cancer.

I can never read anything on the internet again.

@EpponneeRae: This is also possible. What are we talking about?

I'm sure all come off sounding like a moron here, but has anyone read her? I know I havent & I dont know many (er, any) that have/do.

If you listen carefully, you can just make out the ghostly voice of Ralph Ellison: "Now you tell me."

"Like water down a plug hole" kind of aptly proves her point, but not in the way she intended.

actually I think it was perhaps more moronic not grasping the difference between "i'll" & "all."

"All" blame Monday.

I suspect that being 88 may have something to do with her lack of energy as well.

When reached for comment, John McCain said, "Not now. I'm napping."

"Use it while you've got it; because it'll go." Someone needs to introduce Doris' boy-toy to a little magic pill called Viagra.

@SneakingThroughTheAlleyWithLalley: Judge for yourself. Personally, I think "To Room Nineteen" is one of the better short stories I've read.

[www.dorislessing.org]

+ Watch video

Awards are gay

Yep, just ask Jewel -- one book of poems, then the talent escaped her.

Lessing needs to say this to Philip Roth, John Updike, and Woody Allen, who have not had "it" in a long long time. I'd add Saul Bellow to that list, but he's dead, so. These things have a way of working themselves out sometimes.

Her opera "...Representative from Planet 8" was pretty bad. But, I blame Phillip Glass.

It's kind of like the movie Rookie of the Year, where Henry Roengartner slips on the baseball and can suddenly throw 100+ mph, but then later, he slips on ball again (seriously? I mean come on...that's two more times than I've slipped on a baseball in my whole life) and it slides away like water down a plug hole and then he has to use the hidden ball trick and an underhand floater to finish the game and simultaneously teach us all a lesson.

...I'm still waiting to slip on the "baseball" that will let me write well...or throw 100+ mph.

You hear that Mr. Kunkel?

This is not a advice. No decent writer worth his/her slat assumes anything will last forever.

@rightbrain: And that's because people die. Talent doesn't.

@Conbon: "Plug hole" is a Britishism, if that's what's riling you.

I haven't read any of her works, but I thought she was great as the Mom in John Ford's Grapes of Wrath.

@rightbrain: I think it's pretty decent advice. I'm not a writer, but it's the advice that I'd give to young'uns in my field. I know that when I really "had it" I took the flow of things totally for granted. Now every day is like a full life cycle, and it's getting worse with every change of the season. So I'm actually trying desperately to get myself to take this advice. The "No Longer An Option" sign keeps popping up in the rear-view mirror.

But really, the reason I give this advice to young'uns is because they are my direct competition and it gives me great pleasure to see their bored, uncomprehending faces staring back at me, not getting it, and know that they're gonna fuck it up just as badly as I did, if not worse.

Is this true? But I'm so fucking tired now. At 35.
Christ.

True for the sciences too. That's why John Nash was in a rush in his 20s.

@KillNewYork. I'm 49, and it just gets worse.
@InOtherNews: I like the part about Brooklyn, but I suggest it's Berkeley these days.
I'd like to think Dame Doris is warning the young hotshots...like the one whose novel I just read, where his clearly autobiographical character is complaining about a meager $35 K advance.
I think there comes a time in anyone's life--artist or technocrat--where they start to value the evenings and weekends more than what goes on during the working day.

@AuntPenny: You are high if you think Philip Roth hasn't had "it" in a long time. Here is a sample of just the great books he's written in the last fifteen years since he turned sixty. I'm leaving off the merely good and merely excellent books -- four others -- he's also published in those fifteen years.)

American Pastoral -- Pulitzer Prize
I Married a Communist -- Heartbreakturnip Award for Fucking Awesomeness
The Human Stain -- Pen/Faulkner Award
Operation Shylock -- Pen/Faulkner Award
Sabbath's Theater -- National Book Award
Everyman -- Pen/Faulkner Award

How many books have you published these last fifteen years, sweetheart?

@heartbreakturnip: I agree, Turnip. I've never really gotten the snarking on real writers vibe hereabouts, other than as a function of anonymity.