The answer came right here:

Lots of writers put together elaborate playlists for their stories, or even for their characters. I don’t. I fumble from place to place in my work, looking for the next piece of music that’s going to help me out somehow. The next clue. My writer-playlists are nothing but old, current and future clues.

I’m making this sound a lot better than it actually is. When people ask for music recommendations, I cringe. I want to tell them a song because I just spent a lot of time listening to it and it helped me out. But I know what music recommendation requests usually are. Show me something cool.

When I’m writing, I’m not looking for cool. I’m looking for help, and I want it fast. Sometimes I get lucky, and it’s cool. But most of the time, I don’t get lucky.

I’m writing about two people who are in real danger of becoming agoraphobic. I have to write about how they got there, but I also have to make sure they get out. None of us would ever be called an Enrique Iglesias fan. But there he is, saving the day.

One character isn’t sure how to treat someone else. It’s really awkward. Hey, you know who was very good at awkward?

And sometimes, you just have to turn a corner.

Often I hear songs, and I think: I want to write a story that is like that song. Not about the song’s lyrics. I want to create the mood, the atmosphere. This, too, is rarely about cool. Sigh.

Most of the time, it’s just the songs. But this is my go-to video for when I’m taking things too seriously. It is important to note that there is a 20 minute version, and I have had to use it.

Something about being a hybrid writer, after years of realism.

The culture of answering stupid questions.

A note to the MFA prof who inadvertently coined this blog’s tagline.

Caryn Rose and Tod Goldberg on Adam Yauch.

Dune fanfiction.

“Am I a writer?”

A list of all the stuff I wish I was good at. #1: Singing. (Related: Songs for Sinead O’Connor. I’m not a songwriter at all, but maybe I could pull that off?)

Publishing explained, using Star Wars figures.

Endless comments below totally random articles in the online version of my local newspaper. But really, who doesn’t?

On Pregnancy and Privacy and Fear.

A recreation of a long thing I wrote, and subsequently lost, about why I can’t stand Jason Mraz that’s really about why I still can’t stand someone I haven’t spoken to in 24 years. (When Jason Mraz was 10, apparently.)

Myfanwy Collins on Steve Himmer’s The Bee-Loud Glade.

Did I mention Dune fanfiction?

Amber Sparks’ May We Shed These Human Bodies is available for preorder.

One or two of the five or six postapocalyptic dystopian novels I have started and abandoned.

How to Introduce an Author. Slightly related: In Real Life.

Sales letters.

The MFA Sweet Sixteen!

Adaptations of The Firm and Jude the Obscure.

What do the red lines on the Marriott ballpoint pen mean?

Some of Brian Kiteley’s writing exercises.

Scott Wrobel interview.

Poetry, because for years I have envied poets who write amazing prose. There HAS to be a way to reverse engineer that whole thing.

And finally, another one: Lack toast and tolerant.

Flash fiction doesn’t have to be an unfinished story, a poem in paragraph form, a joke with a punchline, a stunt, or a gimmick. I love how the w50 proves this without a shadow of doubt, year after year.

Karl Urban
Karl was Eomer in LOTR, McCoy in Star Trek, and Caesar in Xena. Xena! There is no way in hell he was going to not make this list. (Also: No official website? Really?)

Gillian Anderson
I think we’re all over David Duchovny at this point. Gillian seems extremely cool and takes the whole X-Files thing in good stride, and is insanely beautiful. You’re just mad you didn’t think of her first.

Ronald D. Moore
Ron’s got a whole A Little Pretentious But Still Slightly Scruffy thing going on that I appreciate. And then there’s the creative output. Cylons can get annoying, but the Battlestar Galactica episode “Unfinished Business” is so heartbreaking that I still get teary even though I’ve seen it a ton of times. Judging from that website, Ron’s HTML skills are…eh. But if he can cook and write some new episodes of Caprica, we’re fine.

James Hetfield, circa Garage, Inc.
I’m getting too old for the younger versions, and anything after Garage, Inc. is just kinda…no, thanks. But that small window…yes.

Kelendria Rowland
I like Kelly. No constant scrutiny from the rest of the world, no heavy burden of raising the pop culture Kwisatz Haderach. She does her thing and has a good time. I’m tempted to put David Guetta in the same cage because they work well together, but he strikes me as a pretty crafty guy who’d free everyone within a day or two.

Tom Hardy
When I saw Tom in that first little scene in Inception, I forgot all about how we were sitting in the front row because all of the other seats were full, and that my neck really hurt. I thought “That guy looks shorter than Tom Cruise, and it doesn’t bother me.” I thought “I am not usually that big on guys being sweaty but he looks a little sweaty here and I’m okay with that.” After I went home, I looked him up online and watched him interviewed in some British TV clips and I thought “I can’t usually sit through celebrity interviews without getting twitchy, but I’m fine with this.” If they made a Tom Hardy GPS voice, I’d buy the hell out of it and get lost all the time anyway.

And really…watch the man cry. With a dog. (If you write about this video for The Northville Review’s summer issue, I will love you forever.)

1. Just to confirm: Unlike Colton Burpo and several of my near-death experiencing family members, I had no visions at any point in the whole adventure. I know when my appendix blew up, and I was watching Judge Judy.

2. The final bill for everything came to about $60,000. The rest of my life, however long that ends up being, has a price tag.

3. I did not pick up most of the tab. I can’t go into why because that is not really my story to tell, but there was some true karmic justice in how that all played out.

4. My incision scar is now about 7″. Parts of it are a white hairline, parts are still red and deep. Every once in a while, I get a weird little twinge along the line. My abscess drainage scars — I have two of them, below the incision — are about the size of dimes. They’re shadows, more than anything.

5. There’s at least one person who I’m fairly sure thinks I really just had gastric bypass surgery.

6. I didn’t get serenity. Things like traffic and 11 items in the express lane still piss me off just fine.

7. I have now heard many freaky appendicitis stories. I’m glad I don’t have an appendix anymore because now I’d be running to the ER every time anything happened in that general area of my body.

8. Number of health care professionals who have shrieked at me YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE! YOU ALMOST DIED! in the course of a routine exam (so far): 1

9. Things I would not have done if I’d died last year: Read a lot of books, taught some great students, watched beyond about the fifth episode of Game of Thrones, started a novel, told my daughter about the Socially Awkward Penguin meme and watched her write a few, fallen in love a few million times over.

10. I had always imagined that death would be like what CS Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters. There would be pain, and I’d push through the pain to find truths I knew all along on the other side. Now, when I imagine death, I remember that operating room that looked more like a basement workshop. I remember that no one said I should say goodbye, but no one was meeting me in the eye, either. I remember the eyeblink going under. And I imagine death as a lot more like life now. That is comforting. It’s also terrifying. But all I can really do about any of it is be here, until I’m not.

Cliff Garstang on Junot Diaz’s “Miss Lora.”

Magic Hours, Tom Bissell.

Mensah Demary on the Pulitzer.

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Eternal Wisdom, Mel Bosworth. 

David Rees, the Proust of pencil sharpeners.

The Weather Stations, Ryan Call.

When people leave (and return) to Connecticut.

NowTrends, Karl Taro Greenfield.

Tom Bissell, part 1.

Threats, Amelia Gray. 

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.

Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson. 

I love literary roundups.

A couple of 30 year old movie magazines with The Empire Strikes Back in them SHUT UP

And finally: WANT.

I have an essay in The Rumpus today about being a type 2 diabetic who is conflicted about Paula Deen.

As always when I have something new out there in the world, here are some fun facts:

• I don’t write about myself very often. Apparently I have to get really pissed off in order to do that.
• I’ve lost about fifty pounds since my diagnosis. I didn’t mention it in the essay because that wasn’t the point.
• I try not to get evangelical. One thing I have learned from all of this is that there is no one right way for everyone.
• For a fuller Erin Is A Diabetic Experience, you can also read this story at FRiGG.

Fake Massachusetts towns.

In Hot Pursuit of the Next American Word Wizard. A remarkable look at small press publishing, from the inside.

Writing Suburban Fiction: The Way of the Sac. Oh yeah, I preordered.

And finally: What the hell is flaming young?

Kanye West will be on the next season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Can “My Heart Will Go On” Be Resuscitated?

Demi Lovato almost killed Paul McCartney.

Beyond the Measure of Men.

Jennifer Love Hewitt totally wants Adam Levine.

An Open Letter to the Person Who Judged Me for Lip-Syncing on My Run This Morning.

Britney Spears’s dad splitting conservatorship with her fiance.

HP Lovecraft Answers Your Relationship Questions.

Chevy Chase does this every so often. 

The Death of Poetry.

Shannen Doherty marries again, no pre-nup.

A Room of Everyone’s Own: The Writer as Public Fixture.

Gale Hawthorne is really angry about what the paparazzi is doing to Hannah Montana.

Next Up: Double Love!

Genevieve Sabourin and Alec Baldwin have different versions of what went down.

Elizabeth Ellen is a Machine.

Thomas Kinkade still dead; how to shop for posthumous works.

Ashley Judd is a Terrible Writer. (Read this first, if you haven’t.)

And finally…oh, Lindsay.