“During another Ceca song, I saw a man waving the three-finger salute — to me, the equivalent of ‘Heil Hitler’ — and a switch went off in my brain. I flashed to the time my family was stopped at a checkpoint and a paramilitary cocked his gun at my back. The soldiers laughed, proud to demoralize a 12-year-old boy. I wished I could wake up the next day at age 18, to take revenge as a soldier. But as an adult, I’ve never once used my fist, afraid of what I might do. To get the guy’s attention, I threw a crumpled napkin across the bar. It bounced off his head. His table looked in my direction, and I smirked. I used to stand on the banks of the river in Brcko, tossing rocks into the ripples. I waved my index finger side to side, cautioning him not to repeat the gesture. It would be two against six, but they couldn’t imagine how much rage we had pent up. I had no idea myself until that moment. Fortunately, the Serbians stayed on their side of the bar, merely muttering insults.”
 — Today’s op-ed from Kenan Trebincevic, a Yugoslavian immigrant living in Queens, is great and harrowing and makes me want to read the book he’s writing about living through the Bosnian war.

Would you like to know what was voted to be the VERY BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE COVER of the year 2011, by the editors of magazines near you? The answer may surprise you. (Or cause any other number of negative emotions, at least in part because it’s, you know, fake?)

“The bear famously tranquilized on the University of Colorado campus last week, and immortalized in a viral photo by CU student Andy Duann, met a tragic death early Thursday in the Denver-bound lanes of U.S. 36.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials said a 280-pound black bear that died on U.S. 36 after being hit by a car at about 5:40 a.m. Thursday was the same bear that became known worldwide last week after wandering onto the CU campus near the Williams Village dorm complex.” [Via]

Over my bed, or the thing I call my bed which used to be a couch but is kinda now more of a cot, suddenly bathed in an unnatural moonlight, is a seven-foot book with arms and legs. It’s a hardcover with a shiny commercial trade book cover. The title is set in a silvery font that jags and blurs out a little, like frost. It reads: THE COLDEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR. This was the title of a play the Drama Guild of my high school wrote and performed about homeless people for a one-act play competition. We didn’t win, but I always liked that title. I always wanted to use it for a kind of hard-boiled thriller thing. So here it is, looking down at me in the middle of the night as I lie awake worrying about writing it. Except this book is bigger than me and has huge, unblinking “Simpsons”-character eyes. And a vague look of frustrated disgust across its mouth. It even has an arched eyebrow. It lifts a lit cigar to its teeth and squints.

— So how am I coming along?

It even speaks without scare quotes, like one of those soulless characters in a Cormac McCarthy novel. The kind that kill people with like a special silver spork they’ve had made out of the cavity fillings of all their victims. The spork just keeps getting smelted down and made longer and longer as the trail of bodies stretches like an appendix scar across the open wasteland of West Texas. He speaks like a hardened, unyielding sheriff, possessed with his own wild menace. Like that kind of Cormac McCarthy kind of thing. Somebody I never heard of would play this book. And would come this close to winning an Oscar.

I’m quiet for what seems like a long time. The crazy old glove factory building we live in creeks and settles for the billionth time, finally coming to rest right exactly where it began. There’s a moth above all the piles of boxes of old cassette and video tapes that slope up over my resting place, the color of brown sugar spilled across a floor and left forever. The unblinking eyes darken behind the rising S of cheap cigar smoke. There’s blood thumping in my ear. I can almost hear my roommate tossing in his sleep a room away, it’s that quiet. There’s a rising dread inside me mixed with something careful, a need to get this just right.

“You’re coming along OK, I think.” It escapes me dryly. Like a coma patient’s first crusty words after a year in the spin cycle of their own skull. The platter-shaped eyes are unimpressed.

— I’m coming along OK?

It’s shiny cover glints brightly, catching moonshine. It sends an unforgiving halo right into my heavy-liddedness. It’s impossibly bright and I’m sightless for a breath. I can feel the blood releasing into my neck. A slow bead of sweat is sent directly down my ass crack. I have nothing but stars in my field of vision.

“I think I will get a lot done this week,” I offer, emboldened by the fact that we’re still talking and he’s yet to unviel his sharpened half-fork. He’s chomping on the wet end of the cigar, deciding the fate of the world. The wheels are turning behind the big eyes. The trim of his pages look golden and wet in the light of the moon. He cocks his eyebrow in a totally different way.

— Because I don’t want to mess up your process or anything.

I haven’t taken a breath in a while. I let some in, and blow out some bullshit along with the carbon monoxide. “Of course not! No, I wouldn’t think you would… I understand you’re concerned. I think that’s totally legitimate for you to feel… impatient.” I feel like I could keep swaying verbally like this back and forth for a while, but I pause to see if it’s having a soothing effect.

— You just don’t seem to be too hard at work on me.

I clam up. An airplane takes its time crossing our building overhead. It sounds like a nose stuffing up. Traffic on the bridge never seems to stop swooshing. You can almost hear him stepping on his mental clutch and switching gears.

— Do you know what it feels like to be unfinished?

I gulp.

— Incomplete. Hopelessly abandoned. Empty.

I run my finger across my top lip, hoping to wipe away whatever guilty juice seems to be pooling and collecting right under my nose.

The book takes the cigar out of its mouth and spits a little paper and tobacco out.

— This week.

It’s said as an all-encompassing gesture. Threat and promise and command and ultimatum. It lifts itself away from the moonlight and back into the corner of the apartment it was born out of. I am afraid to move, even though my arm is falling asleep. An hour later I have to go to the bathroom. Not an atom has moved until I stretch up and head to whizz.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

1. Sheldon decided he was an elephant.
2. Everywhere he went, he wore a gray t-shirt, gray sweat pants, and gray basketball shoes.
3. He also carried a brass trumpet that he’d painted white.
4. Sometimes he used that trumpet as a tusk.
5. Then he’d use it as the other tusk.
6. Sometimes he played that brass trumpet and pretended it was an elephant trumpet.
7. Every other day, Sheldon charged around the reservation like he was a bull elephant in musth.
8. Musth being a state of epic sexual arousal.
9. Sheldon would stand in the middle of intersections and charge at cars.
10. Once, Sheldon head-butted a Toyota Camry so hard that he knocked himself out.
11. Sheldon’s mother, Agnes, was driving that Camry.
12. Agnes did not believe she was an elephant nor did she believe she was the mother of an elephant.
13. And Agnes didn’t believe that Sheldon fully believed he was an elephant until he knocked himself out on the hood of the Camry.
14. In Africa, poachers kill elephants, saw off the tusks, and leave the rest of the elephant to rot.
15. Ivory is coveted.
16. Nobody covets Sheldon’s trumpet, not as a trumpet or tusk.
17. On those days when Sheldon was not a bull elephant, he was a cow elephant.
18. A cow elephant mourning the death of her baby.
19. In Africa, elephants will return again and again to the dead body of a beloved elephant.
20. Then, for years afterward, the mournful elephants will return to the dead elephant’s cairn of bones.
21. They will lift and caress the dead elephant’s ribs.
22. By touch, they remember.
23. Sheldon’s twin brother died in the first Iraq War.
24. 1991.
25. His name was Pete.
26. Sheldon and Pete’s parents were not the kind to give their twins names that rhymed.
27. In Iraq, an Improvised Explosive Device had pulverized Pete’s legs, genitals, ribcage, and spine.
28. Sheldon could not serve in the military because he was blind in his right eye.
29. In 1980, when they were eight, and sword fighting with tree branches, Pete had accidentally stabbed Sheldon in the eye.
30. When they were children, Sheldon and Pete often played war.
31. They never once pretended to be killed by an Improvised Explosive Device.
32. Only now, in this new era, do children pretend to be killed by Improvised Explosive Devices.
33. Pete was buried in a white coffin.
34. It wasn’t made of ivory.
35. At the gravesite, Sheldon scooped up a handful of dirt.
36. He was supposed to toss the dirt onto his brother’s coffin, as the other mourners had done.
37. But Sheldon kept the dirt in his hand.
38. He made a fist around the dirt and would not let it go.
39. He believed that his brother’s soul was contained within that dirt.
40. And if he let go of that dirt, his brother’s soul would be lost forever.
41. You cannot carry a handful of dirt for any significant amount of time.
42. And dirt, being clever, will escape through your fingers.
43. So Sheldon taped his right hand shut.
44. For months, he did everything with his left hand.
45. Then, one night, his right hand began to itch.
46. It burned.
47. Sheldon didn’t want to take off the tape.
48. He didn’t want to lose the dirt.
49. His brother’s soul.
50. But the itch and burn were too powerful.
51. Sheldon scissored the tape off his right hand.
52. His fingers were locked in place from disuse.
53. So he used the fingers of his left hand to pry open the fingers of his right hand.
54. The dirt was gone.
55. Except for a few grains that had embedded themselves into his palm.
56. Using those grains of dirt, Sheldon wanted to build a time machine that would take him and his brother back into the egg cell they once shared.
57. Until he became an elephant, Sheldon referred to his left hand as “my hand” and to his right hand as “my brother’s hand.”
58. Sheldon’s father, Arnold, was paraplegic.
59. His wheelchair was alive with eagle feathers and beads and otter pelts.
60. In Vietnam, in 1971, Arnold’s lower spine was shattered by a sniper’s bullet.
61. Above the wound, he was a fancy dancer.
62. Below the wound, he was not.
63. His wife became pregnant with Sheldon and Pete while Arnold was away at war.
64. Biologically speaking, the twins were not Arnold’s.
65. Biologically speaking, Arnold was a different Arnold than he’d been before.
66. But, without ever acknowledging the truth, Arnold raised the boys as if they shared his biology.
67. Above the wound, Arnold is a good man.
68. Below the wound, he is also a good man.
69. Sometimes, out of love for Sheldon and Sheldon’s grief, Arnold pretended that his wheelchair was an elephant.
70. And that he was a clown riding the elephant.
71. A circus can be an elephant, another elephant, and a clown.
72. The question should be, “How many circuses can fit inside one clown?”
73. There is no such thing as the Elephant Graveyard.
74. That mythical place where all elephants go to die.
75. That place doesn’t exist.
76. But the ghosts of elephants do wear clown makeup.
77. And they all gather in the same place.
78. Inside Sheldon’s ribcage.
79. Sheldon’s heart is a clown car filled with circus elephants.
80. When elephants mourn, they will walk circles around a dead elephant’s body.
81. Elephants weep.
82. Jesus wept.
83. Sheldon’s mother, Agnes, wonders if Jesus has something to do with her son’s elephant delusions.
84. Maybe God is an elephant.
85. Sheldon’s father, Arnold, believes that God is a blue whale.
86. Some scientists believe that elephants used to be whales.
87. Sheldon, in his elephant brain, believes that God is an Improvised Explosive Device.
88. Pete, the dead twin, was not made of ivory.
89. But he is coveted.
90. If Jesus can come back to life then why can’t all of us come back to life?
91. Aristotle believed that elephants surpassed all other animals in wit and mind.
92. Nobody ever said that Jesus was funny.
93. Then, one day, Sheldon remembered he was not an elephant.
94. Instead he decided that Pete was an elephant who had gone to war.
95. An elephant who died saving his clan and herd.
96. An elephant killed by poachers.
97. Sheldon decided that God was a poacher.
98. Sheldon decided his prayers would become threats.
99. Fuck you, God, fuck you.
100. Sheldon wept.
101. Then he picked up his trumpet and blew an endless, harrowing note.

Sherman Alexie’s collection, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, will be published by Grove Press this October. He lives with his family in Seattle.

Would you like more poems? We hide them all here for you. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

by Josh Fruhlinger

84–65 (tie). Titus (died in AD 81), Nerva (98), Trajan (117), Hadrian (138), Antoninus Pius (161), Marcus Aurelius (180), Septimius Severus (211), Tacitus (276), Constantius I (306), Gallerius (311), Constantine I (337), Constantius II (361), Theodosius I (395), Arcadius (408), Constantius III (421), Honorious (423), Marcian (457), Libius Severus (465), Olybrius (472), Leo I (474): Natural causes.

64. Vespasian (79): Natural causes; quipped “Uh oh, I think I’m becoming a God” as he died.

63. Diocletian (311): Abdicated voluntarily, lived for six more years in his vast palace compound tending to his vegetable gardens before dying of natural causes.

62. Romulus (~500): Forced to abdicate, sent off to live in Campania with a nice pension, presumed to have died of natural causes decades later.

61. Glycerius (480): Natural causes, after being deposed and forced to become a bishop.

60–59 (tie). Augustus (14), Claudius (54): Probably natural causes, though both were rumored to have been poisoned by their wives.

58. Lucius Verus (169): Food poisoning.

57. Jovian (364): Suffocated in his rooms by carbon monoxide fumes from a charcoal grill. Alternatively, may have eaten some bad mushrooms.

56. Theodosius II (450): Fell off a horse.

55. Claudius II (270): Plague.

54. Valentinian II (392): Discovered hanged in his palace; may have committed suicide because he was dominated by his chief general and had no real power, or may have been murdered by said chief general.

53. Tiberius (37): His entourage thought he died of old age, announced his death, then smothered him in a panic when he suddenly regained consciousness.

52. Nero (68): Tried to commit suicide as his regime collapsed; after several failed attempts, he ordered his private secretary to stab him in the throat.

51. Domitian (96): Stabbed to death by a large group of palace officials.

50–46 (tie). Caligula (41), Pertinax (193), Elagabalus (222), Balbinus & Pupienus (238): Assassinated by members of the Praetorian Guard.

45. Alexander Severus (235): Assassinated by mutinous soldiers in a coup.

44. Constans (350): Assassinated while seeking refuge from coup plotters in a temple.

43. Carinus (285): Assassinated by an officer whose wife he had seduced.

42. Caracalla (217): Murdered by one of his bodyguards while urinating on the side of the road

41. Numerian (284): Possibly assassinated by one of his officials while on campaign against Persia; his rotting corpse was carried in a closed coach for hundreds of miles across Asia Minor before his death was acknowledged.

40. Aurelian (275): Murdered by high government officials who had been shown a forged document indicating that the emperor had marked them for execution.

39–36 (tie). Gordian II (238), Philip the Arab (249), Maxentius (312), Constantine II (340): Died in battle in civil wars.

35–32 (tie). Macrinus (218), Severus (307), Licinius (325), Gratian (383): Executed after losing civil wars.

31–30 (tie). Avitus (457), Julius Nepos (480): Lost a civil war, were both forced to become bishops, then starved to death (Avitus)/stabbed to death (Julius Nepos).

29–26 (tie). Otho (69), Gordian I (238), Maximian (310), Maximinus II (313): Committed suicide after losing civil wars.

19–25 (tie). Didius Julianus (193), Maximinus Thrax (238), Trebonius Gallus (253), Aemilianus (253), Gallienus (268), Florianus (276), Probus (282): Murdered by their own soldiers during a civil war.

18. Quintillus (270): Accounts differ: Murdered by his own soldiers because he was too strict, or maybe died in battle in a civil war, or maybe suicide.

17. Gordian III (244): Died while on campaign against the Persians, possibly in battle.

16. Decius (251): Died in battle against the Goths.

15. Julian (363): Died of hemorrhaging three days after receiving a spear wound in battle against the Persians.

14. Carus (283): Possibly struck by lightning.

13. Valentinian I (375): Became so angry at German ambassadors who were not sufficiently deferential that he suffered a rage-stroke.

12. Valentinian III (455): Murdered by soldiers who had been paid to do so by a senator whose wife Valentinian had raped.

11. Leo II (474): Poisoned by his own mother so her husband could become emperor.

10. Geta (211): Murdered in his mother’s arms by soldiers on orders of his brother and co-emperor

9. Commodus (192): Given poison by conspirators, but he vomited that up, so they brought in a wrestler to strangle him in the bathtub.

8. Vitellius (69): Dragged from hiding as his regime collapsed, strangled, then ritually thrown down a flight of stairs.

7. Valens (378): Wounded in battle with the Goths, he was carried to a small hut, which the Goths later burned down, unaware the emperor was inside.

6. Petronius Maximus (455): Fled Rome rather than staying to fight invading Vandals; stoned to death by an angry mob of Roman refugees.

5. Majorian (461): Deposed, tortured, and decapitated by his chief general.

4. Anthemius (472): Lost a civil war with his chief general, fled to St. Peter’s Basilica for refuge, was dragged out and beheaded.

3. Galba (69) Murdered by calvary officers in a coup; severed head brought to his successor’s supporters, who carried it around and mocked it.

2. Joannes (425): Captured after a civil war; after his hand was amputated, he was paraded on a donkey and subjected to insults, then decapitated.

1. Valerian (sometime after 260): Captured by the Persians and died in captivity; rumored to have been used as a human footstool by the Persian king, killed by having molten gold poured down his throat, then taxidermied.

Josh Fruhlinger quit five semesters into an ancient history Ph.D. program, but that’s still five semesters more than most people do. He has a Tumblr and a Twitter and runs the number one Mary Worth fan site on the Internet.

“Just his voice and his drumming were so incredibly personal… It comes out of a certain place in the past, and you can’t replicate it.”
 — Nevertheless, Bruce Springsteen sang The Band’s “The Weight” last night in honor of Levon Helm at the Prudential Center in Newark. [Via]

Anderson Cooper will come around and personally try to ruin your life now, with hidden camera jerk pranks which take up peoples’ lunch hours and hours of their lives that they’ll never get back. Reports one victim: “ultimately what I felt was not anger or amusement but a profound helplessness. When it was a man being awful in the back of a restaurant, I couldn’t do anything. When it was an actor being awful in the back of a restaurant, I could do less. I had been working with rules that were not rules. I had made assumptions based on experience and observations, assumptions made invalid by a crew of people wedged in a small unisex bathroom.”

How To Get And Keep A Mentor

by Amy Goldwasser

First off, know that I want to help you. I do. I enjoy being a mentor. This is largely because I’m so inspired by, and thankful for, my past and present mentors. I credit most of my career (in publishing) to the five or six people who took the time and patience, and surely the occasional offense, to bother teaching me their business. Yet in our I want-I click world of ordering things up — no doubt made more frenetic by job crises across the board — the art of finding, courting and keeping a professional mentor has been lost.

I see this almost daily in the Mad Lib assistance-on-demand emails I receive. For the most part, they go something like this:
• It’s been far too long, much to catch up on!
• How are you/city/work/husband from when we were last in touch?
• A few words of I read/I saw/I liked flattery or interest in person/place/project/partner
• An invitation for coffee. Variations can be seasonal (iced!), sometimes more substantive (martinis, breakfast) or meet-cute (pie, vegan cupcake, bubble tea)

Then the inevitable phrase, verbatim, “I would LOVE to pick your brain.” Picker, please! Unless you’re a zombie or a surgeon, this is an appeal you should never make. It holds nothing but the promise of extraction and exhaustion — organ donation — for the person on the receiving end. Indeed, the phrase has become kind of a telltale for me. Its appearance is one that can actually put me off helping a person who’d previously had my attention, like a résumé from someone who “utilizes.”

Now The Brain likes martinis and maybe you a lot. But The Brain is also a busy professional — the very reason you seek its services — who gets a lot of these requests. You’re asking someone whose business you respect to take time and thought out of their workday and volunteer for yours. So if you’re going to email me or anyone else, in any industry, seeking advice, you have to understand there’s an artful way in. Here are some strategies for The Picker from The Brain toward establishing a happy, helpful mentor relationship.

TRY NOT TO SOUND LIKE EVERYONE ELSE

On average, I receive six to 12 requests for professional help a week. In high season, when the teenagers I work with need college letters or the college students I teach need jobs, it can be that many a day. And it’s not just the lots-to-learn kids, new to the work world, who are doing the asking. Sometimes it’s — let’s say — an actor who’s voiced a character for 23 seasons of “The Simpsons.” A recent 48-hour sampling is pretty typical, inquiries common to exotic: have I heard of any very senior edit jobs, what do I do for health insurance, can I help spring an assistant out of assistanthood, and do I know a French-speaking writer based in Toronto. What they have in common is that they all followed the template above.

So you’re competing for someone’s attention here — you want your email to stand out. First step: delete “I would LOVE to pick your brain.” Even if the phrase doesn’t bug you and you think me cranky, it appears with such frequency in my inbox that I keep a Brainpickers 2012 file — at the very least it’s unoriginal.

And originality is key here; it’s the rare person who’s moved to mentor action by a form letter. As Groupon does not yet make this kind of vendor available to you, you have to craft a request to which a human being — imagine a human being like yourself — might respond.

KEEP IT SHORT, EASY, HONEST

If you’re not in regular contact with The Brain — especially if it’s been longer than three months since last communication — come clean, and quickly admit that you’re reconnecting because you want something.

Important: What you want at this stage is not a read of your book proposal or an editor’s name at whatever publication or a research assistant or a food stylist. What you want is a brief conversation with The Brain, at the convenience of The Brain. I recently had someone tell me she’s “OK waiting” the two weeks until I was back from a trip to discuss what’s next for her in her career. Yes she is.

Here’s how to do it. You demonstrate that you know they’re doing you a big favor. You start by not making them leave their desk. Then, if it seems like The Brain is open and receptive, work your way up: “Is there a good time for you? I can send a few specific questions via email, or we can talk on the phone, whenever works for you. Or if you prefer, I can come to you, whatever’s easiest.”

The Picker should never make The Brain feel like a sucker. Better to admit your COBRA’s about to run out or layoffs approach and you’re panicking than to feign coincidence or that you were just thinking about The Brain’s pet project. Back to putting yourself in the recipient’s role, for all you know The Brain might have lost a job, a friend, even that husband since last contact.

THIS IS NOT A THIRD-PARTY SYSTEM

The Picker should never solicit The Brain’s help on behalf of another picker. It happens all the time: Here’s my girlfriend’s résumé, she’s building up a lot of clips as a music critic; or my son is moving to the city and wants to talk to you about digital media; or my therapist who has no writing experience wrote a book and do you have suggestions for literary agents? (Note: This book might be about eating babies for all the information provided The Brain here.)

If these proxy pickers are adults, simply ask The Brain if it’s OK for you to share The Brain’s contact information with them, or make an email introduction.

The Picker should be proving to The Brain that he or she will match — and far exceed — any efforts on The Brain’s part to help. Asking on behalf of a third party only shows that someone out there is lazy or disengaged enough to put two people to work for them without lifting a finger.

Also, do not ever use The Brain’s name without express permission when contacting another professional (i.e., an editor you pitch). The test is, if you’re not comfortable enough to cc: The Brain when mentioning their name, then don’t.

DON’T EVEN IMPLY THAT YOU CAN MAKE IT WORTH THEIR TIME

Again, in exchange for The Brain letting the The Picker inside the head, the coffee is usually offered. Whether of not coffee happens, The Brain is not in it for the money. So please don’t insult this person who was moved to help you by calling said latte or shrimp-and-grits a “bribe,” or in any way a fair exchange for their services. (These are services clients pay your brains for, people!)

They can buy their own coffee or have breakfast with someone with whom they have sex.

If The Brain is actually taking the time to meet you — unless you plan on writing them a check to cover their hourly rate plus transportation — no question, no fuss. Treat them to whatever you’d invited them to join you in and consider it a tremendous deal for you that they showed up.

KEEP IN TOUCH

A particular Simpsons character is now dead to me. His voice was playing at being a playwright, and I wish I’d been a little more “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script” about it instead of spending a solid afternoon reading and giving notes I never heard back on. The disappearing act is perhaps the most common and least forgivable way for The Picker to offend The Brain.

Inversely, human vanity — The Brain’s vanity — is such that you will never bother anyone by sending an email that thanks and shares credit with them for something good in your life. As soon as that editor The Brain connected you with accepts your piece, let The Brain know. Same if you get called in for an interview or sold a book seven years later based on your blog for which The Brain suggested names (whether or not you used them). If The Brain helped you to negotiate your salary, then The Brain should be the second or third person to know whether or not your boss went for it. Do not wait for The Brain to come across your story as a civilian reader on a Sunday morning.

Worse — and all too common — definitely do not wait until things go pear-shaped. They often do. The Brain is not going to be inclined to help you chase down your payment 30 days from that Sunday morning or when you’re ready to leave the job The Brain had no idea you’d landed.

Make sure you keep in touch, too, when you don’t need anything. Particularly when you don’t need anything.

Offer up something to The Brain, rather than asking for it. Tell them something they don’t know; recommend a movie, a restaurant; pass on positive gossip or a compliment if and only if it’s genuine: you did really enjoy their piece in this week’s whatever. Tweet it and “like” it. You recommend them for a project. Or, I met this person you work with and they think so highly of you, or you’d mentioned the Magnetic Fields, and tickets go on sale today.

HELP AND BE HELPED

That won’t-read-your-fucking-script piece, by the way, was sent to me by a Hollywood friend when I’d asked him to… read a script of mine. (Which he did, giving me brilliant notes.) For the same reasons I recommend that editors write sometimes and full-timers freelance, it’s good policy to try on both roles, The Brain and The Picker.

There’s the sunshine-y karma — someone helps you, you turn around and help someone else — but more important is the humility. It keeps you from acting like an entitled asshole.

Easiest exercise: Read your email before you send, and see what kind of action you’d be moved to take out of your workday if it landed in your inbox.

THANK THEM ONCE, THANK THEM TWICE

As soon as any level of picking has happened, send The Brain a proper handwritten thank-you note via the U.S. Postal Service. It’s the right thing to do, and if you need more mercenary motivation, it will set you apart from the email mob. The Brain will remember you.

This part is mandatory. The next part is largely circumstantial and completely optional.

If things work out splendidly for you, based on any initial introduction or advice from The Brain — meeting someone you’ve always wanted to meet, placing a $250 op-ed or selling a $250K book or $2.5 million screenplay — or even if they don’t and you can swing it, a small gift in the $25-$50 range is extra kind and will not go unnoticed.

Like picking up the iced coffee tab, it’s not about the money. It’s about appreciation, what really feeds The Brain. Without any thought at all I can tell you exactly who gave me a Gramercy Tavern gift card (martinis, but with a person of my choosing instead of with The Picker); Lady Jayne Ltd. tiger, leopard and cheetah notepads; an Alice Munro collection as soon as it came out; and a donation to the Lower Eastside Girls Club as thanks.

I gave that L.A. friend a gift certificate to Tavern for reading my fucking script.

Note that these gifts are tax write-offs — promotion or research or professional services, depending on your accountant. I have an excellent one, and I will give you his name if you ask me the right way.

Amy Goldwasser is an editorial consultant who specializes in launches and relaunches, digital and print. She is the editor of RED: Teenage Girls in America Write on What Fires Up Their Lives Today (redthebook.com), which she is currently adapting for theater. She teaches editing in the Columbia Publishing Course and writing with the Lower Eastside Girls Club. Drawing by Harold Cushing courtesy of Yale Medical Historical Library.

Tomorrow London voters will cast their ballots for mayor, and it looks like incumbent Boris Johnson is a fairly sure bet to be reelected. “Boris,” our Emma Garman wrote back in December, “has achieved the hallowed celebrity niche of single-name recognition via a lethal combination of gold-plated charisma and an unshakable belief in his native exemption from the conventions — social, professional, legal, personal — to which everyone else must conform.” Learn more about him here.