In writing the story of how Jill and I bought a wrecked frat house and tried to bring it back to its original Victorian splendor and keep our then-early love alive at the same, I had a hell of a hard time. That book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story, is out today from Academy Chicago Publishers.


Why was it so hard to write this book? Because life is messy, messy, messy. In any snippet taken from my life or yours, there is never only one story. There are many strands of many stories running through everything we do — the story of your working life, the story of your dreaming life, the story of your love life, the story of your domestic life, and so on. The story of my work on the condemened property that had, for ten years, been Baltimore’s most notorious fraternity was just one of many strands I had to keep straight. As it happened, Jill and I had been dating for only a few months when I bought the house, hoping that Jill would move in with me and that we’d fix up the house in no time and then live happily ever after. Here’s the video trailer that gives you an overview of that situation: From Animal House to Our house video trailer


I am much more comfortable writing fiction than nonfiction. In fiction, if I don’t like the way things are going, I simply change it and try out another possibility. That’s what makes writing fiction fun: anything can happen. In nonfiction, however, only one thing can happen: the story as it unfolded in your life. Nonfiction is inconvenient in ways fiction will never be. You can’t change time or place or chronology. You can’t combine two or three people into one character in order to make the telling more convenient. If you think you can, then you should be writing fiction.

I am surprised and a little disturbed when I hear memoir writers say that they have altered some chronology and combined some people in their nonfiction in order to make the story more manageable. They defend these choices by insisting that they have been “true” to the story and have left untouched all the important details. This rationalization changes the essence of the “non” in “nonfiction,” doesn’t it? Granted, it’s understood that writers of nonfiction reconstruct dialogue to the best of their recollection and describe events as well as they can remember. The memoir is, at bottom, a form of testimony, as if to say, “This is what I heard, saw, and felt as best as I can recount it.” But this is not a license to make things up. Life is messy enough without the writer fudging the details and hiding the fact that, say, “Uncle Tim” is actually a conmbination of Uncle Timothy, Uncle Simon, and Aunt Clara.

Had I written FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE as fiction, I would have

1) made the roof cave in (only three ceilings were falling in),
2) made the contractors more bizarre than they were (the beer-drinking roofers, one of whom nearly died, were the worst we had to deal with)
3) made my family’s first, too-early Christmas visit even more disastrous than it was (I would have made someone fall through the floor, for instance, and added even more extended family to make it more chaotic),
4) created at least one thoroughly eccentric neighbor, to add some local color
5) brought back some frat boys (only one returned and I nearly attacked him when he did),
6) and made the fights between Jill and me even more volatile (we had plenty of arguments but we never separated).

As it happened, just as Jill and I began working on that old, wrecked frat house, my life at work was imploding. In the original draft of From Animal House to Our House, I tried to connect my travails at work with my travails at home. But, really, there was little or no connection to be made. And, honestly, the story of my working life wasn’t that interesting, even though it was complicated and often ugly. The result was that the story I had to tell — about Jill and me in a wrecked frat house — got muddled. That’s why, in the first round of submissions, no publisher would take the book. They didn’t want to deal with that mess.

So I had a choice: change the story or leave some of it out. Since I was writing non-fiction, I chose to do the latter and simply left out the story of my working life. All writers understand the need to be selective: you can’t tell everything. Now, when you read From Animal House to Our House (as I hope you will), you’ll find a fast read that focuses on a newly romanced couple taking on an impossible task: why they survive it? If so, how?

I left out other things too, like the details of my second marriage, some of which were so disturbing they would have distracted the reader. That’s the challenge of writing non-fiction: you have to keep the reader focused. Just because it happened in your life doesn’t mean you are obliged to tell about it. When in doubt, leave it out.


Although I think I’m getting more comfortable writing nonfiction, it continues to bedevil me because nothing is messier than real life. Sorting through that mess to make sense of one or two things will always be a daunting task, it seems. But then I remind myself, Who would want a life that’s so simple, there’s nothing to sort through?

For more before/after pics of the house, click here.

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When I began teaching a course called “Writing for the Web” three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the internet, and even less about what they need to do to become effective communicators online.

The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster. Twitter. Facebook. Given that (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation) the average 18-year-old spends almost eight hours daily immersed in media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren’t kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games?

But video games do not create savvy users of the internet. Video games predate the internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and X-box. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself–who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The internet’s chief similarity to video games is that both are siphoning off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the internet. As a delivery system for TV, film, and games, the internet has proven itself a premier source of entertainment. And that’s all that most young people know about the internet.

Why wouldn’t we educate students in more sophisticated uses of the internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world’s time and attention? I’m not talking about a course on “How to Understand the Internet” or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (though this is useful, obviously). I’m talking of the need for students to understand and produce texts online–essential skills for life beyond college.

Look at the strategic plan of any American college and you will find an emphasis on helping students “meet the demands of the information age.” But walk into many college classrooms and you will see only a single computer at the front of the room. In most cases, that computer functions as an overhead projector. Where are the computers for students?Apparently, many professors believe that students’ ownership of computer notebooks and pads somehow guarantees that students will learn all they need to know about computers. But who is teaching students how to write, say, a marketing report or an historical overview for an online readership? I am surprised at the number of my colleagues who prohibit the use of computers in their classrooms because they fear that students will “surf the web” during a lecture.


The absence of computers in the classroom sends the message that computers are ancillary to learning. This misconception of the computer is due, in part, to the fact that the majority of faculty are Baby Boomers who didn’t need computer technology to succeed as professionals. That’s why most university professors have not integrated computer use into their courses.To most of them, it seems, the computer is a fancy typewriter, a means of sending memos, and, generally, a distraction. Students write papers on their computers, but those papers are handed in as hard copy. Never mind that the world outside of college does very little business with hard copy. In short, there exists a huge divide between the college classroom and the world outside, where work and life thrive on the internet.

Presumably, we want our students to have an impact on the world. But how can that happen if we don’t teach them how to use the primary tool that would make that impact possible? To be fair, there are some important developments taking place in the Digital Humanities movement, which aims to expand the notion of “legitimate” research by including nonlinear sources, such as videos, digital images, and hyperlinks: why not augment texts with digital tools? There are also a number of professors of Composition and Rhetoric who are teaching digital literacy. But such efforts remain marginal. One of my students recently wrote, “The world is moving closer and closer to being a completely technological place, and those who don’t understand it are going to be left behind.”


It seems clear to everyone that our increasingly technological world demands technologically adept citizens. Start with the simplest act of online communication: e-mail. Recent studies have shown a significant decline (59%) in e-mail usage among teenagers (Pew internet & American Life Project, Comscore Media Metrix report, Neilson report).Why? E-mail is for business, not entertainment and socializing. Young people have abandoned e-mail for text messaging. I often hear faculty members complain about the ineptness of student e-mails—whether as queries or as a means of presenting proposals—but very few professors seek to rectify the situation by teaching effective online communication in their classes. They don’t seem to understand that emails are as important as more formal correspondence, even though, ironically, the professors’ own daily use of emails underscores this fact.

How can discipline-specific computer teaching begin? Let’s start with the fact that every academic discipline makes use of databases. Do your students know how to access these databases? Do they know how to write articles of their own that might appear in these databases? Are they aware of the ethical dimensions of placing information online? Those studying social work, for example, should know that all client records and reports can be subpoenaed. Social-work students, therefore, need to be aware of confidentiality laws. These students also need to know that any report submitted online will remain online forever. There is no such thing as expunging a record from the internet. This is just one of countless examples of internet protocol and online constraintsthat impinge upon a student’s understanding of a particular field of study.


Nearly every discipline now has an online journal and may also have blogs and special-interest web sites. Until quite recently, online literary journals were considered inferior to their print counterparts. That’s no longer the case. My students should be reading online journals, but they should also understand how an online journal differs from a traditional print journal. Online journals make use of multimedia—video, audio, photos, chat rooms—that are not available to print journals. The rhetorical package online is very different than in print. My students hope to write for online journals—in addition to or in lieu of print journals. They may also have an opportunity one day to manage or edit an online journal of their own. If they have not studied the medium, if they have not written in the style of online journals, if they have not analyzed how online journals are keyed to rhetorical aims that are specific to the internet, then they will be unprepared for the field they hope to enter after graduation.


American colleges and universities send 1.7 million graduates with bachelor degrees into the world each year (National Center for Education Statistics).Why would we not give them every advantage? As we help students strengthen their knowledge and ability to write, read, and communicate effectively, we must prepare them for the online cultures that will be central to their private and professional lives. Undergraduate writing majors at my university end up in a variety of fields, but they share at least one thing: much of their work finds and defines itself on the internet – that’s where the readers go; that’s where the markets reside. If using the computer to write, read, and produce texts is not yet central to their identity as professionals, it will be soon. It should be central to their education, too.

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Right now, for two weeks, I’m staying at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, an artists’ colony. If you’re not a writer or painter, you may not understand what an “artists’ colony” is or why anybody would invent such a thing. It’s a place that artists go to do their art. The “colony” part means that there are many artists in one place, sometimes staying in one house or dormitory. They don’t stay long, anywhere from two-weeks to two months. What little time they get at the colony they dedicate wholly to their art, day and night. As a result, they get a lot done.

Packing your bags and going some place for two weeks to write may not seem like it’s worth the trouble. You leave behind loved ones and pets and friends and your favorite comfy chair. But you also leave behind a hundred distractions: junk mail, bills, phone calls, grocery shopping, meal preparation, car repair, yard mowing, tree trimming, garbage disposal, vacuuming, weed pulling, toilet cleaning, dusting, washing and ironing, pet feeding and grooming and walking, litter box cleaning, dehunidfier emptying, dish washing — you get the idea. When you add up the distractions you deal with on a daily basis, there’s not much time left for anything like writing.

Still, it’s not easy to get away. Jill often asks me, “Why can you just stay home and write?” She knows the answer, but she keeps asking the question because no spouse likes to be left behind. I do write at home, of course, but I don’t get as much done as I would like because I have duties at home: I do the grocery shopping and most of the cooking and all of the heavy lifting (stuck windows, bags of weeds, garbage cans, etc.). It doesn’t matter who you’re married to or partnered with, nobody is going to give you a get-out-of-all-chores pass when you’re at home.

The worst case for the stay-at-home writer is the spouse who doesn’t understand the writer’s necessary down time. Writers spend a lot of time just sitting at their desks, pondering and agonizing and staring at their computer screens because writing a story or poem or essay is like solving a complicated puzzle — like a Rubic’s cube. I heard one writer recount how his ex-wife never understood this. She would walk into his study and see him sitting or, worse, lying on the couch. Then she would say, “Since, you’re not doing anything, could you take out the garbage?”

If you are the spouse of a writer, you really don’t have to be jealous of the time your partner seeks away from home. There’s nothing fancy about most artists colonies. In fact some can be almost primitive — you get a 8′ X 10′ room or cabin, a little desk to write at, a single bed to sleep on, and a bathroom down the hall. You can’t be squeamish about sharing a bathroom or territorial about sharing a kitchen. For all the time you may spend writing in your little room, you do have to be sociable at the communal meals. And some nights there are card games or charades, even. Other nights, there are readings or showings of work-in-progress. If you’re inclined to charitable contributions, an arts colony near you would be a grateful recipient.

The company’s pretty good among other artists, but there’s almost always one asshole to deal with somewhere along the line — the guy who takes a fifty minute shower and uses up all the hot water or the person who steals the eclair you were saving in the communal fridge. Recently I heard of artists at one colony who had the pleasure of hearing one of their fellow residents masturbating — loudly — every time this person took a shower in the colony’s only bathroom — which was right behind the kitchen and dining room. The self-abuser’s groans and yelps from the shower stall sent the other residents running from the building every time. Dinner conversation among this group was strained, as you can imagine.

The sacrosanct thing about an artists’ colony is that nobody is allowed to visit your study without an invitation. You are totally on your own. You can stay in your room and write for the entire time and nobody will bother you or think you’re odd. Also, somebody else makes the food for you at the colony. All you have to do is show up and get fed. Usually the food is pretty good. I recall, though, staying at one colony years ago that supplied us with pimento cheese sandwiches every day for lunch. Mind you, artists’ colonies are non-profit, budget-conscious operations. At most of them, you pay a nominal daily fee. Others are wholly free to the artist. You have to apply, of course. You have to qualify. Not just anybody can go.

You may have heard that some people carry on inappropriately at artists’ colonies. I’m talking about sexual hijinks. Almost always it’s an embarrassing spectacle to watch two talented people sidetrack themselves into an affair. And especially painful if one or both are married. Sometimes there’s a man or woman who is absolutely determined to get laid because that’s what he/she thinks has to happen at this point in his/her life. These people at an arts colony bring everybody else down because their philandering ruins the group dynamic, undermining everything the artists came here to do. But, thankfully, these torrid incidents are rare.

Outside of commercial interests (e.g., you get paid to write a jingle for a TV commercial), there is very little support for the arts in the U.S.A. By contrast, other countries find significant ways to support their artists. Until 2007, for instance, the Netherlands government would regularly buy paintings from its painters. The only tangible support for the arts in our country are spotty state grants (modest cash awards to artists who compete every other year for a handful of prizes) and the National Endowment for the Arts, which gets about $150 million a year to support all arts in all areas of American culture–from national arts projects to local arts programs to individual grants to artists. That comes out to about 50 cents a year per person. Or .007 cents per person per day. Compare this to the $700 billion defense budget. That’s $233,000. per person per year. Or $638.35 per person per day. Make art, not war?

American artists are a scrappy lot because they have to be in order to survive. Most will never get much money or recognition. Their stays at an arts colonies are a respite from the pressures of making ends meet. So think kindly of your writer friend or spouse who says, “I’ve got to get away.” It’s very possible that a painting or a novel or a song you like came into being in a little room at an arts colony.

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Although I love to travel, I don’t totally have my travel act together. For example, I always overpack and yet no matter how well prepared I am — writing lists, packing the night before, taking inventory — I always forget at least one thing. Still, I’ve learned some tips about making traveling easier, simply because I’ve spent a lot of time on the road, starting with the 9,000 mile zigzag I made across the continent after graduating from college. More recently, I lived in a motel room for five months in Micronesia. I’ve done all the usual things: washed clothes in sinks, made soup in coffee makers, etc. And I’ve done some unusual things, like the morning I discovered a wild hair growing from the tip of my nose and, unable to pluck it with my fingers, tweezed it out with one hinge of my eye-glasses. Yes. improvisation is often the key to doing well on the road. But there’s also something to be said for being prepared.

What I recommend is a survival kit. To be less dramatic, let’s call it your travel kit. If it’s put together well, your kit will help you keep body and mind together, especially if you’re away from home for longer than, say, 3 days. I’m currently on a 5-city book tour that will last just over a week. That’s long enough to mess you up in many ways. Here are the top-ten items in my travel kit:

1) ear plugs
Most travelers don’t notice, but they should know that planes are as noisy as subways. Maybe noisier. If you’re plugged into your music player or watching an in-flight movie, you probably couldn’t care less. But, if you’re reading a book or typing on your laptop or trying to nap, your ears are getting hammered. Next time you fly, take note afterward of the ringing in your ears. That noise wears you down, even if you don’t notice it. I carry wax earplugs with me everywhere and use them in subways and other noisy places too.

2) inflatable pillows
You can get these at camp stores. I carry two. They’re about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a conventional pillow, they inflate/deflate like miniature air mattresses, and they’re more for the hotels than for planes. I never get enough pillows at hotels unless I’m staying at a really expensive place. Recently, I stayed at a “guest house” that had a cell-like room whose bed offered a single flat pillow. My inflatable, half-sized pillows have made a big difference in instances like this, not to mention instances when the hotel pillow cases looked like poorly laundered diapers.

3) lunch
Bring it. Nobody is going to make a better sandwich of better ingredients than you can make at home. I usually make an avocado, sprout, lettuce, and cheese sandwich on whole grain bread for a fraction of the cost of anything I might buy on the road. I make it just the way I like it, with plenty of mustard. I can eat it any time, anywhere. And it will last, if it must, for a day and a half.

I also bring at least two apples, an orange, and a carrot; also a small ziplock bag of peanuts and another of raisins. The added weight isn’t burdensome (the load lightens quickly) and the advantage of having your own snacks is tremendous, especially when you’re starving for a bite and tempted by junk-food vending machines.

Good food makes good energy.

4) Vitamins and supplements
Too many people, it seems, abandon their routines when they travel. This means that not only might they forgo their usual eating habits (and resort to eating junk food) but also forgo taking their daily vitamins and supplements. That’s understandable: travel is a logistical hassle that makes it difficult to sort through bottles of vitamins etc.. That’s why I make up a vitamin pack for every day of travel. Other supplements, like ground flax seed, I put in small plastic containers and spoon them out as needed.

5) a portable orange juicer
This sounds exotic but is not. You can find one at the housewares aisle of most supermarkets. It’s made of plastic, lightweight, and easy to carry (comes in two pieces). It allows you to buy a handful of oranges or grapefruit and squeeze your own juice anywhere (as long as you have a serrated plastic knife – see #6). Talk about starting the day right! Do you know how hard it is to find fresh-squeezed juice anywhere in America? And how much it costs, if and when you can find it? Day or night, fresh juice gives you a kick not only because it’s healthy but also because it’s a treat and makes you feel very special.

6) Plastic eating utensils.
TSA will not confiscate these. And they are handy for more than just eating. Any kind will do – knife, spoon, fork – but I prefer the heavy-duty variety, which is especially important in the knife (see item #5). I also carry napkins. BTW: your heavy-duty plastic utensils are easy to wash and re-use. No need to throw them out.

7)
hand/face wipes
As you know, there are all kinds of wipes you might carry—some are alcohol based, others are infused with hand cream, and others are anti-bacterial. I’m talking about something a little different: individually wrapped aromatic oil wipes. These are herbal wipes that contain no chemicals but are naturally anti-bacterial (if that’s your worry) and, above all, offer a quick, cleansing respite from the sweaty, sticky vicissitudes of travel. They smell great and will make you feel like you’re giving yourself a treat.

day bag
This is the small carryall – nylon backpack or canvas messenger bag — that is with me at all times. It contains the usual stuff (cell phone, wallet, chapstick, etc.) and three vital items: toothbrush, deodorant, and dental floss. If you are truly stuck somewhere, a good tooth-brushing may make you feel a little better. And flossing? Have you ever spent the better part of a day, absently and persistently tonguing at a particle of food stuck between your teeth?

If I’m going to a city, my day bag also includes a change purse with plenty of quarters for parking. (I forgot this the last time I was in Boston.)


9) map
Nothing’s worse (for me) than being holed up in a hotel and having no idea what’s around me. Inevitably, the hotel’s courtesy map offers a paltry depiction of your surroundings. So, before I travel, I download a set of Google maps so that I am well acquainted with the neighborhood surrounding my hotel and/or the place where I’m reading. This is really important for fetching food and locating cool sites you might visit. (Before printing out your map, be sure to look at “print preview” to make sure you’re getting the portion of the map that you want.)

10) compact mirror
Most women carry this. But, guys, I’m here to tell you that our need for a small mirror is no less important – as you surely know if you’ve ever returned from an outing or, heaven forbid, a reading only to discover that – nestled at the opening of one nostril – you have a booger the size of a mung bean. Sorry, I know you don’t want to hear this. But looks do matter, especially if you’re presenting yourself to the public. So a small mirror for a last-minute check is really helpful. Jill got me a vintage travel mirror that has been invaluable.

I could probably name another ten items. But let me close with three life-style habits that will get you off to a better start, no matter what your itinerary:

a) Stretch out in the morning, before breakfast. If you know yoga, do some. If you don’t know yoga, just stretch – 5 minutes will make a difference, as good as a jolt of caffeine.

b) Breathe deeply. All day long. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Remind yourself that a deep breath is energizing – it brings oxygen to your blood.

c) Keep your head up. Literally. Looking down at the ground as you walk is a tremendous strain on your back. It brings you down physically and mentally. Keeping your head up helps you meet the world face-on and will make a difference in the way you feel.

It’s tough being on the road – which is why vacations so often are NOT restful. And, vacation or no, it’s tough enough simply being in the world. Wherever we are, our challenge is to find the care and nourishment we need. Our travel kit reminds us that we can give ourselves some of this when we’re far from home and on our own.

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I’ve been looking for Jonathan for 15 years. The last I heard, he’d run off to China to find the woman he thought was the love of his life — an American doing research there. His then-estranged wife wrote me that Jonathan was bipolar and had long been troubled. He and I met in college as aspiring writers and shared similar losses: his mother, and then my father, died while we were students. Apparently, there was a lot I didn’t know about Jonathan. Years later, I was sending him holiday cards every year and his wife was answering them in his absence. He had dropped out of sight five years previous. “I thought you knew,” she wrote. I was so freaked out by this revelation that I didn’t write her back. My second marriage was crumbling at the time.

Jonathan had been the star of our undergraduate creative writing program at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)l. He was the youngest writer ever to win the Stegner writing Fellowship to Stanford – right out of the undergrad chute. He was just 21 when I waved him and his girlfriend off in his packed-to-the-ceiling Toyota that summer after our graduation. A brilliant writer, he seemed destined for greatness. I, on the other hand, was as aimless as dandelion down.

That’s why, six months later, I was in California too. And a few months after that, I was sharing a house with Jonathan and his girlfriend while I looked for work in San Francisco. I don’t know that I followed Jonathan exactly (my grandmother lived in California), but his proximity anchored me in some ways. Patiently, he read my stories that first year and tried to help me improve. But he himself abandoned writing fiction after his two years at Stanford. It seemed the big fellowship had burned him out — maybe too much was expected of him. He ended up writing copy for a left-wing media company, where soon he became their Creative Director.

After he and his girlfriend split up, he shared an apartment with me in San Francisco. By the time we were thirty, he was married, had a house, a dog, and two kids, and we saw each other infrequently. I was married too but much less settled and much less mature. He, for instance, was seeing a psychiatrist weekly to deal with the early loss of his mother, which was bundled with other problems. I wasn’t dealing with anything, including my already ill-fated marriage to a woman who expressed disbelief when I told her I wanted to be a writer. I was a professional musician by that time, playing the clubs six nights a week like a factory job.

After I quit music and went off to grad school, Jonathan remained important to me because he marked my passage in ways that were hard to articulate. It occurs to me now that some friends are like constellations in the sky – we don’t just get used to their presence, we need their presence to make the sky seem complete and make us feel fully here.

Every so often I’ll make a web-wide search for those lost beacons in my life, Jonathan foremost among them. A couple years ago I discovered one of Jonathan’s sons on Facebook. I tried to friend the kid but he didn’t respond, even though I had explained the connection. I can hardly blame him. Then, just this week, after doing another of my internet searches — just out of curiosity — I found Jonathan himself. He has returned to California and started a business. And he looks good, much better than I imagined he would. By my reckoning, he’s been “freelancing” for 15 years – which means that he has probably been on a longer, harder journey than to China and back.

I remind myself that we must be careful with friends we have found after a long absence. Reunions can be demeaning if all we’re left with is a tally sheet of a comparison/contrast, of wins and losses. It’s not always easy to convey to a long-gone friend what he or she meant or how he still fits into our night sky. The sum of our pasts has to amount to more than nostalgia. So, I have little reason to write Jonathan now, but I’m certain that I will write to him eventually, if for no other reason than to say, “Welcome back.”

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