Let's face it, book tours are weird and (sometimes) boring. On the Awl, nine authors and publicists talked about the best and the worst of the requisite book tour. Their consensus: there's something wrong with the whole setup. So step aside, dudes and dudettes. I'm not like regular authors. This is what I would do if I was on a book tour.

If I was on a book tour, I would wear the same sophisticated, refined Yves St. Laurent suit to every reading. The same way I wear my Clockwork Orange costume for Halloween every year. (I probably wouldn’t stuff a sock down my pants for a book reading, though.)

If I was on a book tour, I would only read the parts of my book with sex orhigh-speed car chases. Anybody can think about philosophical problems on their own. Sex and high-speed car chases, however, are best enjoyed ascommunal experiences. Also, one of my friends got lucky at a Literary Death Match event (probably one that Black Balloon publisher Elizabeth Koch ran, although she's not telling). All it took was a smile, a few literary allusions, and a round of vodka and Red Bull. That’s got to be a good sign.

If I was on a book tour, I would interrupt discussions about my work to dish out Dear Sugar-style advice to the audience:

“Mr. Author, my marriage isn’t going so great. I’m reading your books like my wife told me to so that we have something to talk about when I come home from work. I don’t think it’s working. What should I do?”

“Have you tried stuffing a sock down your pants?”

If I was on a book tour, I would drink a Tom Collins before I got in front of the audience (for the stage fright), and then I’d leave right after the signing for the nearest dive bar (for the non-stage fright). This one time, I met a bartender who was reading Ulysses when he wasn’t pouring shots. He was in the middle of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, and managed to concoct an industrial-grade mojito while reading aloud her words—“What do they find to gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink water”—and laughing the whole way through.

If I was on a book tour, I would bribe my friends to come and be extremely attractive backup readers. They wouldn’t actually read though. They’d just stand around, being wonderful supportive friends. I’d tell them, “You can just stand up in front with me while I read about sex and high-speed car chases. You’ll probably get laid."

Come to think of it, maybe I'd stuff a sock down my pants after all. You never know what the audience is really there for.

image credit: leedsfestival.com. I would probably have a classier outfit.

Sure, the internet has tons of advice on how to go about being a writer. But last week, the internet had advice I have just now acted on and can retrospectively congratulate myself for. Without meaning to, I have followed The Awl’s suggestion to move out of Brooklyn in order to write the great American novel.

I have left Brooklyn for the Midwest! I have totally done so! My reason for doing so? Not too far a cry from trying to actually write the great American novel!

My aims are slightly less grandiose; I hope to simply write, every day. Could I do this in Brooklyn? Not as easily. Most literary types are familiar with Virginia Woolf’s whole idea of a room of one’s own, and a room of my own, in Brooklyn, was certainly more than I could afford. I’ve only been in the Midwest for a week, but I know I can realistically obtain such luxurious space here. I can fantasize about—and soon make a reality—pimping my new place with such classic writerly touches as cork-lined walls and plot outlines penciled above the bed (cf. Apartment Therapy's excellent post, "Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms").

Of course, such space is not merely physical but psychological in nature. I find that, for me, the best writing gets done when I am able to achieve a particular mental state, one that scientific studies have shown can be brought on, one might even say enhanced, by the consumption of alcohol. In all truthfulness, I do perform better on Mr. Writing Machine the more oblivious I am to external stimuli. Brooklyn was a gigantic swarm of distraction and anxiety—blissful and dearly missed in some cases, but incalculably hard to retreat from.

For the past week, I’ve maintained an almost constant state of mild distraction from my immediate circumstance. It’s so easy here to loll about, I can’t even describe it without maybe sounding kind of high, or at least drunk. Which I am not...yet. Because New Scientist says only a small amount of alcohol aids in creative problem solving, and therefore I have only consumed a small amount of alcohol in preparation for this blog post. What can I say?

It’s a little too soon to tell whether I’ve made a terrible mistake or I can become a mildly alcoholic, abundantly prolific and happy-in-my-dirt-cheap-luxuriously-spacious-Midwest-apartment writer. But it looks like the internet is telling me yes, such ecstasies as a small efficiency with a single window, a bed and a desk that I can afford, plus Jameson that costs half what it did in the city, might just make all my dreams come true.

Image: ApartmentTherapy.com