Yet again on writing.

Tonight Hooman and I went to Farnaz's book reading at Barnes and Noble in Tribeca, except that I missed the book reading because I got tied up at work. But the after-party in the East Village was fun. Tannaz and Ali booked the room in the basement of Via Della Pace around the corner from their old place, and about 20 people showed up, including a baby. We had Italian food and some people had wine. The book is set in Baghdad I think. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I know Farnaz spent some time in Baghdad covering the war for the WSJ, came home and had a skiing accident. During the months of convalescence, out came a book, just like that.

I've tried many times to write a book, but most of the time I hit a wall. Writing is far too intense and revealing for me to succeed at it. That's why the best way for me to accomplish this feat is either to write a piece of non-fiction, or to write a fictional story based 100% on someone else's life and 0% on my own. This is because, even if I write start writing a fictional story about a totally made-up character, in the end that character is really me, so I won't be able to write it.

By the way, in the subway on my way to the reading, I saw a poster for David Duchovny's new series, Californication (which, incidentally, is a television show about a writer) and it hit me that he looks just like a guy I know at work [hello]. The guy at work is a writer. I'm a writer too, I guess. But not really. I'm more of an observer who happens to put everything in writing.