On leaving Seattle in less than 24 hours, scowling at one’s notecards, and remembering what you like about people

Lesson learned #1: I can only speak extemporaneously — successfully, that is — first thing in the morning. Or before noon. A long day and a luggage delay, and I’m flubbing transitions and tensing up. This is good to know.

Lesson #2: Transitions! Important, because, as I’m experiencing, that’s how and where people become convinced. Never mid-paragraph.

Lesson #3: People who ask questions at readings are special people. We should give them all tax breaks.

Lesson #4: Some members of the audience will appreciate falterings and pauses more than the well-polished lines that cascade from your lips. Intellectually, I’ve known this. But experiencing it speaks more to the senses. It feels like grace. I’m grateful for it.

Lesson #5: A ringing cell phone spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Standing at the podium, you see the effects quite starkly. Thirty seconds elapse before the energy in the room returns to previous levels.

Lesson #6: The library closes at 8.

Many thanks to the Seattle YPN, the Chamber of Commerce, and Kim Ricketts Book Events — very warm and hospitable hosts, the whole lot.

In Washington D.C.

1. This afternoon I went to talk about HTBU on Broadminded, a show on XM satellite radio. The hosts, Molly and Christine, were lovely and chatty and so what happens — and this worries me — is I get lulled by the dim lighting and general pleasantness into thinking I’m just having a nice conversation with these very nice people and I forget, oh, that I’m on air, and supposed to be selling a book.

2. Politics and Prose is a great bookstore. You cannot, however, walk there easily from the Friendship Heights metro stop. Whoever tells you that is…joking.

3. My cab driver on the way back to the hotel wanted to talk about Richard Holbrooke and U.S. policy in the Mid-East. This got me misty-eyed about democracy and informed electorates and all that, but I pretty much airballed this conversation too.