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July 6th, 2008


After two years and six months, the revised novel is finally out the door. In the damn mail, dude.
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Easy Street
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You’d think I feel an enormous sense of relief.

You’d be so wrong.

I’m still waiting for the elation. I’m not even close to feeling it. Maybe I haven’t internalized that the enforced morning march to the computer is over?

Although. . . It was kind of delicious to kick back in the reclining Queen Anne and, without a speck of guilt, read the bitch of a Sunday paper. In one sitting—comics and all. Did a crossword puzzle, even. On a Sunday. How remarkable is that!

Even more remarkable is that now I have anxieties out the wazoo:
  • The nice women at the agency won’t like the revisions.
  • The book opens too leisurely.
  • Coming in at 417 pages is just not a good thing. Too many goddamn pages.
  • They may want me to delete a minor character. A character who gives me a chance to show culture differences. And to make the husband jealous. And to show my main girl how different (dull) her life could’ve been.
  • There’s too much sex—even if it’s a novel about sex.
  • I might’ve pulled a boner with the chronology and logic and haven’t yet realized it.
  • Nobody will get that the house, light, blood, breath, seasons, are characters.
  • My writing style be too lush.
  • The foreshadowing isn’t subtle enough.
  • No publishing house will want the cussed thing.
Thank the good sweet stars we’re off to China. Plenty of ancient and beautiful things to distract me. New folks to meet. And, now, I can shift my worries to 14-hour flights, summer heat, squat toilets, soup for breakfast, and, the ever popular: children pointing at me. Okay, then. Ni hao. Coming at you. To relax, hear?


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