What I Would Love to Say to Young Writers

Write what you know.

Which is incredibly boring and cliched and of course can lead to the protestation But J.K. Rowling didn't KNOW about wizards and Stephenie Meyer didn't KNOW about vampires.

In my just-sold novel my main character does things I've never done, particularly in the opening pages - but I apparently have an incredibly good imagination, have seen movies or read enough descriptions that this particular scene is convincing.

What I know is human emotion and what I can describe with great verisimilitude are the character's thoughts and feelings. Meyer understood teenage angst and longing, and, apparently, the female need for a modern-day Heathcliff. Rowling understood people and motivations and mythology and emotions.

I've recently looked at samples of two teenagers' novels. The first is a very good writer and incredibly hard-working and disciplined, but she's tackling extraordinary mature (and depressing) themes that she lacks first-hand experience with - plus a complex multi-generational plot that's difficult for even seasoned writers to pull off. Maybe it's the immensely practical side of me, but I'd rather see her working to rewrite some of her earlier novels into something she can pitch to an agent and sell. Because I can tell you right now, that dream of writing wonderful novels in your spare time while you work another job is very, very difficult.

I'm still struggling with how to respond to the second teenaged writer, who has some talent but not the life experience or plotting or character development skills to write convincingly or compellingly about what he's trying to write about. I want to tell him gently to put this manuscript aside, and to write about things he knows more about and characters he can understand.

And what I want to tell most writers, teenage or not: Rewrite. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I don't mean edit. Rewrite until there's life in every scene, and every word is on the page for a reason. Outline every chapter and see it if it all makes sense, or if you've crammed too much in some chapters. Study each character and see if their motivation and speech and actions ring true. Rewrite it on computer and then on printed copies. And when you think you're done, read it all aloud. You'll find ways to strengthen your manuscript you never could have imagined. And you very well may end up rewriting again.

Being Invited to the Prom - for the First Time

I never went to a prom. I wasn't even aware that my high school had them. I suppose they must have, although the fact that our town was constructed with the sole purpose of helping build the atom bomb meant my classes were filled with a disproportionate number of scientists' children. (I am assiduously avoiding the word egghead.)

But the concept of a prom was simply outside my world, as was attending a football game or pep rally. If any of my friends went to a prom, they never talked about it, and I skipped my senior year to go to university early. And when I wasn't living and breathing bicycle racing I had my nose in a book, and likely would have considered the entire prospect of a prom with the combination of horror and disdain you reserve for things you know are outside the realm of your life options. People in my world did not get asked to proms.

But now suddenly, I have. Suddenly I'm not on the outside looking in. Suddenly I am smack in the middle of a life I had only begun to vaguely dream of.

I've been asked to the prom, and not by one party, but by two: Two publishers wanted to buy my novel, LEARNING TO SWIM.

Which meant I had to decide between them.

Yes, it's a good problem to have, but I agonized over it, as I likely would have back in high school if two mythical males had asked me to the prom I supposed we had. The vagaries of fate meant that I was making my wrenching decision in a hotel room far from home, while in the background, The Bachelorette's Gillian was pretending to try to choose between the two - no, oops, three - men she was considering. And as she did, I parsed and compared and analyzed and consulted and weighed and tried to figure out which of my needs and inclinations were visceral and real and which were purely emotional.

Then, long after midnight, I made up my mind. For the second time in my life - the first being back in May when I decided to disregard one agent's tepid response and suggestion to drastically cut the opening chapters of my novel, and proceeded to query a bevy of top agents - I simply trusted my gut.

And woke up the next morning knowing that I had an entirely new future ahead of me.

Life after the prom. I'm looking forward to it.

Details: I have committed to a two-book deal with editor John Glusman at Shaye Areheart Books/Crown. The first novel, LEARNING TO SWIM, will be published in hardback in Fall 2010.

And Now We Know What Porcupines Sound Like Mating

It's a sound somewhat like a pack of crazed myna birds screaming in tandem. Giant myna birds. Enraged. In fear of their lives.

And of course it was the one night this week it hasn't stormed like mad and I could have perhaps slept the whole night through.

I knew I had porcupines nearby because Monty got a snootful of quills one evening in the side yard before I had the full fence up.

No, the dogs don't like the sound, either.

20 Things I Want to Say to People

Few things make me laugh out loud, but this entry from Steph Bowe's blog did:

20 things I want to say to different people. These people will not be identified. You will read this, and then you can go and write a list of things you want to say to other people.

1. I miss the person you were three years ago.
2. Thank you for believing in me.
3. I think the highlights in your hair make you look ridiculous. I will never tell you this. I’m just going to wait for your hair to grow out, and try and avoid laughing every time I see you until then.
4. I think you’re going to regret what you’re doing now when you’re older, but I don’t know how to communicate this to you without offending you.
5. I’m sorry that I told you I was gay so that you wouldn’t ask me out.
6. I completely misjudged you.
7. I think you’re awesome, but I know you’d feel uncomfortable if I told you that.
8. I wonder where you disappeared to.
9. You try too hard. You were more likable when you acted like yourself.
10. I wish you dressed better, and I feel bad when I wish that, because I dress terribly myself.
11. I forget how beautiful you are because I see you every day.
12. Your support means a lot more to me than I think you realise.
13. You’re not fat, and I wish you’d stop telling everyone that you are.
14. I’m afraid that you’ll die before I do.
15. I envy you, and I feel terrible about it.
16. Brown is not your colour.
17. I was the one who wrote on your poster. I’m sorry. It was stupid. I was twelve.
18. You think you’re a lot more grown up than you really are.
19. I’m really sick of the way you treat me.
20. I wish you’d have let me cut your hair.

Did I mention that Steph is only 15, and an astoundingly talented writer? Sometimes I think she's really 39 and just pretending to be 15.

I'm working on my own list. Whether I post it or not is another story.

Giving the Tourists Their Money's Worth

Weekdays, it's quiet here. I live on a dirt road that pretty much goes nowhere, with only a few inhabited houses, and access to the river down below.

On weekends, the tourists arrive. From Connecticut, from Massachusetts, from New York and points farther away.

Saturday I am out walking Monty, the Landseer Newfie mix so enthusiastic about squirrels and people and other dogs that he must be harnessed to my body in a sort of dry-land skijoring arrangement (had he not been grown when I acquired him, I insist on believing that I could have trained him like the other dogs - but perhaps not) and Emma, the elderly retriever/lab/greyhound mix who pretends deafness when convenient.

I am wearing a baggy T-shirt acquired via my mother, who loves to buy things and then wants to get rid of them, and short tan overalls handed up by a niece who got them and then didn't want them. (I find it an odd habit to buy clothes you don't actually want to wear.) The sneakers, at least are mine, from a scratch n'dent sale at REI from my last trip to Nashville. My hair is unkempt because, well, it's Saturday and it's Vermont and I'm just walking the dogs down the road.

Here come the tourists in their cars, passing me on the narrow dirt road. They smile widely and wave, and I realize I am dressed perfectly for the part: the Vermont lass in her overalls out walking the hounds. And I smile and wave back because, after all, they are on holiday and if I can make their weekend a happier one by playing the role of a Disneyland-ish Vermont character, so be it.

On Sunday I take Bridget, the tiny Australian Cattle Dog, and Lucy, half ACD/half Australian shepherd, down to the rocks for a swim in the river. And down the river comes a legion of couch-potato tourists lazily floating down river in giant rented tubes, complete with pillows and slots for their beverages. Look at the dogs, they shriek. I put Lucy on leash, in case she decides one of them is a threat, and tell Bridget Swim! and she leaps in and begins to swim her endless circles. The tourists marvel at her as they float past.

Once they are gone, Lucy and I take a dip while Bridget swims madly, and we dry off on the rocks in the sun and trek back to the house.

Our tourist-pleasing duties are done until next weekend.

Things That Made Me Happy Yesterday

Watching my smallest dog swim. She was born with a birth defect in one ankle - the result of her confined mother nearly starving to death before she, the father, and pups were found a few days after birth - and movement on land is painful for her. She's an Australian Cattle Dog, bred for motion, and in the water she can move freely. She swims in balletic circles, circling across the river until I call her back, heading for shore with beautiful graceful strokes, gliding through the water, getting out for a few moments before plunging back in, joyously.

Seeing two barefoot teenage boys running down my dirt road, inner tubes slung over their shoulders - they'd been tubing down the river with friends and fallen behind. The first one out chatted with me, and when his friend caught up and they saw their pals in the river below they took off running, holding up their baggy swim shorts with one hand. It was a perfect Norman Rockwell moment: kids doing what kids should do in the summer, having fun outside and being clever enough to figure out a shortcut, running down a sun-dappled Vermont dirt road with the sound of the rushing water and their friends' voices below.

Excavating cans and bottles from my yard. Apparently in days of yore, before recycling, people used to dig big holes and fill them with their cans and bottles. At least that's what they did in Vermont, where there's no free trash pick-up and the dump charges a minimum $10 plus a $25 annual pass (the logic of this escapes me, because it encourages stopping on lonely dirt roads and heaving out bags of trash). And cans and bottles eventually work their way to the surface, like splinters working their way out of your skin. So I make the rounds of that area every few days, especially near the fence line where Monty runs, and when I see a rusty can or glint of glass emerging, I dig it out. Yesterday I made quite a haul, and am beginning to believe we're near the end. In a very small way, I feel I'm righting a wrong done years ago, cleaning the earth of these foreign elements it's spitting out.

Using my new rice cooker. It may sound horribly domestic to be ecstatic over a rice cooker, but I cook rice often because I can't eat bread. And because brown rice takes 45 minutes to cook, all too often I go off to do some work or read and forget all about it and end up scorching it. A $20 rice cooker, less $2 with a coupon, and I'm in rice heaven. I'm thinking I can even use it for my steel-cut oatmeal. No more scorched pans or far-too-chewy dried-out rice.

Life is good.

Discovering Just Social I Am - Or Not

I was eagerly anticipating the evening visitors. I'd made dinner in case they hadn't eaten. I'd decided to give them my room upstairs, so the dogs wouldn't disturb them at 6 am when they think it's time to get up, and squeezed myself and dogs into my downstairs office. So my guests arrived. We visited; we watched America's Got Talent, which apparently transcends cultural boundaries - and by the end of the evening I am of course speaking with an approximation of their Dutch accent, a version of what SO calls my Ikea accent. And it was fun, and I was happy.

In the morning I worked a while before hearing stirrings upstairs, so I made coffee and turkey bacon and pancakes, with my curious mix of rice and soy flour and corn meal, as I can't eat wheat, but supplied local jam and real maple syrup. We ate and visited.

And then, well, I was done. That was all the visiting I wanted to do. I had been sociable as long as I wanted to.

Mornings belong to me. The older dogs nap; Monty hangs out in the yard. I like being alone, me and my mind, to work or do email or blog or wash windows if that's what I want to do. What I don't want is to visit, or be interrupted while I'm working on the computer. I don't want long drawn-out goodbyes that stretch until nearly 11.30. I want to be left alone.

Admitted I was thinking to myself, Okay, this is the price you pay for getting motivated to clean your house.

And it wasn't as if these were friends - they were a couple from London I'd never met, who had found me via couchsurfing.org, and arrived in their rental car with their nice luggage without even a tiny hostess gift.

So now I know, the next time couchsurfing guests arrive, I'll visit with them in the evening and make clear that I Am a Writer and work in the mornings. The difficulty, of course, is that I also want to walk the dogs in the mornings, and get to the river by 11.45 am while the sun is still on my side of the river, to watch Bridget swim and swim myself if I feel like it. And I might be in the mood to paint the ceiling or scrub the floor. But I want to be left alone.

So maybe I will make clear that I Am a Moody Writer. Whatever works.

Note: These were my first coachsurfing guests - lest you think it insane to take strangers into your home, you can read bios and other hosts' comments before you accept them - and they were fine, nice and tidy people. Will see what transpires with the next guests. The next time my house needs cleaning, that is.

How to Clean House Very, Very Fast

Simple. At 8 in the morning, agree to host guests from London arriving at 8 that evening.

Twelve hours sounds like a lot of time. But bear in mind that it has been a disaster zone here since I returned in the spring, and that I work at home, although this week that seems to have consisted of mostly checking my email to see if my book has sold yet.

To force myself to clean and organize I'd considering playing the pretend your agent is coming to visit in two hours game. But I knew this wouldn't work - I'd just cram things in closets, which is pretty much how I got into this mess in the first place.

This winter we shoved All Things Important into my lockable office (books, computer parts, electronics, and food stuffs) and clothing and other odds and ends into my access-on-hands-and-knees attics. (If you are desperate enough to crawl through my attic for my spare sneakers, you are welcome to them.)

All so while I was traveling/hiding out with friends and relatives down south to finish my novel I could rent the house to city folks who like to wade through snow and freeze their noses off on weekends and then go back to New York or Boston and enjoy their central heating. All Things Important had begun their migration back to where they belonged, but hadn't all completed the journey. Some had made it halfway before I'd gotten distracted by some pressing need.

And a week or so ago I began a ceiling mudding and painting project that requires multiple coats and isn't done yet, so of course all the painting supplies were scattered throughout the living room. I'd also pulled out all the receipts from shoe boxes and began sorting them on the kitchen table.

With, of course, errant dog hair hiding in crevices and under furniture.

But I did it. The office still needs work, and there are empty boxes at the foot of the basement stairs that need moving into the storage area, but it's clean and organized. And I love it.

All I needed was to arrange to have two complete strangers come to spend the evening.

Quinn Cummings Out-Konraths JA Konrath

Author Quinn Cummings, whose book NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE was released July 7, has taken book blog touring to a new extreme - four in one day yesterday:

• Cat Connor's blog I See You, down in New Zealand: "The Giant Eyeball Talks to Quinn Cummings"
• Sharon Kendrew's Reality Covered in Chocolate: "Quinn Cummings, Guest Blogger Here Today"
• Emily Barton's Telecommuter Talk: "An Interview with Quinn Cummings"
• Dawn Maria's Method to the Madness: "Notes from the Underwire"

With four in a day, I think she's on track to out-Konrath author J.A. Konrath, who did perhaps the world's most ambitious book blog tour back in March. He did one blog a day for the entire month, and some days multiple blogs: over 100 for the month, he reports. But I don't know that even he hit four in one day!

Note: And today she has hit Deb's Punctuality Rules: "Tour Stop with Quinn Cummings." And is presumably taking a break so she can go to her real live book event at Vroman's this afternoon.

The Nocturnal Visitors

First was something mysterious in the yard. I would have missed it, but for Monty's loud, I-must-go-tend-to-this barking. But it was 11.30 at night, and I didn't want to deal with porcupine quills or an encounter with a moody fox, so I declined to open the door.

Next was around 2.30 am. I had left a table knife on the kitchen countertop, one I'd used to stick peanut butter in the dog's Kongs. Apparently I still have some mice living with me, and one was dancing back and forth along the knife and clanging it against the countertop. Loudly. Note: When you have a chalet design with a huge open staircase, despite your bedroom being a story and half away from the kitchen, you might as well be sleeping in the kitchen when it comes to sounds.

Down I go, flicking on lights. The dogs sleep on. By the time I've rounded the first six stairs I can see the kitchen down below. No mouse, but when I reach the kitchen I can hear him - he's run into one of the burner outlets on the stove and is scurrying around within. I leave on the stove light and go back to bed.

At 4.30 am, the neighbors on the ridge behind me let out their dog, dubbed Wolf Dog by a former tenant of mine. Normally we sleep through this. This morning Wolf Dog decided to bark loudly. I yell out my balcony at him to GO HOME! - sometimes this works. It didn't, and Monty was going nuts, so I open the living room door and all four dogs run out, barking loudly. I think the ridge neighbors got the hint, and took Wolf Dog back inside.

We have first breakfast - dog bones for them and a handful of almonds for me. Finally fall back asleep and down in the kitchen by 8 am for real breakfast. And we see the mouse scurry from under the stove to the crack beside the dishwasher - apparently with the light on he was too nervous to retreat earlier.

So we will formulate a new plan of attack to convince the mice to move out. Because I don't like these 2.30 am wake-up calls.

Quinn Cummings Begins Blog Tour for NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE

I stumbled across Quinn Cumming's blog earlier this year, and fell in love with her wry and funny writing. This is the first of her guest blog appearances to promote her new book, NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE. Read her blog; buy her book. Order it for friends for gifts. Because writing that's this clever, this self-effacing, this devastatingly honest and funny (and sometimes heart-wrenching) should be rewarded. And yes, once upon a time Quinn was a child star and while she occasionally refers to peripheral side effects of having-been-famous-and-still-getting-recognized, that's not what this book is about.

Q: Why is a woman apparently riding a runaway roller coaster car on the cover of your book without benefit of blouse?
Quinn: She is because my editor Brenda Copeland is very clever. When the title was in play, she remembered a long series of ads from the Maidenform bra company, with the tag line "I dreamed I (watched the ballet, ran for Senate, performed a nose job) in my Maidenform." No, I have no idea what it meant, and can only assume they made sense in their time; I think those ladies on Mad Men would just have read the ads and smiled knowingly. Anyway, Brenda scoured the ads and found the one she felt had the right combination of poor decision-making and potential harm (you will notice the car is off the tracks) and surreal good cheer; those traits say "Quinn Cummings" to me. Note: See possible alternate cover images in post below.

Q: How did your book get its title? (And what does it mean?)
Quinn: It means it was the title I came up with that made the marketing department happy. There were a few months there where if I was staring off into space it was safe to assume I was trying to come up with a title that made the marketing department think "Funny!" and "Wildly successful!" We finally came back around to the subtitle of the blog, which I thought up years ago while sitting at a stoplight. It's kind of "Notes from Underground," only girly. I quickly Googled it and, magically, it didn't come up. It was offered to the marketing department and, thankfully, they gave their big marketing-department collective nod of approval, and we were in the title business. Their only request was that the phrase be in the book, so I spent a taxing but ultimately pleasing week or so trying to crowbar it into the book. It's there, and I like to think it's not blatantly after-the-fact.

Q: What came first, your book or your blog, and how did both get started?
Quinn: The blog began because I was writing to multiple friends at once, filling them in on the details of my life and I noticed I was cutting-and-pasting freely. It was starting to feel as if I were regifting my emails. So as not to feel regifty, I decided to write a single blog, tell my friends about it and let them get caught up with us as they were inclined. Two months later, a friend suggested it to Newsweek "Blog of the Week" column and they included it. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Sometimes, in a moment of hallucination, I imagined getting a column in a newspaper out of this, which is adorable because even in 2006/7, papers were already starting to look really unwell. And then I was in a story in USA Today and an editor at Hyperion saw the story and found the blog and an absurdly short amount of time later I was being offered a book deal. For the person reading this with the MFA and the file full of polite turndowns from agents and editors, I know. I'd hate me, too.

Q: How many times a month do people say "I loved you in Goodbye Girl" or "I loved you in Family?"
Quinn: Maybe three or four times, depending on whether the movie has played someplace. Unless I'm completely distracted, I thank the person and I mean it. There are very few jobs in this world where what you do can make people happy. I can't remove a brain tumor from your granny, so I'm very grateful I worked with talented people who allowed me to entertain you.

Q: What from your acting days helped prepare you for life as an author and blogger?
Quinn: A year ago, I would have said "Nothing." In fact, I would have said that writing and acting are polar opposites, because acting only happens once someone hires you and writing can happen any time you sit yourself down and write. Acting requires an audience; writing would like one. But when it comes to marketing the book, I'm very much back on familiar territory. I'm now a public commodity by virtue of having written a book based on parts of my life, just as I was a public commodity when I came into people's living rooms once a week. Still not my favorite part of the life, but I think I'll handle it better for having gone through it before.

Q: What's the oddest comment you've ever gotten about your writing?
Quinn:I had someone once write in to say that I was the "Stupidest guy writing on the Internet." I have to admit it hurt that my charade with the giving birth and with the having ovaries was so transparent.

Q: The nicest comment?
Quinn: Every single time I've written about something really weird and personal (accidentally repeatedly insulting a little person, being a documentary-hag, having a kitten living in my bathroom), people have written in to assure me that a) They had laughed very hard at me and b) I wasn't alone. I mean, no one said, "Why, I too have accidentally insulted a little person," but they were eager to tell me they did stupid things in public all the time and accidentally insulting a little person is just a sad eventuality for them. I've always been pretty comfortable with my weirdness, but I never thought I was anything but a couple of bubbles off plumb. It's cheering when someone else knows about the cane toad documentary.

Q: Do you have a writing schedule or do you write when the mood hits? Do you compose at a computer or by hand on scraps of paper?
Quinn: Ideally, I put up a new blog every Tuesday. I used to put one up every other day but at that schedule I was cannibalizing my life too much; I'm pretty certain that if you start thinking of your loved ones as "material," you're writing too often. Usually I wait around patiently and then with increasing concern as the week progresses, hoping I do something stupid. Some weeks, I come up with a phrase or an idea that has to sit and ripen in my head, eventually drawing other sentences as compost draws earthworms. There's a notebook next to my bed to jot down starter-sentences, because twice I've been certain I would remember it always and I completely forgot it an hour later. Man, those would have been great blogs.

Q: How do your family members react to entries about them, and do they get "review privileges"?
Quinn: Consort, because I am very lucky, is a marvelous editor of my work. He's the first person to see the blogs and if you like them, I can tell you now, it's because of him. He wrestles my grammar into submission and takes a pruning shears to my adverbs, because no one has ever loved an adverb as much as I do. So he knows when he's the star of the show and he has the epic grace to not only find those funny but to forward the ones about him to his friends. The kid is rarely the star of the show any more, because I never want her to do anything and then turn to me and say, "That would make a great blog!" The dog is happy to be invited anywhere and the cat, without having any idea about the Internet, already assumed she was world famous.

Q: Are you getting a new pair of pants to wear for book events?
Quinn: Strange you should mention that. I've got a reading July 11 in Los Angeles at Vroman's books, and until you asked me that question, it hadn't dawned on me that I had to wear clothes. One of the side effects of blogging and writing is that your work-wardrobe requirements are fairly forgiving; I have two pairs of pajama bottoms I still wear that have been around since the kid was an infant. I can promise you this; whatever I wear that night or to any other event thereafter, know that I am mildly irritated and disappointed with how I'm not taller. Dressing for events makes me fussy.

Q: Plans for a second book?
Quinn: Yes. Goodness, no. Possibly. Probably. I'd tell you about it, but then I'd have to write it.

Q: Why do you often (but not always) put a period at the end of a blog post title?
Quinn: Oh, bless your heart for thinking this was some runic way of communicating with the audience. The answer is sadder; I went to school in the 1970s, when they started teaching self-esteem and stopped teaching grammar. When Consort doesn't check my blog before it goes out, it sometimes has a period, especially if the title feels like a full sentence to me. Can't help it; a full sentence looks naked without a period. If you ever feel like seeing a grown man start to mist up, ask Consort about what I do with semi-colons, colons, and commas.

In her acting days Quinn Cummings was best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance in Neil Simon's 1977 movie The Goodbye Girl at age 9 and her two years on the TV drama Family. She left acting by 1991, and now markets her child-carrier sling, The Hiphugger, writes, rescues animals, and helps rear a young daughter. Her book, NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE: Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life, goes on sale today. Her publisher says: "In ... Quinn’s smart and hilarious debut, she tackles the domestic and the delightfully absurd, proving that all too-often they’re one and the same. From fighting off a catnip-addled cat to mortal conflict with a sewing machine, Quinn provides insight into her often chaotic, seldom-perfect universe—a universe made even less perfect when the goofy smile of past celebrity shows its occasional fang."

Alternate Cover Images for Quinn Cumming's Book

Possible images from the Maidenform bra ads of the 1950s that could have been considered for the cover of Quinn Cumming's new book NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE.


In case you can't read the captions, these include:

I dreamed I rode a streetcar in my Maidenform bra
I dreamed I went on safari in my Maidenform bra
I dreamed I opened the World Series in my Maidenform bra

Personally, I think the women in the 1950s had very strange dreams - or rather, the admen who designed these ads did. And I would love to know just how effective these rather bizarre ads were.

The Update You've Been Waiting for

What, you thought this was about a book deal? No, no, no. Even my agent can't sell a book in two days before a holiday weekend.

A few weeks back I posted about an upcoming change in eating habits - because if you post it, you will make it so.

I could digress here and talk about how I learned long ago to never make more than one major life change at one time (let's not discuss finishing grad school, tending father and planning his funeral, ending a relationship, landing a job, and moving a thousand miles in one six-week period). Let's just say I didn't plan multiple changes this time.

What happened was discovering a blocked muscle or nerve or something (SO can rattle off all the terms - all I knew was that this really hurt here and that muscle there was horribly tight), probably from four months straight of mad typing hunkered over my laptop with terrible posture. And the relatively simple stretch he showed me opened up this blockage so much I had muscle spasms and then chills, and was exhausted the next few days as my muscles got used to restored blood flow and everything realigned.

All at the same time my cells were screaming for carbohydrates and chocolate. While I was painting my bedroom and ceiling trim (probably also not a smart move - but it was raining, and those are the days when I can get Handyman help, to mud the joint and do all the high and painful parts).

It all made me grateful that the worst habits I've had to break to date have been nail-biting and putting sugar in my iced tea (significant for a born Southerner).

But now it's a few weeks later. I can't tell you actual weight loss, because by the time I located my bathroom scales more than a week had passed, and I never had to see the digits I suspected. And I no longer have food cravings and now my stomach tells me politely when it needs food and what type of food it needs, and it does not try to insist on chocolate or ice cream. Although it convinced me one afternoon it could handle potato chips, and it could not, or at least not the number it thought it could (I could explain about glycemic index here and my never being able to handle much sugar, but I won't).

And I feel exponentially better. Which is what it's all about.

And in a few weeks or so will start trying on the clothes I've been assiduously avoiding up until now.

Which is also part of what it's all about.

Apparently I'm Supposed to Be Nervous

Now that my manuscript is with publishers, apparently I'm supposed to be on pins and needles.

But I'm not.

Because it's out of my hands. While I was doing my last revisions and final read-through I was nervous (SO would probably put it a little more strongly). You can't stop that little voice in your head saying The changes you make now will affect how publishers will react to your book and thus the course of your entire future and hence freaking out a little. But once it's out, it's out. My agent (and I do love saying "my agent" - this is all new to me) is great at his job, and it's in his hands now.

For me it's like traveling in a plane. I wear the right clothes (three crucial words: synthetic fabrics melt) and sensible shoes (Brother advocates lace-up leather boots, but I don't go that far). I sit in the exit row or as close to it as possible, and I know how many seats away it is. I read the safety card and see how the exit door works and exactly how the inflatable life vest goes on, because I know that a few seconds indecision or confusion has dire consequences in emergencies. My wallet, keys, passport, glasses, and cell phone are in a fanny pack attached to my waist. Yes, fanny packs are tacky, and the only time I use one is when I travel, but it's phenomenally handy to have those items in one tiny bag firmly attached to your body. (I know some people carry purses, but it has always seemed nuts to put all your important stuff in one small separate bag that just cries out Come steal me! Valuable stuff within!)

And then I put all of it out of my mind and read a book or work until the plane lands. Because it's up to the pilot to fly and land the plane. I can relax.

And now it's up to my agent to sell my book. And I can relax.

What You Do the Day After Turning in Your Manuscript

You sit around a while saying to yourself Wow, my agent likes my manuscript and Wow, publishers are going to be reading it soon.

And then you look around at all the things you have neglected the last few weeks:

• The living room ceiling, which needs one more coat of mud on the joint and one more coat of special paint to cover water stains from ice dam damage this winter, and then must be painted

• The guest room, where you rooted through every single Rubbermaid tub of clothing to find outfit to wear to meet agent some weeks back, and haven't replaced them because the clothes need sorting
• Your bedroom, where you managed to finish painting walls, but which is Ground Zero for the ongoing fight-against-dog-hair - when you rolled back bed slats for ceiling painting, you were aghast to realize you actually haven't been Swiffering the dog hair, you have simply been pushing it farther under the bed
  
• Hallway, where walls are spackled but not painted, and bookshelves still covered in plastic with things piled atop helter-skelter
  
• Kitchen, which somehow has acquired two computers, one working and one not, and a variety of other items Clearly Not Intended to Repose in Kitchen
• Downstairs office/yoga room, which has not been organized or thoroughly cleaned since you arrived home in late May
• Bathroom, which doubles as tool room, and still has all tools pulled out from work a week ago involving spackling and sanding
• Office desk drawers, where you have crammed all paperwork without looking at it for weeks (fortunately all bills are paid automatically and electronically)
  
• The wood pile in the yard that needs stacking, the cut trees that need moving, the culvert that needs digging out, the area collapsing under the stairs from heavy rain that desperately needs shoring up
  

Your awareness of all these things is heightened from yesterday's visit from the 10 1/2-year-old girl from across the street and her 11-year-old cousin, whose sharp little eyes notice everything and whose brains are clearly thinking Our homes don't look like this. You try to explain about deadlines and manuscripts and agents and trying to sell your book, but you can see they don't comprehend and have in fact most likely never wondered how words get into books or how books get made or that someone would actually get paid to write the words in a book.

You toy with the idea of calling the woman who sometimes looks after your house when you are gone and hiring her to do some housecleaning, and then realize you will get the same look from her you got from the 11-year-olds.

So the day after you turn in your manuscript in to your agent - you clean your house. Or get started, anyway.

Correction: It turns out the girls not only took in all I was telling them about my novel, but went straight home and told the mother all about it. Who knew that a preteen blank look = I am taking all this in and will repeat every word of it a few minutes from now?