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Don’t Have to Do Nothin’ No More, No More

—

by

Jennifer
in

Easy StreetAfter two years and six months, the revised novel is finally out the door. In the damn mail, dude.

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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