Growing up

As I think I’ve mentioned, one of my best friends from college is getting married in less than a month and I’m flying to California for the wedding. As I think you might have figured out, I’m not super good at this “adult” thing. I mean, I’m not living under a bridge or anything; I’m employed, I pay my taxes and my rent and have zero debt (I actually beat most adults in that department), I manage to feed and clothe myself and keep myself out of danger. I have insurance. So, you know, it could be worse.

But I don’t own a house, or any property at all. I’m single. I still consider a drink on my tab a more than adequate birthday present, even for my closest friends. I will eat whole wheat pasta with a little Smart Balance and some garlic salt for several meals in a row because it’s easy and I’m lazy and I don’t need that much variety. I’m a New York adult, which for a large percentage of us (i.e. the poor ones) is not a real adult. Being a young adult in New York often means you’re living like a sixteen-year-old would live if they didn’t have to go to high school anymore. It’s a cobbled-together adulthood that involves a lot of dumb mistakes, procrastination, taking a stab at things and hoping they work out (i.e. apartment hunting).

I realized this (or, re-realized this, as I realize and then forget this over and over again) a couple of days ago when I remembered that I was going to have to get my friend a wedding present. Then I gave myself a day to once again be weirded out by the fact that people my age are allowed to get married, and then yet another day to remember that in New York I am normal but outside of New York I’m a stunted adolescent so of course I think it’s weird for people my age to be getting married because I still think of myself as a high school senior.

So, anyway, wedding present. I’ve never bought a wedding present before, which is fairly sad because I’ve actually been to two weddings of people my age and had my name on a card for a present for another wedding I wasn’t able to attend. Twice I just pitched in on a group gift with my friends, which someone else picked, and one time my mother bought the gift because I was a senior in college and it was my cousin getting married. See how effortlessly I maintain this idea that I’m still a teenager?

Now I have a dilemma–buy from the registry or not? First of all, I couldn’t find where they were registered for a while, which confused me. I checked all the usual suspects–Target, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Nordstrom, etc.–before finally digging through all my recent mail for the invitation, which didn’t say where they were registered, either. But! They had a profile on The Knot, so I keyed in the address and went to the page.

Can I just say how much I love Carmen and Tim? Some people go so over-the-top with everything that their Knot profiles are usually a nightmare, with all this crazy information and babbling about everlasting love and, you know what, I’m a jaded New York single girl, I don’t believe in everlasting love, so that stuff kind of ticks me off. But Carmen and Tim kept it simple, restrained–who they were, how they met, a couple of sentences about the proposal and a picture, the bridal party, and THE REGISTRY. Turns out they were only registered on Amazon. I didn’t even know Amazon had a bridal registry, although now that I think about it it makes absolutely perfect sense.

Now here’s my problem. Do I buy off the registry or don’t I? It seems like I should because they put it together for a reason and these are things they actually want/need versus something that I just pick out that they could have seven of or have no use for. Plus if I buy it through Amazon I can just have it shipped to my parents’ house no hassle; maybe I can even bribe my sister to wrap it. But buying off the registry seems so…impersonal. It doesn’t seem thought out or special or interesting in any way. I mean, this set of dishes, it doesn’t say, “Carmen, Tim, I really thought about what to get you and I love you and hope you’re happy together forever, Love, Anna.” It says, “I’m a set of white dishes that came in an Amazon box. Who bought me? I don’t know. I’m just a sensible purchase.” I have no ideas for what to get them if I don’t go off the registry. So I probably will. But still. There’s not going to be a whole lot of me in it.

I’m seriously considering getting them the extra Wii controller, as a compromise. At least that’s funny.

Cue head exploding

Have you ever had so much go on within a short span of time that you feel like your head is just going to pop like a party balloon? That’s how I feel right now. Don’t worry, I’m self-medicating with some Chinese food. I’m on top of this.

Yesterday and this morning involved a lot of back and forth over jacket flap copy for AUT, which is exciting but also nerve-wracking. Has anyone else noticed that it’s really hard to describe your own book? As the person who spent six years writing it, I feel like everything is important, and I don’t know how to boil it down to the essentials without frying all my circuits. Thank God for agents and editors, right? I’m so tired.

That might have a little to do with being out so late last night, though. One of the reasons I’m super lucky to be living in New York is that I have so many good friends here, and they’re all cool and interesting and into a hundred different things. I’ve managed over the course of a few months to pick up several guy friends who are amateur stand-up comedians, but until last night I’d never seen any of them up on stage. Me, Cambria and Nikki headed over to Gotham after work (short pit stop at Dallas BBQ for margaritas and chicken fingers, OBVS, as it’s right there) and were able to see our friends David and Brian (both incredibly funny) perform. There were a lot of funny people, and it was nice to see some lady comics, because when Bri and I went to Gutbucket a few weeks ago there was only one and she was…fine.

Speaking of Gutbucket, one of my favorite comics from that show performed at Gotham last night. His name is Luke Cunningham and I think he’s hilarious, that’s all.

Afterwards we went to Trailer Park, which is just down the street. It’s a kitschy little bar made up to resemble (what else?) a trailer park. I personally think it’s a little too expensive to live up to its name ($5 PBR? That’s highway robbery, that is) but the atmosphere is pretty great and the tater tots are to die for. We hung around with David, Brian, and a bunch of other comedians after the show, including one of the ladies, who I’m pretty sure I gave some material to, although quite honestly it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before on Sex and the City, so whatevs. MD also joined us after her date, bringing the party as always.

I got home around midnight, but then of course stayed up until one to finish Wintergirls, which is so wonderful and traumatizing. Some people don’t like sad, emotionally eviscerating books, but those are my favorite kinds, and Wintergirls is the perfect example. In short, I loved it, Laurie Halse Anderson is a rock star.

Nothin’ to see here

Not much going on in the writing ‘verse for me these days, I’m afraid. Still working steadily (albeit slowly) on GR and that’s about it. I’ve been reading a lot, though, which is good because for a while there I wasn’t reading anything. It started with David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, then from there I sped through The 19th Wife while watching the four-hour Frontline special on Mormons. After that came Charlotte Church’s autobiography Keep Smiling, because I love Charlotte Church (note to self: bore all your blog readers someday with a long post about why and how much you love Charlotte Church), and then a whole spate of YA: Jeanette Rallison’s newest, Just One Wish (MD and I are in agreement that Steve looks like RPattz in our minds), Deb Saundra Mitchell’s Shadowed Summer, and Deb Sarah MacLean’s The Season. This weekend I worked in Dave Cullen’s wonderful book Columbine (three guesses as to what that’s about) and, as a follow-up, a re-read of Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus!, my favorite book of all time. Now I’m reading Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson; it is just as haunting and sad as I imagined it would be.

You know what’s weird to me? How much it seems people don’t like Hey Nostradamus!. In case “my favorite book of all time” didn’t tip you off, I can’t even appropriately express how deeply I respond to that novel, or how important it has been for my own work. Not so for others. Even YA writer extraordinaire John Green wrote a tepid review of it for Booklist a while back. Sad pancakes. I think it’s gorgeous and close to perfect. Ah well.

Fun fact (I don’t know how this became a blog about Hey Nostradamus!): Apparently Douglas Coupland and X-Files creator Chris Carter are friends. There’s a scene in I Want to Believe where Scully is standing in Mulder’s home office and there’s a Post-It behind her on a bulletin board that says “Hey Nostradamus!” on it. That explains why all the characters in Girlfriend in a Coma end up working on a show about the paranormal that is basically The X-Files.

I finally went to check out my friend Eric’s new place in Washington Heights. We shot a video tour of the apartment for his girlfriend, Jenny, who’s one of my best friends in the universe, since she’s still living in San Diego and won’t be moving to New York until May. It’s really big and nice and they live on a street where there’s just a whole bunch of stuff within a couple of blocks, including the subway (two subways, in fact) and a Duane Reade. The granite countertops are brand new–they haven’t even taken off the plastic yet–and there are SO MANY ELECTRICAL OUTLETS. My roommate and I have, like, seven outlets in our entire apartment–they have five in their bedroom alone. I’m really jealous. Not jealous of having to live that far uptown, but still. Jenny called after we left the place and I told her, “It’s so great, you’re going to love it!” Jenny, bless her heart, was like, “Are you going to call me later and tell me the truth?” But it really was a great apartment, I wasn’t even lying, not that I would. Now I just need my girls to get their place in the 80s and we’ll be all set–until I need to move. Ugh.

BOMB

Blerg, Mondays. Especially after a great weekend. I have an idea: let’s make weekends three days long. I just feel like I’d get more done. Lies, I wouldn’t. So much I meant to accomplish this weekend went by the wayside: laundry, grocery shopping, watching Twilight with the director’s commentary…although I did find a pair of shoes I’d lost in my gym bag, which should tell you how many times I’ve been to the gym recently. I’m going tonight! (Maybe. We’ll see. There’s also that grocery shopping and that laundry that needs to be done…)

On Friday night, I went over to Harlem (okay, techs I live in Harlem, whatever, it’s fine) to my friend Mary’s house. It wasn’t quite warm enough to sit outside playing cards for seven hours, but we did it anyway. Mary taught us this game called Bomb, which she learned while studying abroad in Spain in college. Bomb is I guess sort of like Killa, or maybe it’s just a watered-down version of Killa, which I’d never heard of until I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s addictive. I’m not very good at it. I like to think I’m not that competitive, but sometimes I get frustrated after repeatedly losing; I try to reign it in, but I don’t always do such a good job of that. Sorry friends! I don’t need to be the best at anything, I just need to be good enough to be in the middle of the pile, and I’m not there with Bomb yet. Hey, at least I know this about myself.

We played Bomb again yesterday (sans Mary this time) at Galway Hooker, which is normally our college football bar. It was completely empty, which was so weird, but at least we didn’t feel bad for hogging a table playing Bomb all night. We never go to GH unless there’s a USC game on because it’s on 36th and Madison and that’s nowhere near anything, but we’d gone to see I Love You, Man (good not great) at the 34th St. AMC and that’s the bar we like the most that’s even remotely in that area. We bought the cards in, like, the fanciest Duane Reade you’ll ever see over on 34th and 8th. I had to ask an employee where the playing cards were, because we couldn’t find them in the toy/game section, and turns out there was a whole rack of cards in the cosmetics section. Because that’s logical.

I also think I’ve gotten the hang of Evernote. I don’t know what made me log into the Evernote client I downloaded on my computer last January or whatever, but I did, and I started actually writing notes in it. I’ve been working moderately hard on my GR synopsis and thought it would be nice to be able to access it from wherever I am, so I put it on Evernote. Pretty sweet. I also put a character manifesto on there, and a note about the geography of the setting, and all my brainstorming material…I’m pretty sure I’m not using the program to its full potential, but over the course of the next few weeks I’ll either learn it or abandon it. Sort of like Scrivener!

When did I get so boring?

I have no idea what to blog about. I feel like nothing’s really going on, it’s just me, living my life. BO-RING! Hm, what could I talk about? Well, my friends didn’t get that apartment fifteen blocks away from me (15% broker’s fee? IN THIS MARKET?) but they found an even better one in my ideal neighborhood, Amsterdam in the 80s, so of course I’m super jealous and also super excited and I hope they get that place.

What else? The weather’s finally nice in good ol’ New York. It’s supposed to be 65 degrees today! After work I’m going up to my friend Eric’s new abode in Wash. Hts., to see it and congratulate him on what a good job he did finding his first place in the city. Then I’m going to my friend Mary’s place in Harlem to play cards and drink beer out on the porch (she lives on Astor Row, in a gorgeous old townhouse). We won the cards at trivia on Wednesday; they’re all old-fashioned pin-ups with George W. Bush’s face Photoshopped on them. Hilarious, obviously. This is the second time we’ve won cards at trivia; last time, they were supposed to have Jesus on them, but then Mary pointed out that it was most likely Daniel, as there were lions all over the place. They were oval, though, and hard to shuffle, so I think those are just for display. Oh, and Abby has them, never mind.

Erm…as you may have noticed, my website launch has been moved back a little bit. Still working on that…

I’ve decided on my new nail polish color for spring! Light green, almost mint colored. O.P.I. has one called “Hey! Get in Lime!” Oh, speaking of things that start with “Hey!”, let me tell you a story from my youth. I don’t know if you’ll care for it, but my family thinks it’s hilarious and it gets retold a lot. Like A LOT. Usually after telling it one of my parents goes, “And that’s when we knew she was going to be a loud mouth…”

I was born in January 1984, and my brother wasn’t born until the end of May 1986, so for two and a half years I was the only kid. Those were the good days…Anyway. Just kidding. I love my brother. I was a pretty good kid, all things considered. I was well-behaved and sweet and not at all obnoxious or rambunctious, which did not prepare my parents for the whirling dervish that my brother proved to be, but that’s sort of besides the point. Once, when I was about two, my parents took me to an Italian restaurant that they liked. Because I was  easy to manage, that was the sort of thing they could conceivably do.

The waitress came over and took their orders and apparently this is the kind of restaurant where you would get salad to start off the meal, kind of like Olive Garden where they bring a big bowl of it to the table and you serve yourself. I was too little to need my own meal, obviously, so I didn’t get any of my own meal accoutrements, either. This did not please me. The waitress set a salad bowl in front of each of my parents and walked away. As soon as I assessed the situation and figured out what was up, I decided I was not going to take these age-ist shenanigans lying down. So I turned around in my high chair and yelled out, clear as a bell, “HEY LADY! BRING ANNA A BOWL!!” (Always the emphasis on the word “lady.”)

Aaaaaaand that is my enduring legacy to my family. My mom sometimes likes to follow this story up with, “You would also call out ‘HEY GRANDMA!’ to any old lady you saw on the street.” It sounds like I was a big sarcastic heckler, but actually I just associated gray-haired old ladies with the word “grandma.” I mean, nowadays I just do that sort of thing for fun, but back then it was just a cognitive disconnect, you hear what I’m saying?

Adulthood rears its ugly head

Ugh. I had my taxes done last night. NO FUN. Every time I talked to my mother for the last two months she’s said, “Have you done your taxes yet?” and I kept having to tell her no, thus inviting her to lecture me on why I should have my taxes done. Last week I finally said, “No, I haven’t had them done yet, but I’m going to make an appointment with H&R Block next week,” and she said, “Yeah, Dad and I have an appointment with our accountant next week.” WHAT?! You haven’t done your taxes yet either?! Then I don’t want to hear it.

At the end of that conversation I whined, “Mom, being an adult is hard,” and she was all, “Yes, it is. That’s why I want you to get married.” Because that makes things so much simpler? Having to care about someone else’s life in addition to your own? Does. Not. Compute.

Anyway, it turns out I owe the government sixty billion dollars. Apparently, I forgot to calculate social security and Medicare (Medicaid?) when I paid the estimated taxes on my advance at the end of last year, so I owe it now! It’s a lot of money. The nice lady who did my taxes and laughed at all my stupid jokes was trying very hard to get me some deductions for all the hard work I do writing books for y’all, but to be honest it costs me virtually nothing to be a writer. I work at home, I haven’t traveled anywhere, I don’t print anything, I don’t mail anything, my computer is four years old…This year will of course be different, with my new computer and my website and maybe some travel expenses, but 2008 there was only a slight deduction for the 30 sq feet I use to write my books.

Also, we were talking about how often I use that space to write books, and it turns out that I have pretty much no hobbies. All I do is write! At my desk, I mean. I use my computer for approximately three things: writing, emailing, and blogging about writing. Get a life, kid!

Apartment hunting

There’s nothing I’d rather do less than apartment hunt in New York City. It’s so hard! Everything’s always dirty, too small, overpriced, and it’s pretty obvious that the leasing agents/landlords are trying to screw you big time. The worst part is that once you find something decent you have to jump on it right away, with no time to comparison shop, because apartments here go in the blink of an eye.

I found the apartment my roommate and I live in now on my own, took care of the application and arranged things with the broker, and we lucked in to a pretty awesome place despite my complete naivite. We haven’t moved since, because we both felt like finding a new place as good as this one would be a total nightmare. And it will be! In November. When we move.

Two of my friends live in Brooklyn, and they’re desperate to move to Manhattan, so yesterday I went with them to look at a bunch of places in my neighborhood (generally speaking). FYI, it’s so much more fun to apartment hunt when you don’t have to make any decisions. The first one we saw was in South Harlem, 118th and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. The apartment was gorgeous; big and full of light, with an open but large kitchen. It had been vacant since September the leasing agent told us, because of the economy of course.

They say that a lot these days, along with “The rent has been lowered three times this year,” as if you’re supposed to feel sorry for them. You were goudging people for years! This is the only good fallout of the economy, that non-investment bankers can afford to live in Manhattan again, but it helps me and my friends so I’m not at all sympathetic to the management companies that have been greedily jacking up rents for almost a decade.

The price was great, especially for the size of the apartment and the niceness of the building (it was clean and the tennants were friendly and everything seemed to have been freshly painted) and proximity to the train– less than I pay now for an apartment two thirds the size. But the neighborhood, while relatively safe, wasn’t really around stuff. The thing that bugs them both about their abodes in Brooklyn is how far they are from food and bars and the drug store (when you live in New York, it’s important to be close to two things: the subway, and a Duane Reade. Don’t ask why, that’s just how it is). So they stuck that place in their back pocket (another nice thing about this economy’s effect on New York real estate: you don’t have to decide THIS VERY MINUTE) and we went back to Broadway to check out a place on 108th.

LOL this experience. It was an open house, we didn’t have an appointment with a specific broker. We show up fifteen minutes late and there are a bunch of other people hanging out on the stoop, including some unfriendly girls who seemed to view us as enemies, I think because they were under the misapprehension that we, like them, were looking for a three-bedroom, but we weren’t, as I have an apartment already and was just around for moral support. So cut it out with the dirty looks, mean girls!

Finally the guy (I say “guy” because I have no idea what he was–leasing agent, owner/landlord, etc? It’s a mystery!) shows up and he’s like, “Okay, we’re going to see a bunch of apartments, ready, go.” I think we probably saw six, and all in different buildings. The apartments were all empty, but mostly dirty. Also, they were typical New York apartments. A lot of these old buildings used to have big family apartments that’ve been sloppily chopped up and made smaller (mine is an obvious example; it’s like a freakin’ fun house in there, with the slanted ceilings and bulging walls and doorways shaped like rhombuses). As a result, the apartments have radically different-sized bedrooms and strange layouts (nothing sends a chill up my spine like the words “railroad apartment”). That wasn’t going to work for my friends.

I was getting really frustrated with how little effort the guy was putting into selling these places to prospective tennants. We were just being herded in and out of each apartment (all fourth and fifth floor walk-ups, for the most part, except the last apartment, which was on the second floor but naturally there was an elevator), and every once in a while he would ask people, “So what are you looking for? What’s your price range?” like he was barely listening to the answers. It was very odd.

Happily, however, one of the apartments was pretty good–equal sized bedrooms with nice closets, a newly redone kitchen with granite countertops, half a block from the train, good neighborhood, lots of stuff nearby. Basically, it’s perfect for them, and for me, because they’ll only live 15 blocks away! Hopefully everything works out with their application and they get the place and don’t have to apartment hunt anymore OMG it sucks so much.

As for me, my reward for all those shenigans is that I came home last night to discover they were turning the abandoned storefronts across the street from my apartment (I live in a somewhat less classy part of the nabe than the girls are moving to) INTO A DUANE READE! Since I live 10 feet from the train, this fulfills the New York Dream for me. Now I kinda don’t want to move.

Back to work

This morning, I finally (sorry J!) sent the revised MB manuscript off to Joanna, who in turn is going to send it to my editor, who in turn is going to look at it sometime…soon? I don’t know, I can only imagine how busy she must be, and this book isn’t set to come out until January 2011 after all, so I’m not holding my breath. In fact, I’m letting it out, in a huge sigh of relief. AUT is off to copyedits, MB is off to my editor, and I can work on new stuff yay!

I love putting together a book. Pre-writing and plotting are my very favorite parts of the whole process. For me, the process is very much like someone scattered a 500-piece puzzle all over P.Diddy’s mansion and it’s my job to find them all and put them together correctly. I would say I have 1/4 of the pieces for GR right now. I have the short, pithy description: “Lord of the Flies meets The Haunting of Hill House.” I have my cast of characters, my dramatis personae if you want to be as insufferably Elizabethan as apparently I do. I have some background information, I have some clues, I have some ideas for puzzles (that’s right, puzzles–I knew that playing all those Nancy Drew computer games with Em and Fish would come in handy one day), I have the setting, and I’ve done some research about it. I have the soundtrack (lots of Andrew Bird music). I have the structure, and I have some major plot crises. I have a good idea for a couple of relationship and character arcs. My mind is busy day and night, working out the plot knots and introducing obstacles. Pre-writing is the best.

All of this said, I could use a vacation. A real one. I’m going to California for a friend’s wedding at the beginning of May (perhaps I already mentioned this?), but only for two days, if that. I may or may not be going to London in May, also, but again, only two days. Back to California in June for my siblings’ graduations, maybe that’ll be four days, but there will probably be no small amount of frenzied activity and sitting out in the hot sun listening for their names to be called. Back to California in late July for another wedding, this one in Monterey, so it should be a little bit more temperate but no less hurried, unfortunately. Although, I already got permission from my parents to borrow a car so that I can drive to Maggie’s wedding and possibly swing by the John Steinbeck house on my way through Salinas. We’ll see–I really love that drive, though, regardless.

As happy as I am to be doing all these things, what I’d love is just to have one long vacation, not these super short trips every month. It wouldn’t even have to be somewhere exotic or touristy–just being at home in California for a week would be fine. My parents and I wanted to go take a trip up to the California ghost towns (research for GR), but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

Still, I mosey. Last night my friends and I gathered at our “local” (and I put that in quotation marks because I live nowhere near it) watering hole, Dempsey’s, for St. Patrick’s Day. It was packed, as one would expect the best Irish pub in New York (according to me) to be on the big Irish holiday. When we got hungry, we went to Artichoke for spinach & artichoke pizza (the line was considerably shorter last night than it had been at three am two Saturdays ago), and I’m not kidding you, this is the best pizza I’ve had ever. It’s niche, of course–you’re not always in the mood for spinach & artichoke pizza, and if you are then I pray for your arteries, but it’s so delicious you don’t even know. 14th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves. That’s a little tip from me to you.

Stress

Stress is my eternal enemy. To be honest, I’m not very good about dealing with it. When I was in college, I decided to get a double degree, so I needed forty extra credits to graduate. As a result, I ended up overloading nearly every quarter. Also, I became a huge joiner sophomore year, so by my senior year I had all these external responsibilities. I was a supervisor at my job, in charge of hiring, firing and scheduling my merry band of misfits, second-in-command of our undergraduate literary magazine, an officer in my sorority, a Senior Senator and appropriations committee chair (lots of work, little respect, no compensation), and a member of the peer judicial board. Also, I had friends and a life and ten roommates. My grandmother died that year, and my father had a stroke. Needless to say, I was very, very busy and very, very stressed out, and the fact that I made it through 2004-2005 with my sanity intact is a miracle.

My body, however, did not fair so well. It got to the point where any attempt to relax, even for forty minutes to watch an episode of Law & Order with my roommates, would result in terrible stomach cramps the origin of which are a mystery to me. Forget taking a nap–I would get sick the moment I laid down.

Okay, so I didn’t go to the doctor, because I was sure it was all psychological. And sure enough, the day I graduated all my symptoms went away. I spent the next three years bored, but healthy. And then I got my book deal. And then I started having inconvenient, irritating friend problems. And then it was winter and I got homesick for my family and California. And now I can’t lay down without stomach issues and my shoulders feel as though a great weight is upon them and I wake up after restless sleep feeling twisted and achey. I have got to do something about this.

AUT revisions are stressing me out big time. I feel the pressure to finish them and get on with it, but mostly that’s internal. I’m excited about everything that comes next, so I’m busting my butt to get these revisions done, and I’ve accomplished a good chunk of it–now all I need is to carve out the time necessary to make the last changes. And, actually, I’m felling really great about what I’ve gotten done so far, and I’m pretty sure I know exactly how to fix the rest of the little problems in the MS. It’s just this last final push, when my energy is so low, that’s standing between me and being able to wave a fond farewell to AUT as it makes its way to copy edits.

And, okay, the friend stuff is problematic. This is probably the biggest stresser in my life that I have no control over. It’s coming at a really inopportune time and every attempt to deal with it just makes the situation worse because the cognitive disconnect between me and this person is so great. Generally, I don’t deal with tough interpersonal problems by withdrawing and being distant and withholding my friendship–I like to confront things head-on, fix them, and forget about them–but the situation is such that my only option currently is to shut it down. I’m perfectly happy to discuss issues in the hopes of reaching a satisfactory conclusion, but I’m not prepared to teach somebody how to be a good friend. That’s not my job. We’re all adults, it’s time to act like it. Take what you want and pay for it, says God.

But what I realized yesterday is that as much as AUT has been stressing me out, in so many ways it has saved me. It has given me something to focus on that is productive and satisfying and meaningful. I wrote AUT for many reasons, but one of them is that I was trying to puzzle out what it means to be human, what it means to grow up, what it means to love people, to forgive them, to ask for forgiveness. My characters are not flawless or perfect, and they don’t always mean well, but they are searching for a way to be good, to repair what has been broken to whatever degree it can be repaired. These revisions have given me extra time with them, and it has been so great for me because it reminds me what I value.

So my strategy is this: take lots of deep breaths, have faith in my own principles, and focus on the work*–not only what I can give it, but what I can get from it. Already I feel a little lighter. Confession is good for the soul. Thanks for listening!

*Also, plan a vacation. Cambria and I are buying tickets to London tonight! (I think.) I need a break, even if it’s not going to happen until May.

Oh, so THIS is what it feels like to be productive

Ladies and gentlemen, I had one of the most productive weekends ever. I’m very proud of myself for getting stuff done, because I normally have big plans for my weekends and then I end up sitting in my pajamas all day eating ramen and watching Monk on Hulu (I did that anyway this weekend, but for once I balanced it out).

As you probably already know, finishing my revisions has been the monumental goal in my life for the last week, so Friday I opted not to go out with friends and instead went home to work. I got through about thirty pages, which is respectable, but not great. I also watched some TV on the Internet, because I’m incorrigible, and I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, which was pretty good and I even solved! the! mystery! before Poirot exposed the criminal(s).

On Saturday, my friend/coworker/web designer/brother from another mother, Eric, picked me up and took me to IKEA, because he’s just that awesome. I bought a bookcase and a new dresser (mine is quite literally falling to pieces), plus some knives (IKEA has the best knives, you heard it hear first), some extra plastic utensils, a replacement corkscrew (ours cost $3 at a bodega and is a terrible piece of worthless plastic; the IKEA one cost $2.50 and is an indestructible brushed steel), a couple of document boxes, and two chocolate bars.

Let me opine for a second about the IKEA chocolate bars. My friend Marisa handed me a dollar on Friday and asked me to bring her one. She also said, “Please get one for yourself; you won’t regret it.” I did what she said and I bought two milk chocolate bars, even though I’m not the biggest fan of sweets (I’m much more of a salty/savory person by nature). Guys? I ate the whole thing as soon as I got home. It was delish. Late last year I bought a Cadbury bar at the grocery story, as my once-every-three-months sweet tooth demanded, and it was not very good. I would later discover that the Cadbury brand in the US is actually just Nestle or Hershey’s or whoever owns them–it’s not actual Cadbury chocolate. Gross, right? Well, IKEA tastes just like Cadbury, so I was very gratified. It’ll hold me over until May, when I’m going to England and plan on importing several Cadbury chocolate bars.

On Saturday night I went out to dinner in the Financial District, which, guys? Just don’t do it. This is a little New York advice from me to you. I’ve spent more time in the Financial District than I ever cared to in the year and a half I’ve lived in New York, and other than Trinity Church and some of the old New Amsterdam stuff still around (which is way cool), it’s pretty worthless in the off-hours. I came up from the subway at 9:30 and of course it was dark and deserted and while I didn’t feel unsafe, necessarily, I get really turned around in that neighborhood and it’s just not great. Also, the restaurant was totally empty, which is creeptastic on the weekend at the dinner hour. Then we went to a ridiculous house party at this giant apartment that used to be a nightclub that our friend Kyle’s friend owns; there was a salsa band and Kyle somehow got control of the remote for the projector and put on The Beach (??) and it was PACKED, although we stuck together and didn’t mingle because none of the people were interesting to or interested in us. You can only have a party like that in the Financial District; anywhere else and your neighbors would call the cops in three seconds.

On Sunday I watched like 15 hours of Psych on Hulu, put together my bookcase, rearranged the living room a little, went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and got a bunch of stuff including a vacuum (!!), took out all the garbage and the recylcing in the entire apartment (which was a lot), moved all my books out to the bookcase and now I can finally BREATHE in my bedroom, and cleaned my room a little. I thought that was enough; I was like, “Anna, you don’t have to do any more revisions today, you’re good.” But then I was watching Psych and Friday Night Lights and I just kept going, “One more page, I’ll just work on one more page,” until everything was finished. Finished! Although not quite finished. I still have some flags in the MS of notes I have to go back to, and my editor gave me a one-page editorial letter with some clarifications and I have to make sure all those got taken care of. But the big work is done. And I’m feeling very accomplished.