Today's Writing

So here I am at the library, working on my “book.” I shouldn’t put that in quotation marks. It’s actually coming along these days. Ever so slowly. I write a page here, two pages there, add a sentence someplace else, or even just a clause to make a scene more real. I’m up to about 117 pages, typed, double spaced. How many words is that? How many words do you need before it’s officially a book? One of the things I worry about is that the first thirty or so pages might have to come out. Or be drastically edited. Does it matter if I write an extremely skinny book? Some of the books I see over at the middle school library are very skinny, not that many words on the page. Books that can easily be read in one sitting. As long as the story is compelling, or interesting, or funny, or relevant, and as long as it’s well-written, length doesn’t really matter, does it?

I was reading yesterday about Laura Amy Schlitz, who was just announced as the 2008 Newbery Medal winner. She completed her book in 2000 and sent it to eleven publishers. It was rejected by four of them before being picked up by Candlewick Press. Problems delayed publication for another six years! Meanwhile she published two other books and is at work on a third. I’m too impressed, and discouraged, for words.

Makes me wonder how long it will take to publish mine, assuming I complete it in a reasonable amount of time. Last year I said I’d have the first draft done by May. I wasn’t done. Then I didn’t work on it all summer. Too distracting with the kids home. Then I said I’d have the draft done by the end of the year. I worked on it intermittently all fall but is the first draft done? Umm…no. But it is progressing and for that I am happy. My new goal is to have a working copy, i.e. first draft and major edits done, by the end of June. I picked June because (1) it’s doable, given the progress I’ve made lately, and (2) I’m planning to attend week 3 at the Chautauqua Institution, which is devoted to writers and writing. Maybe I can learn something. Maybe I’ll meet someone who can guide me toward completing this project. Maybe that week will be the launching of my writing career, so I can tell people who ask that I’m a writer and have something to show for it. (I still hide behind “I’m a lawyer” in response to inquiries.)

And by the way, in case anyone is wondering, I’ve completed my work on the book for today, so I am not in any way procrastinating by posting this. So there.

What is it about 47?

What is it about 47?

I don’t know if this is a universal experience for women, but suddenly, instead of looking like myself, I look like somebody’s mother. My mother, to be specific. Suddenly, my hips are pushing up against my ribcage. My breasts are globular and droopy. I have a kangaroo pouch (I refuse to say paunch) where my flat tummy used to be. I show up to visit my parents, and my mother and I are wearing the same thing.

I read about an idea for a comic that showed women with helmet hair and shapeless sweaters lined up outside a store called Forever 47. I laughed and cringed at the same time. There should be such a store. We sure as hell can’t shop at Forever 21. It’s too loud in there.

I went to Banana Republic, my favorite store, hoping to update my wardrobe with a younger, sexier look, and tried on a sexy red halter dress that looked magnificent on the hanger. I nearly laughed myself out of the dressing room. I have to wonder if the salespeople were having a good laugh too, having witnessed my delusions about the red dress. Of course they’re all young and chic, nary a lump evident beneath their clingy sweaters, heaven forbid a kangaroo paunch, I mean pouch, poking out over their low-rise hip-hugging jeans. I note that these girls celebrate their hips, which are positioned below their waists as nature intended.

At least they weren’t calling me Ma’am. I hate it when people call me Ma’am

I vowed to myself that I’ve got to do something about this 47-year old looking body and the way it’s been presenting itself to the world lately. I mean, it’s still January, not too late for a New Year’s resolution. But what could I do that I’m not already doing?

I learned the answer on CNN. I turned on the TV the other morning as I was getting dressed, expecting a heads up on breaking news. There was breaking news alright. It was delivered by a man called Bradley Bayou, a “celebrity designer” who has a book out called “The Science of Sexy: Dress to Fit Your Unique Figure with the Style System that Works for Every Shape and Size.”

“Yes!” I thought. “I need a Style System!”

“Confident women are sexy,” he said, "and the right clothes can make a woman feel confident.” He showed how different clothing styles can mask body parts we don’t like, and highlight parts we do. He said there are only four body types, and we should make the most of whatever body type we have.

“Oh God,” I thought. “Please let me have a good body type.” I sat on the edge of the bed, began folding socks, and leaned in closer to the TV so as not to miss one precious word about how I might create the illusion of sexiness and confidence using my very own 47 year old body.

Body Type 1: Big on top, small on the bottom. Not me, thank heavens. Who wants to be an inverted triangle?

Body Type 2: Small on top, big on the bottom. The classic pear shape. Not me either. Another thank you offered to the heavens.

Body Type 3: The hourglass. This, he said, is the most desirable of the four body types. The sexiest. I do not have an hourglass figure. Angelina Jolie has an hourglass figure. I don’t have her lips either. I’m not sure we’re even the same species.

Only one body type left. And that is The Rectangle, according to the good Mr. Bayou. I could not deny it. Heaven help me, I’m a freaking rectangle. Couldn’t he have come up with a name just a little sexier? Heck, quadrilateral would be better than the completely devoid of sex rectangle. A rectangle body type is when your measurements—chest, waist, hips—are more or less equal. None of this 36-24-36 business for me. I’m strictly a 36-36-36 kind of girl. The good news, reported Mr. Bayou, is that there are clothes out there that can make even us rectangles look confident, and therefore feel sexy.

My spirits were lifted even more when the reporter covering this most newsworthy of stories revealed that, alas, she herself has been dubbed a rectangle by Mr. Bayou himself, who helped her select some figure-enhancing (figure concealing?) clothing. She emerged from the dressing room wearing a form-fitting short skirt and a sassy melon-colored leather jacket with slanted side zippers, and damn, she looked good. In fact, she looked great. She looked like she might be 47 but yes, she looked sexy. I ignored the obvious fact that the jacket she wore no doubt ran into the four-figure price range, wrote down the name of the book and vowed to study it, to learn from it, to set myself on a future course of confidence and sexiness by way of wardrobe.

I was still watching the TV screen, a notepad perched on my lap, squinting at the slanted zippers and marveling at the optical illusion they created of an actual waist, when my husband entered the bedroom.

“Hey Miss Blind-as-a-Bat. Put your glasses on.”

At least he didn’t call me Ma’am.