Printed in The Oregonian many moons ago…

 

My book is due in fourteen days.

I have already been given an extension because I begged like a banshee and now I’m doomed. Get the book in or perish in a burst of literary flames.

The last six weeks before a deadline are always ugly for me. I write until I am a pale – puke color and muttering to myself. I sporadically wash my hair. I eat my standard fare of two Haagen – Dazs bars and a mocha for lunch and during bored moments, laptop in my lap, I watch my stomach grow.

I do very little housework. Only enough to keep the rats out. This is not a bad thing, as I detest housework. This is my mantra: If the dust doesn’t rise up and bite me, let it be.

But still.

I hope to remember to feed the birds so they don’t die. During the day they are the only ones who talk to me. My cat never talks to me in English. She is silent. Sometimes I sense her laughing at me in a snarky way.

I also hope to remember to feed the children zipping about my home who claim to be my offspring, but they know where the popcorn is, so what’s the problem?

Because of this deadly deadline, the three sisters and the brother in my book are now constantly talking and shrieking in my head, and I have to deal with them directly on a non – stop basis. I am only slightly alarmed to find myself arguing out loud with them or yelling, “Back off, freak.”

They do strange things and I have to edit their strangeness. Cecilia decides to stick a hose into her ex-husband’s Corvette to water it and ignites her wedding dress in a bonfire during the hokey pokey.

Janie wants to hide in her houseboat but I won’t let her. She has got to get a life and a spine. Her weakness drives me crazy, and why does she always wear the same beige, dull bra? Why not pink? Red with lace? Why does she embroider when she’s nervous?

Janie is odd. Cecilia is vengeful. Cecilia and I do not always get along.

Isabelle has been a difficult character to manipulate during this entire book. She is a rebel. She is a free – thinker. She is tough. I make something bad happen to her so I can get her under control so she will change her wily ways by the end of the book. She doesn’t like that part.

Isabelle also wants a boyfriend,  but I will not give her one because she is a head case.

I get the head case part. I have lived through my own head – case problems, but I secretly want Isabelle  to have a boyfriend because then the suburban mommy in me could live vicariously through her and her hot romance.

I would like her to have Keanu Reeves as her boyfriend, but I do not give in to her desires. Maybe I will call Keanu Reeves on the phone for real. I am sure he wants to converse with me and my birds. But not with the cat. That snarky, laughing cat doesn’t talk.

I cry over what I had to do to Isabelle because I am a mess. I cry when Janie takes a breath and dares to dare. I cry over Cecilia’s anger because I get that. The anger. I get it. And I cry over all that blood and their loneliness.

I cry because I want to and I laugh when Cecilia’s young, screwy brained daughter insists on dressing like a nun and says to everyone, “Peace be with you.”

So I cackle and I snuffle while writing and sucking down Haagen Dazs, and that is not counting all the times I cackle with semi-hysteria and believe my work sucks and I am a pajama clad loser and should go back to teaching fourth graders about the Oregon Trail.

I remind myself that I must edit the heck out of the ending because it is too pretty, so I must throw in sadness even though I really like a Cinderella ending. I like to pretend the world is soft and pink, and things work out.

There is zero indication of this Cinderella stuff in my own personal life, and in my deepest understanding, I know that Cinderella was a closet alcoholic (who can blame her?) and married a prince who had a fetish for small feet (and high heels), but I still search for the pretty.

I also remind myself to change out of my pajamas before the twins get home from school. It is pathetic to see Mom still in pajamas at 4 p.m. and I endeavor not to be pathetic. I remind myself to quit swearing at my characters when real-life humans are around and about, and can hear me.

But here is one more problem: Who is this man wandering around my house wondering if we have anything for dinner? You want to eat dinner? I hiss at him. Go and gnaw on your toes in some corner. Eat bird food. Stop bugging me or you will die a painful death.

Go away. Leave my house. Out. In fact, everybody out. Even the chatting birds.

Take the snarky laughing cat who won’t talk to my boyfriend, Keanu.

I’m writing.

I’m panicked.

I have 14 days.

I am dead meat.