I have, you’ll be happy to know, slashed and burned at least fifty-two pages from my October book, Tender Secrets, and FedExed it back to my editor. What she’ll think of the changes is anyone’s guess, but I worked pretty hard on keeping the emotional impact strong and the pivotal scenes intact. I got rid of some descriptions and a lot of the “white space” I tend to write with. I only hope it’s enough …

And can I just say … I really love this couple. Andrew Warner and Viveca Jackson. Love them. Yeah, yeah. I know romance authors always fall in love with their latest couples. It’s a normal part of the process, like, oh, I don’t know—actors and actresses falling in love on the set of a movie. It just happens.

Still, I gotta say, with a big grin on my face, that I really love this couple.

My next book, Sweeter Than Revenge, comes out next month.

This, as you probably know if you’ve spent any time hanging around this blog, means I’m spending lots of time:

1. Not sleeping;
2. Worrying about the book’s potential success or lack thereof; and
3. Generally feeling nauseous.

So when I ran across Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life the other night, I snatched it right up. I have heard other writers recommend this book many times, both for its humor and insight, and I figured that’s what I needed. I had high hopes that Lamott would reassure me that I’m not insane for being this nervous about a book when there are so many other things to be anxious about like, say, the war, global warming, and my children’s latest shenanigans.

I was, therefore, thrilled when I came across this sentence in the Introduction:

I believed, before I sold my first book, that publication would be instantly and automatically gratifying, an affirming and romantic experience, a Hallmark commercial where one runs and leaps in slow motion across a meadow filled with wildflowers into the arms of acclaim and self-esteem.

Whoa, I thought. This woman gets me. I can’t wait to see what else she has to say.

So I will be spending this rainy Sunday in Cincinnati reading Bird by Bird and trying to reassure myself about the whole book thing.

And, all you writers out there, if you don’t have this book, you should go to Amazon right now and order it.