Hating

My second book, How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life, is being published this June. It's a sequel of sorts to my first book, How to Heal the Hurt by Hating, which was published in September, 1998. (What? So I'm not that prolific.) Villard, the publisher for How to Stay Bitter, is going to re-publish HTHTHBH at the same time. Even though HTHTHBH hasn't gone out of print, they're going to give it a new cover and package it with the second book. The people at Villard explained that they didn't feel that HTHTHBH reached its full potential the first time around. It sold okay. Somewhere around 18,000 copies. That sounds sort of respectable. Sort of. Sometimes. Anyway, all of this makes me think of my favorite story about HTHTHBH, which is that a close friend of mine went into a large chain bookstore a couple months after HTHTHBH hit the shelves. She went up to the information kiosk and asked the informant where she might find How to Heal the Hurt by Hating. The informant typed the information into his computer and then said, "No, we don't have a book by an author named Hating." Maybe that's why my first book didn't reach its full potential the first time around.

Questions, questions...

I'm back to my old tricks. Well, actually I never abandoned my old tricks. I'm procrastinating again. I'm supposed to be doing my Author Questionnaire and I HATE it! I LOATHE it! I ABHOR it! It's like the most hideous assignment you ever received in high school from the toughest and most critical and unfair teacher who didn't think you were realizing your full potential. And he was right. For those of you who don't know about Author Questionnaires, they're given to an author by her publisher several months prior to the publication of her book. It's basically a list of questions ranging from What's your full name? to If you could construct an interview for yourself, what questions would you want to be asked? to Also note any awards [your last] book may have won. The answer to the latter is, umm, let me think...NONE!! Do you see? Do you see why this thing is detestable? Oh, I can't tell you how much I hate it. It's an albatross around my neck. Its seemingly-innocent questions make me feel so inadequate. I have no outside interests. I have received no honors or special citations or prizes. I don't write for any publications. I have no viable media contacts. I have a blog. But it's 2005, who doesn't? (I just realized that I can change my font color. Pretty.) Anyway, of course my publisher told me that I should hand it back in as soon as possible and I'm dragging my feet, like I always do, and pretending that little literary elves are going to complete it for me while I sleep. I'm also pretending that I'm working on it even when I'm not actually working on it. In college, if I had a week to do a paper, I wouldn't even start writing it until the night before, but I would justify it by convincing myself that I'd been thinking and composing and organizing the material in my head so that when it was time to start writing, the words would just flow. (Now the green's bumming me out.)

Here's what I've got so far:
Name: Anita Liberty
Hometown: New York City
Occupation: Writer/Performer
Other fields of interest or study, avocations, hobbies:
I like to knit. And play computer solitaire. And watch T.V. And google myself. I like to internet shop. I go to different online stores, fill up my cart and then leave the site when I realize that I either don’t want what I’ve chosen or I can’t afford what I’ve chosen. It takes up a lot of my time. You’d be surprised. Or maybe you wouldn’t.

Okay, okay. I'll work on it.

The Pressure

If it was procrastination that delayed my first entry, then it's pressure that's delayed my second. I just don't know if I'm cut out for this whole blog-thing. It's a lot more complicated than it looks. But maybe that's just me and my need to overanalyze everything.

Okay, so I've been going through the copyedited manuscript of my new book, HOW TO STAY BITTER THROUGH THE HAPPIEST TIMES OF YOUR LIFE, and it's been a bit... harrowing. When my editor went through it, it was relatively painless. In fact, the process was actually enjoyable. I felt like he was able to clarify and hone my writing in places without compromising my tone. It was strange, because the relationship between the editor and the writer can be such a contentious one and if there's an opportunity for contention, I'm usually there. But it was contention-free. Then I got the copyedited version last week and it's like all my feelings of self-righteousness and defensiveness came out on this fanatical person with a red pencil. I think the anonymity of the copyeditor also really bugged me. I know my editor. I have his name and his phone number. We've had lunch together. But just who the hell is this copyeditor person? Is it a he or a she? Is she young or old? Happy or sad? Experienced or just starting out? And why is his/her identity being protected from me? Why doesn't he/she sign his/her work? Leave a phone number, an e-mail address, a note saying, "If there's anything that's unclear or if you just want to talk, feel free to contact me." But no, apparently my copyeditor is in the Copyeditor Protection Program being protected from the likes of me. So instead, when I have questions, I have to call the editorial assistant and she contacts someone in the copy department who then either answers my question or tells her that she'll get back to her and then contacts the freelance copy editor who worked on my manuscript. It's all very complicated. It's all very Alias. Again, I ask, who is this person? And what is he/she hiding? What does she think? What does she feel? What does she look like? Who is she? I definitely think of her as female. And single. And looking for love in all the wrong places. But maybe that's just the cliché talking. (Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe she's not a she. Maybe she's a he and he's in his mid-forties and is happily married. He lives in New Jersey and does freelance copyediting so that he can stay home with the youngest of his three kids so his wife can continue her work as a high-power lawyer at a prestigious law firm in the city. Maybe he read my book and fell secretly in love with me. Maybe he's thinking about me right now.)

At any rate, here's what I do know about her (let's just say it's a "her"): She doesn't like commas. She's not a fan of all-caps. She prefers italicization to bold. She thinks she's smarter than I am. I know she does. There's attitude flowing through the tip of her red pencil all over my manuscript. I can see it. I can feel it. I just feel so, so ...."corrected." Like she's the teacher and I'm her student. But there's no validation to soften the blows. She's just there to find my weak points. And sometimes she succeeds. She knows how to spell "frappuccino." She knows that when I refer to my "cerebellum" that I actually mean my "cerebrum." Even though I took French classes all the way through college, I misspelled "raison d'etre." (Actually, there should be a little carrot-top on the "e," but I couldn't figure out how the hell to make one on this blogger program.) I guess I want more from her than she's willing to give. (A common theme in my relationships, so I'm not surprised.) There is no indication anywhere that she likes my book, that she's interested in my book or even that she condemns my book. There's no opinion revealed. Well, actually, there was one page where I thought she'd given me some sign of her true feelings. She drew a little frownie-face in the margin of one page. Two dots for eyes and an upside-down "v" for a mouth. A really sad and frustrated-looking little frownie-face. A really disappointed-in-you frownie-face. But then I looked closer and realized that she was just making a mark to add an "umlaut" over the "a" in "doppelganger." It wasn't a frownie-face after all. But, ya know, it wasn't a happy face either.

At last...my first entry!

I'm the biggest procrastinator in the world.

I set up this blog the other night as a way of procrastinating from working on the marketing plan for my new book. It was pretty fun setting it up. But I didn't know what to write, so I decided to wait until the next day. I didn't write anything the next day. Or the next. Or the next. I spent nearly two weeks procrastinating by doing almost anything else instead of writing the first entry for this blog. Amazing how what seems like fun when it's being done to avoid doing something else turns into work when it becomes something that has to be done. Do you follow? Read it again. You'll get it.

It's just that my attention span is so freaking limited. I can't follow through on one thought or action without getting distracted and wanting to check my e-mail. (I don't even get that much e-mail. But it always feels like such validation when I do. Like clear evidence that someone was thinking about me without my reminding them of my existence.) I had planned to do laundry this morning, but I don't really want to do laundry and so I'm writing this entry as a way of avoiding doing laundry. Because any time that I feel the impulse to write, it trumps anything else. It's so rare that I actually get that impulse. Funny then that I've chosen a career as a writer. I should have chosen a career as a potter or an accountant or a laundress, because then I'd be writing all the time just to avoid potting or accounting or laundering.

I was in a bookstore once and found a book on procrastinating. I didn't buy it. I just carried it around every time I visited that bookstore. It was pathological. I'd carry it around and then put it down again figuring that I'd just buy it the next time. And, the sad thing is, that happened a few times before I realized how pathetic I was being. So one day I finally just shamed myself into buying it. And I brought it home and put it on my desk. And NEVER READ IT. Big surprise. It's called PROCRASTINATION by Jane B. Burka, Ph.D. and Lenora M. Yuen, Ph.D. (clearly, Jane and Lenora put a lot of thought into that title). Seriously, I don't think I ever opened it. No. I'm wrong. I just looked at it and there is actually an indication that I paged through it at one time. The page is dog-eared on the chapter "Fear of Succeeding: Hello Procrastination, Good-Bye Success." And that's where I guess I stopped reading. Maybe I'll pick it up again. Maybe I won't.

Good-Bye Success. Hello Laundry!