Going naked

One of these days I’m going to get a thong in a knot. Not sure yet about the necessary gymnastics. Just a small ambition to keep me busy while I wait for the valerian to kick in.

I thought I could coddle and hoard my precious Doubleblind revisions until some time in April, or even the end of March. Don’t know why I thought that, but I did.

Tough titty. The ms had to get out to the blurbers, writers whose work I admire and whose time is tight.

Revisions got done. Hurried, but done. All I have left now is deciding things like "crimson" versus "scarlet." (I hope.)

But here’s a gutfall I didn’t expect. It’s right up there with not being thrilled to see many copies of my first book, The shadow side of grace, on shelves. (What? That many? Lord, they’ll never sell. And so on.)

I never expected to be scared about my second book coming out.

Not just scared. Shaking.

I stand five feet, seven inches tall and weigh nearly two hundred pounds. A lot of that is muscle; far too much of it is still flab. Every bit of it has become one exposed nerve.

You can forgive a lot in a first book. You expect a new writer to prove something in the second. Prove she’s learned something. Prove he’s no fluke. Prove she can actually write. And not just re-write the first book.

Very little of Doubleblind comes from my own experience, but it’s still my guts on the page. What interests me. What worries me.

And it’s in first-person. About all I have in common with the narrator is that we both speak English.

Harlan Ellison, in his introduction to PAINGOD and Other Delusions (Ace Books, 1983 edition) quotes his friend Avram Davidson, who called Ellison’s introductions "going naked in the world" (page 10). Ellison goes on to argue that everything he writes is like going naked. He then quotes Irwin Shaw: "A man does not write one novel at a time or one play at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is on a journey and he is reporting in: ‘This is where I think I am and this is what this place looks like today’" (page 11).

Flabby gut, floppy breasts. Bleah. I’m going naked.

This is where I think I am.