Thanks, youse all, for your good wishes on finishing my new book. Always a great feeling, because -- and although this is my 12th -- I'm never sure a book can actually BE finished until it is. There's always the chance it'll fall on its face due to some huge booboo, miscalculation, or important overlooked fact(s) on the part on the writer.

This one has as yet no name -- anyone got a spare? I bet I'll be sorry I asked that. I gave it a placeholder name and sent it to my agent, my editor, and one of my first readers. You writers out there, do you have first readers, people to whom you show your work in progress for comments? I have my writing group, who see chapters as they're written, and then two people who see the first draft of the ms. when it's done. One, a voracious reader but not a writer, reads strictly for what she calls "narrative thrust." She's invaluable for calling out the places where some pretentiousness in the writing or some preposterouness in the story stopped her in her reading tracks. My other first reader is a writer, and he reads more closely, following character logic and emotional charge as well as plot and language. He's the one who's got the book now.

So, while I'm awaiting notes, I'm roto-rootering through my apartment and my life, finding all the things I've left undone in the past couple of months (my taxes) and getting started on projects that really need doing: office (the filing!), household (painting the front door) and literary. I have three essays and four short stories promised to various people, but not today for any of those. Today, my writing brain's off duty. And a beautiful day for it it is. Right now I'm down by the river, a rare spot for me in the middle of the day. Soon, back home, lunch, the gym, then dinner and an off-Broadway show.

I love it when a plan comes together.