Do you have a book coming out soon? Are your nerves messing with your personal equilibrium? Here are ten simple techniques I’ve found to ease the pain.
#1. Go to drug store and buy not one, not two, but three beginner workout videos (pilates, yoga and something to do with jumping up and down and eating right). Watch one, find it a bit tough and quit ten minutes in, explaining that it’s stressing you out. Take a nap.
#2. Download Stephen King’s
Under the Dome from
Audible. At 34 hours long, it’s a good investment. Start listening to it on your iPod while walking the dog. At night. In the woods. When you emerge alive to find that there is no dome covering your town and no pigdog of a second selectman bent on your destruction, feel grateful. Listen compulsively to the book (at least three hours per day, preferably more) until the unforgiving pace of the horror gives you nightmares and upset stomach and you find that you’ve forgotten the imminent release of your book.
#3. When Barbara’s Jalapeno Cheese Puffs go on sale, buy them all. Then eat them. Feel overwhelmed at the quantities of cheese dust left behind on your oversized hoody and by your severe case of what’s technically referred to as “Doodle Bloat”. Remember that you have those three new workout videos and figure that works out to a draw.
#4. Buy a pair of black waxed skinny jeans. Just do it. No, it doesn’t matter that they don’t go with anything you own and that because you never do your exercise videos you are not in any condition to wear low waisted pants. The important thing is that the discomfort of wearing them will be a major distraction from all else that ails you, including blood sugar trouble from the cheese puffs and an anxiety disorder caused by listening to
Under the Dome for several hours each day.
#5. Mail off multiple advance copies of your work. One hour later, start worrying that people didn’t like it. Let the fear ramp up for twelve to twenty-four hours. Then give up all your hopes for the book you ripped your heart out to write. Because hell with it. You just fell into this writing thing. You never expected it to work out. And anyway, you don’t care. You could be perfectly happy working for the cable company as a… cable company worker. Those lucky ducks have pensions and benefits and all sorts of things. Not like writers. All writers get is spittle in the eye.
#6. Get some nice feedback. Feel all will be well and that the year or two or four you spent writing the book was well worth it. One person likes it and that's all that matters. Maybe it will be useful. Start to feel nearly ebullient at the prospects for your book. Lots of people will like it. There will be film deals! About the Author documentaries! Maybe it will take up near permanent residence on bestseller lists! You may end up purchasing an estate near Lake Cuomo. No, that’s not right. Wasn’t that the name of a governor of New York? You won’t fit in with George and his friends if you can’t even get the name of the lake right. Also, will they expect you to speak French? What’s that? Johnny Depp lives in the south of France and George lives in Italy? Is Italian easier to learn than French? Go to library and take out instructional CDs to help you learn both languages, just in case.
#7. Get some feedback that feels a little lukewarm. FREAK OUT. What exactly did she mean by “It was pretty good.”??? Rip off the waxed skinny jeans that you’ve been wearing around the house in an attempt to look more like someone Bono might talk to if you met him at George or Johnny’s place. Put on track pants. Old ones with bagged out seat and knees. Write a screed of some kind. Send it to newspaper in response to a completely unrelated article.
#8. Go online and print off application forms for farrier college.
#9. Try to volunteer for an NGO working in war-torn, poverty-stricken country. Get turned away by the person on the other end of the phone with the comment that “we’ve got enough problems on our hands”. Decide that next time you won’t talk so much about what you’ve learned about what happens when New England towns get trapped under invisible domes and how you hope to bring that knowledge to your work with Crisis Doctors Internationale even though you are pretty freaked out about the imminent release of your new book and just generally have a lot on your mind.
#10. Finally, having listened to all 34 hours of
Under the Dome and unable to eat any more cheese puffs or fit into your waxed skinnys, start a new book. One that you know will not give you as much trouble as the last one. Remember that, in the immortal words of
Meg Cabot: You are not a hundred dollar bill. Not everyone is going to like you. The book is done and the response is out of your hands. Decide Somerset Maugham had the right idea when he left on year long round the world voyages upon publication of any new book.
P.S. If you are a contest winner, please note that the above was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. You are under no obligation to tell me what you thought of the book. Unless you enjoyed it. In that case, please contact George and Johnny's realtors and ask them about properties suitable for a thirty-five year old thirteen foot Trillium travel trailer (electrical hook-up and running water a must!) that are within walking-to-brunch distance of Depp or Clooney's place. Not both obviously. I do know that much about Europe.
