a good day

I've been living in three worlds these days--an uncomfortable feeling. 

There's the real one, where I'm a mom shepherding my kids through the transition to summer (we brought forty-two books home from the library yesterday!) and their chores and their fun, and I'm a wife, a gardener, and when I can grab it, a reluctant runner.

Then there's the CHOSEN life, preparing for the promotion and release of this novel. Meetings with my publicists in New York, articles and essays swirling around, jotted down. 

Then there's my current writing life, my new novel, where I've been in the most painful part of the homestretch for the past few weeks. Wanting to wrap it up and get it to my agent by deadline, worrying that it's not done, not right, not quite good enough. I worry that I have made characters too real, too flawed to be followed. Ironic, since the working title is FOLLOWING. 

Plus I tried to do the caveman diet for a week. Dumb. Cheese helps me write, I swear.

Last night, my brother suggested we try this running route that I have been dreading, six and a half miles that ends with a brutal quarter mile uphill. He's an English teacher, a good writer, and though he keeps a better pace, he's kind enough to slow it down for me, my favorite running companion.

He let me talk, the whole time, about my book. About the ending. Huffing and puffing along, I wheezed about my ideas and worries, twists and reveals, Easter eggs and closure. (Thanks, B!) We tweaked, and debated, compared to other works.  Sucking wind up the final hill, I suddenly had it. The ending!

I came home and took the kids swimming, jotting down watery notes while I timed them holding their breaths, cheered their underwater summersaults. I wrote until my eyeballs were dry at midnight. I sat down this morning and dashed the rest off, a sprint to the finish. And I finished it. 

In my CHOSEN life, I learned that NY Times' Lisa Belkin wants to run my essay on Why I Choose Homeschooling--a favorite, heartfelt piece of mine. (I'll post link when it comes available.) Thanks, Jocelyn! 

And in my real life, my boys weeded the shade garden without argument, my daughter beamed when I picked her up from music class, and I found four Calvin and Hobbes books my son doesn't have to take with us to his all day annual craniofacial team appointment at CHOP on Thursday. 

A good day--off to the pool.