Will later wake up, put on clothes, go to work.

My entries have gotten so dull lately that I actually got two comments on my remark that I was craving chicken. So I'd better write something pertinent.

Over the last two weeks, I've been revising Novel 3 some more, on the computer. It went from 379 pages back up to 400. Then I printed it out on Saturday and read the thing on paper over this weekend, making notes all over it. I seem to have slashed through a lot of sentences, so it probably will drop back down once I input all these changes into the computer.

After I input them and print it out, it goes off to my agent at the end of the week [note: sorry about the snobbery of saying "my agent"; I'm not famous or nothing. From now on I'll just refer to her as 99.]

She will send it out the first week in May to various publishing houses to see who's interested.

Some may read it quickly, some may take a while. Some will say they like it and want to see changes, some may love it the way it is, some may say it's not for them.

But I am very happy with the new version and I think it's -- at last -- ready to go!!

The dark side...

I've done so much revision that when I finally read the paperback version of Stephen King's oft-recommended On Writing yesterday, I made a few corrections on the pages. Hey, no writer is perfect. I'll try to scan them in later.

He says a few things in there that I think might scare people away from writing. I don't like the idea of scaring anyone away from writing. You can't always believe that you're going to write best sellers, but if you want to write, then write. He says that a writer might need at least four hours a day uninterrupted. Yeah, if it's your full-time job -- but I find that unlikely. In fact, I've found that sometimes it's healthy to have two-week periods when I'm taking a break from the actual writing and instead am constantly thinking about the book and characters so I have more fully-developed ideas when I go back into it. But I've never written full-time, so my process is different from his.

[Peanut gallery says: "Yeah, that's why he's sold fifty novels and you haven't." OK, OK.]

Other notes...

Have you ever left something on a plane, realized as you were about to leave the airport, turned around, tried to get it back since you just stepped off the plane five minutes ago, and they all sit there talking to each other on walkee-talkees but for some reason can't just go get your item off the damn plane?

It's happened to me twice, and it was just a small thing I left there both times, but what a pain. You walk out those security gates, and two seconds later it's like you were never there. The plane and crew has disappeared, and your item is in neverland. Anyway, the moral of the story is, make sure you have everything, because otherwise you'll be sitting there for an hour while they try to locate the Incredible Disappearing Crew to see if they found your stuff.

And what's with pilots and crew members giving these long monologues about the windspeed and temperature. I don't care. I also don't care how many miles up we are. There is nothing I can do about it, is there? Tell me if there's a blizzard or hurricane, but otherwise, just fly the plane properly and make sure we don't crash.

Is it just me?

Ever since I read that New Yorker piece about an increase in bedbug infestations in New York last week, I've scratched myself to sleep.

One more comment

There was an essay in the Sunday New York Times today about a woman going to a sperm bank to select a donor from a list of available men. She gets to read their characteristics to narrow it down. What I wonder is...there are only certain men who are going to donate sperm probably - men who need the money. I can't see a guy doing it for fun. So already the pool is narrowed a bit, right? You're going to be mating with someone who needs to sell his sperm for cash. When I went to a Iveee Leeg college, there used to be ads in the college paper for women to donate their eggs. I guess the egg donation places wanted smartypants eggs. But I don't remember sperm banks placing ads. A college student would clearly need the money for the right reasons. But since sperm banks aren't advertising there, does that mean they're getting 35-year-old men who are broke? Not to be a snob - being poor makes you cuter - but I'm just saying that perhaps there is not as big a cross-section of sperm as some might think.

This concludes our radio broadcast of "Speaking of Sperm." For all of us here, good night.