Hi my lovelies! I want to wish you a very very good and in fact wonderfully happy and even exemplary new year!
We flew into Amsterdam this morning. No sleep last night. The scary thing, after trying to bid the van-taxi driver down below his 200-euro fixation, was cruising along the freeway, wife and kids asleep in the back, waiting for the day to start. By 8:15 I was getting worried that the sun wouldn’t rise till late January. But the sky did lighten by about 8:30, and we got to Arnhem by 9:00.
And everything here is just the same as it was five months ago. The house is here, the key was still under the flowerpot, the car woke up once I remembered to depress the clutch while starting it. The next-door neighbor gave me a big hug when I knocked on his door. My friend, the woman down the street, nearly burst into tears when I showed up. Julian’s 8-year-old friend came by, just now, with his mother, to drop off an oversize postcard that read “Welkom T’huis” — Welcome Home. And even the guy at the nearby SPAR store was happy to see me this afternoon — he beamed that sweet openness that you just don’t see in big cities in North America. Not that Arnhem is a big city. And when I left with my bag of groceries, it was of course raining in the grey, soggy streets.
The weather in L.A. was fantastic, but I’ll take the people in Arnhem any day.
I know I’ve been talking about finishing my book ad nauseam. But it really is finished AS OF YESTERDAY!!! I wrote “THE END” at the bottom, a couple of days ago, and I’ve been picking away at edits since then. While Isabel took care of all social and child-related responsibilities, I sat on various friends’ and relatives’ sofas and wrestled with so many meticulous decisions, such as…: Should I refer to the amygdala or just the dorsal striatum in the chapter about Johnny, who nearly drank himself to death before quitting? Should I include “hair on the bathroom floor” — or is that overkill? — and just go with “clumps of hair in her hairbrush” when describing Alice’s descent into anorexia? Should I call the neural network that churns out DESIRE the “motivational core” or the “motivational engine” in this paragraph? Many of these edits were triggered by the thousands of comments/suggestions along the side of the page, from my editors and from Matt Robert and his partner, Cathy, who noticed everything that needed noticing… But I had to ruminate about each one before I was satisfied.
Have I mentioned the parallels between OCD and addiction?
But it’s all done. Edits x 3 throughout most of it, and a final chapter that actually comes to a conclusion, rather than ending with the ubiquitous but lame “……more to come…..”
So I’m high on fatigue — little dreamies sauntering in from the corners while I’m trying to sleep this afternoon — happy to be back here, really glad that the book is done — at least until the page proofs are sent back to me — and not even curious about what I’ll be doing next.
The book will be out in May. And my only request is, simply, BUY IT!
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