I have finished my book. (I think I have made that statement here before; it sounds awfully familiar.) Ah, yes, on May 13, I declared I was finished with the book.

In fact, come to think of it, I was always going around, declaring that I had finished my book…and then I would wait a few days, and the book would somehow come unraveled, and I would have to go back and write other things in it, and then while I was fixing one part of it, another part would come undone. It was like my knitting projects: you fix one loosened part, and the whole structure needs retooling.

But now, I HAVE REALLY, REALLY FINISHED THE BOOK. And to prove it, I actually mailed it away to my editor…and as a reward, was taken out to dinner by my sweet husband, who was beginning to fear, I think, that I had some kind of psychiatric disorder that was going to prevent me from ever being able to actually submit this book.

But I mailed it–which, may I just say, is a little anti-climactic these days. You simply press the SEND button, and the book zips itself away.

It’s not like the old days when, suspecting you were nearing the end of a manuscript, you started looking around for a suitable box to place it in–usually a box that a ream of paper had come in. And then you found an envelope big enough for this to fit in (or else you had to look for brown paper and tape and maybe even string), and then you have to find the address of the publisher, and sometimes you even had to put in a self-addressed, stamped envelope just in case the publisher would like to send the book back to you. And then you went to the post office and stood in the line, and if you were in MY post office, one of the postal clerks was willing to rub the package against his Guinness Ale tie tack, for luck. (Sometimes you had to let other customers go in front of you, so you could have that specific clerk–most of the others in the U.S. Postal Service don’t know about the Guinness tie tack rub/book acceptance connection. I don’t think it’s something they teach them at the training school.)

But now these days–no need for Guinness for luck. Just the SEND button, and then out to dinner, where we drank to our own luck.

That was a week ago, and since then I’ve been talking to old friends I haven’t seen in months while I was working on the book. I have read other people’s blogs that I have missed. I even brushed the dog and trimmed his toenails. I have played with my grandbabies. I made dinner most nights. We went to the the beach. One day I didn’t get out of my jammies until 3:30 in the afternoon. I started going for long walks again with my friend Karen.

And today–well, today, another character showed up in my head. Daria, she said her name was. She’s married to Will, who is a professor. And a long time ago she was in love with Will’s mentor.

“Uh oh,” I said to her. I was watering the plants. “Could you just hold off for a minute? I think I need to go and write this down.”