Well, I didn’t give her my book on May 2. She didn’t break my limbs, mainly because she didn’t have to. I am already pretty much incapacitated, and I don’t think even Danger is one to beat up a cripple. (Usually.)

I managed to stay more or less on schedule up until April, which is kind of amazing in retrospect, since the Word file of my book turned out to be corrupt and I had to type the whole thing again by hand just to edit it. Then I took out a character, added a character, completely revised another character, moved nineteen chapters, deleted twenty thousand words (what? I like adjectives), and essentially reworked the entire storyline. The result was a second draft that is nowhere near as terrible as the first draft, but yet, impossibly, somehow remains the most terrible thing that has ever been written.

So: I hate it infinitely, but somehow, paradoxically, I hate it LESS infinitely than the first version. If my goal was to achieve the impossible with my writing, consider me a success!

At any rate, feeling the teeniest bit encouraged at this somehow mathematically invisible decrease in hatred from one draft to the next, I tried not to let my manuscript’s sheer repugnance deter me from finishing it, and I was getting there. I really was.

I met up with a man off Craigslist in a dark alley in order to purchase his used Macbook just so I could use Scrivener, a truly miraculous writing program that helped me compile all of my notes and outlines and cards and swatches of text into a reasonably neat pile that did not make me feel as if my sanity were trying to burrow through my temples in order to escape my skull entirely. I became a fixture at the local community college, because it had power outlets and silence and vending machines. I plowed through thousands upon thousands of words a day, and no one was more surprised than I was when I realized that I was sort of really doing this. That I was maybe going to finish.

Except, in April, two things happened:

1. I was contracted to oversee the most epic editorial project in history. We’re talking over six hundred Word pages. This project left a ragged, bloody hole in my calendar where my April had been. I would tell you all about it, except I honestly scarcely remember it, except at one point my eyes were so strained that I could see a giant, pulsating rainbow whether my eyes were open or closed. It was sparkly and kind of festive, really, and I don’t know that I would have minded so much if I hadn’t been so concerned that my retinas were … I don’t know, dissolving. I’m not a doctor. The point is that I almost died of retinal gangrene.

2. As if that weren’t bad enough, I stressed so hard on the above project that I actually harmed myself. Have you ever scrunched up your shoulders anxiously for days on end while also typing? Well, I don’t recommend it, because you can only get away with it for so long before you are whimpering when you try to put your hair in a ponytail, your left hand is numb, your left elbow and wrist are on fire, and you need assistance putting on your party hat. I think you will agree that nothing says “geriatric birthday girl” like having someone else slide elastic under your chin for you. The best part is that when people ask, “Oh, did you hurt yourself playing roller derby?” I have to answer, “No … I hurt myself typing.” Hardkore!

Stupidly, I tried to continue–for days after it became apparent that I would be lucky to manage to pull both socks onto my feet, much less think through the pain clearly enough to generate brilliant prose. The level of denial I maintained regarding my injuries is sort of breathtaking in retrospect. I would wake up, let my eyes water into my pillow for an hour while I worked up the nerve to sit up, and then congratulate myself once I had managed to at least swing my feet off the bed, because everyone knows that anyone who can sit up after only an hour of passive crying is a paragon of physical functionality.

Danger would ask how I was, and I would be like, “Great! All I have to do is sleep in a neck brace, and that almost nearly solves a modest portion of the agony! It’s like a new lease on life … in some sort of tenement building, granted, but that will just make my fiction grittier!”

And Danger would be like, “Hey, you know, we’re actually friends, and I probably won’t really break your limbs … and come to think of it, you are the only person who even gives a crap about this book you’re writing, seeing as the rest of us have real problems, so maybe you should just, you know, relax a little,” and I would shriek and try to cover both of my ears at once with my one good hand, because why be rational about things when you can act as if your efforts to write a novel are of crucial importance to the very survival of the human race.

It honestly wasn’t until today that I realized I was being That Person, that staggering heap of failing synapses who is so stubborn that she will wave off any offers of help while she drags herself on her hands and knees across the triathlon finish line, pooping her running briefs a few times for good measure.

Worse, I was being That Person over a book, a freaking NOVEL, that thus far has no agent, much less a real actual deadline of any kind.

I had, in fact, managed to abandon all perspective and completely lose my mind in a way that forced me to participate in my own hobbies against my will.

So I quit. For now.

But believe me, I am still very bitter about it. I’m sure a real novelist could have crossed that finish line even while in the grip of some kind of unexpected coma. Hell, a real novelist could have crossed that finish line POSTHUMOUSLY without even breaking a sweat.

I can still type, obviously, though I have done a lot of this with one hand across oh, I don’t know, nine hours. What I can’t do is have very much fun while writing very complex fiction, and if anything is going to save my book, it’s the fact that most of the time, I was enjoying myself while I wrote it. I’m still in plenty of (slooooowly decreasing) pain, not to mention sick to death of worrying about a self-manufactured failure and then hating myself for being the sort of person who worries about a self-manufactured failure while eyeless orphans on the brink of starvation panhandle the dusty, glass-sharded streets of some war-torn country somewhere.

(NOTE: If you are thinking of writing a book, and you desperately want to be a humble person who does not take yourself too seriously (all while neurotically realizing that anyone who desperately wants to be any sort of person is probably ALREADY taking themselves too seriously, SHIT), you might want to consider the fact that you will find it impossible not to loathe yourself deeply when you find yourself doing things like calling a friend for the sole purpose of wringing your hands over your prologue. You have been warned. Save yourself.)

Where does this leave me? I don’t know. I’m trying to sit around and heal, but it’s hard. I don’t really know how to watch TV, for instance. I tried watching it today, at my parents’ house, and I actually mistook their phone for the remote control. Sadly, it took me a moment of wondering why a remote control would have a Talk button before I figured it out. And then, when I finally found the real remote, I marveled that the television TELLS you what show is on whichever channel you just flipped to. Amazing! Unfortunately, I had never heard of any of these shows, because all the Internet ever talks about are Glee and Lost, and apparently neither of those were on. I guess certain shows only air at certain times, like at the movies? I’m not an expert.

At any rate, a new deadline will be in the works shortly, I am sure, as soon as I have two completely functional arms and have regained my will to live, much less create. For now, though, I find myself a failure–and not for the first time.

But somehow, my familiar surprise at the earth’s continued rotation is brand new all over again.

Danger’s talents include making people sweat by staring at them, wrapping her voice around people’s spinal cords in order to control their movements, and adjusting her proximity to newbies in order to diminish their bladder control. Jammers have stated that when Danger hits them, they have to look back on the track to make sure they had not pooped out their kidneys.

If you are a new girl and you are resting your hands on your legs as you skate around the track, Danger will scream at you to take your hands off your legs in a manner so compelling that you may never touch your own thighs again, in any context, instead choosing to walk around for the rest of your life with your hands pulled in close to your ribcage as if you are a small child whose hands have just been slapped with a ruler. Decades from now, when you are old and withered and your derby days are long behind you, you will refuse to use a walker despite hours of cajoling on the part of nursing-home staff, so concerned are you with the prospect of incidental hand-thigh contact.

Danger has been playing derby for as long as it’s existed here, and in addition to having won Meanest Rollergirl a multitude of times, she is also very good at the sport itself. Which is why one of my favorite fantasy pranks involves paying a new girl twenty bucks to, after her very first practice at the rink, walk up to Danger, pat her affectionately on the shoulder, and say, “Hey, you looked good out there today,” in the most patronizing voice possible. There are two problems with this plan: first, I don’t really want the death of a newbie on my conscience; second, even the most expendable newbies aren’t stupid enough to do it. Danger is that towering headstone in the middle of the graveyard that you dare your friends to run up and touch in the middle of the night without getting caught by cemetery security and/or murdered by an evil spirit (hint: Danger).

To the untrained eye, my friendship with Danger is unlikely. In a zombie invasion, Danger would be running down the street with a chainsaw in each hand, decapitating zombies while cussing a blue streak. She would probably be on her way to my house, where I would either be 1) clad in my underpants and asleep with my face in a plate of hummus, utterly unaware that a zombie invasion was under way or 2) trying to soothe the poor agitated zombie that I had corralled in my bathroom and named Steve. I would be shoving slices of pizza under the door and talking to Steve in a soothing voice when she found me, gave me two seconds to say goodbye to my new friend Steve despite my protests, and then threw me over one shoulder. I would explain to her that it wasn’t the zombies’ fault they were so hungry while she bashed their skulls in, the poor things, and made absentminded “mmm hmmmm” noises.

We’re very different, is my point, and yes, Zombieland was an uncomfortable movie for both of us.

When I decided that I wanted to be friends with this person, there was really only one way to go about it, which was to declare my allegiance in some way that did not garner her disdain. It was tricky, because I couldn’t be too cool or blase about it. Danger can smell fear, so any faked attempts at coolness would cause her to do that thing she does where she raises one eyebrow while otherwise maintaining the ominously resolute expression of some sort of stone goddess on a godforsaken island somewhere. No interpretation of this reaction has ever been offered to me, but I’m pretty sure that it means you are not at all cool, you and Danger both know it, and you should probably just go kill yourself and get it over with. On the other hand, simpering and groveling before her would be even worse, and would likely result in death by eyeball laser beams, like the ones from those sphinx-things in Neverending Story.

Needless to say, I did not want to hear THOSE drumbeats, so I figured I would avoid either extreme with simple honesty. So I skated up next to her, confessed to her that she had become the dominant force behind my submissive social existence, and said, “You know, I think that if we were two monkeys in the jungle, I would be trying to pick lice off of you right now.” And she did not raise her eyebrow and I did not get zapped by lasers. If I am remembering it right, she made a startling and unfamiliar noise that sounded kind of like laughing, except it was coming out of her face so I guess it was something else. Not long after that, we were good friends. And by “not long after that,” I mean “damn near a year and a half later, after I had scrambled through an invisible social gauntlet in which I completed a rigorous battery of unspoken tests.”

Also, she knocked me down a bunch of times and jabbed me in the ribs at random intervals, because no one wants to be friends with a crybaby. Danger has VERY discriminating tastes.

I feel that any remaining progress to be made in our friendship was achieved during the 2009 season, during which I spent a lot of time partnered with Danger in the pack. This essentially meant that I scrambled to do whatever she told me to while she saved both our asses. If I got knocked onto the floor during practice and Danger yelled at me to GET UP UP UP UP UP UP!, I did not clamber to my feet like a mere mortal. I was actually lifted onto my skates like a puppet attached to the cosmic string that is Danger’s unadulterated willpower (commonly referred to in casual conversation as “the Tether”). Sometimes she would realize that someone was gunning for her and then yank me backward in order to propel herself forward, stretching my jersey cartoon-character style while sucking me back with the force of a black hole while I scrabbled on my wheels like a drunk baby giraffe. I eventually stopped falling down when this happened. “Look who learned to stay on her skates like a big girl!” Danger would muse afterward. This is her version of effusive praise and should be taken as such.

I hope I’m not implying that she is not a delightful person. She actually is a delightful person, but if I say so it will make her so very angry, so you’re going to have to pretend that I didn’t. (Sometimes she is even very kind and went quite far out of her way to help me throughout my split with Jeff. YOU DID NOT HEAR THIS FROM ME.) Thus, I specifically avoid publicly pointing out that she acts tough, but on the inside, she is in fact my squishy-wishy Dangerkins. If I dared to tell any of you that, she would punch me hard enough to necessitate a defibrillator, so it’s best that I keep it to myself for the time being.

At this point you’re asking yourself, “What on earth does this have to do with Jen’s book?”

Um, only EVERYTHING.

Only Danger has the power to make my book happen, you see. All of my other friends are sort of mundane in the sense that I am not actively terrified of them. When Danger says jump? I do not ask how high—not because I am not dying to know, but because the question would necessitate an unacceptable delay between her command and my obedience.

This tendency is deeply compulsive, yes, but could also be quite useful if, say, I had asked Danger to pound on my door on May 2, 2010, and collect a full copy of my completed manuscript …

… and that’s exactly what I did …

… and Danger takes her promises VERY. SERIOUSLY.

She now tracks my progress with actual concern, because she knows that won’t enjoy bending my limbs into funny shapes if I do not comply with her request for the book when she arrives. Despite her distaste for hearing me scream like a rabbit in a trap, she won’t hesitate to manipulate my body into something resembling a balloon animal if that’s what it takes, because she has a lot of integrity that way. Anytime Danger takes it upon herself to do you a solid, her commitment to quality is unsurpassed. I’m pretty sure that if I told her to hide some cookies from me so I wouldn’t eat them, midnight would find her out in the middle of Sahara with her footsteps trailing to infinity behind her, holding a flashlight, a trowel, and the Tupperware bin of cookies. Note that the Sahara is in Africa and I didn’t even mention the cookies until right before dinnertime.

Anyway! My point is that I finally have an answer for everyone who asks, “So when are you going to submit that book to an agent, anyway?”: May 2. May 2 is the day that I will mail it out to various publishing professionals. Danger is going to take a picture of me standing by that big blue mailbox and maintain a faux atmosphere of cheery celebration while I smile weakly and try not to throw up the ice cream cone I have told her to put in my hand as a distractionary mechanism.

And then Danger is going to go home WITH MY MANUSCRIPT and maybe actually read it while I writhe on the floor while contemplating the sweet release that death by random falling anvil would bring, if only the universe would arrange it. Also, I may or may not succeed in resisting the urge to call her every four minutes. Does she like the book? She does, right? She shouldn’t say she does unless she really does. I mean, the last thing I want is to be PATRONIZED. BUT SHE DOES LIKE IT, RIGHT????

I’m not sure which one of us I pity more in this scenario, now that I think about it.

The good news is that I have never felt less doubt that this is going to happen, now that I really don’t have a choice. I could have hired an assassin to put a bullet in my forehead on May 2 if I did not finish the final draft of my manuscript, and I would only feel marginally more confident that I am going to pull this off. If I wind up faking my own death on May 1 and joining the witness protection program (is “John Connor” taken?), I guess we’ll know that I was wrong.

Not that it would stop her, of course. I just want to live long enough to turn thirty either way.