If I should decide to have liposuction, and I haven't decided to have liposuction, what worries me is ... what would I do with my fat?

There will be no photo with this blog, because I don't want to demonstrate for you why I would wish to have a pipe stuck under the skin of my derriere and have icky yellow adipose tissue sucked out -- for some useful purpose I cannot yet determine. It's been a bum year. I've had problems --some serious, some trivial -- that I had to discuss with a bagel. I put off until tomorrow until there were no more tomorrows. I purchased pants with elastic waists.

I could use my fat as fuel to heat my house.

I could use my fat as grease to lube my car.

I could donate my fat to a war-ravaged nation.

Technology exists, or so I have read, that allows people to remove fat from one part of their bodies to have it injected into another part of their bodies. I could have my fat injected into my cheekbones, until they were so prominent I could hang blazers on them.

But I think it is necessary for the cheekbones to be the POINT of such an exercise, not the byproduct. The person who figures out how to do both at once will be canonized.

That I have built Butt Rushmore from "healthy" foods is a particular source of grief to me. I haven't eaten meat in 42 years. I have never eaten fast food. I don't drink alcohol more than five times a year. I am allergic to chocolate.

Last spring, my read end was curvy. Now, it is like a little dog that follows me around corners about 30 seconds after the rest of me. It is composed of organic cheese, organic taco chips, organic vanilla lattes.

It's composed of gluttony, to be honest. I am a glutton, who eats to forget, who subconsciously believes that food devoured after sundown has no calories.

When I was young, I was a hunger artist. I could live for a day on a cup of tomato soup. At the end of that day, I would have lost five pounds. At the end of that week, I'd have lost ten. Now, I have lost both my hunger skills and my metabolic grace. A dear acquaintance just spent a full year losing 60 pounds through substituting fruits and vegetables for bread and meat and exercising daily. When I look at her, I want to be put to sleep -- not like a sick animal, but until I can sleep off at least half that many pounds.

That the fast food industry was a novelty when I was a child in the 1960s and now is a gabillion dollar industry, and that the cosmetic surgery and fitness industry has grown in direct response is a queasy witness not just to me but to American culture altogether.

To be fat in a hungry world is both painful and unfair. Being fat is bad enough; being fat and politcally incorrect is abominable.

If I could donate my fat, I would feel better about the whole distasteful issue of liposuction. But the technology does not yet exist for converting my sin into some kind of beneficial commodity.

If you come up with an idea, please write. If you have no respect for me for even considering this, please keep it to yourself.

Jackie M.

There are some beautiful websites out there constructed by writers I know.

And I wanted to direct you to some, to link up. They're writing blogs as diaries, blogs as diatribes, blogs as reflection and writing tips.

It's safe to say that most of them are like this:

http://www.pattyfriedman.com

http://www.jodipicoult.com

http://www.chrisbohjalian.com

http://www.luannrice.com

And so on. I'd like to recommend those from Adriana Trigiani, Beth Gutcheon, Holly Kennedy, Patricia Wood, Karin Slaughter, Anne LeClaire, Barbara Delinsky (you thought you knew her, but you don't know her now!), Susan Issacs, Joan Anderson, Elizabeth Berg, Scott Turow and Tess Gerritsen, one of the sites that offers the most practical wisdom.....

Just for when you are roaming!

Jackie M.

When My kids came home from school and said that "someone" named my first novel, 'The Deep End of the Ocean,' the second most influential book of the past 25 years -- second only to Harry Potter -- I thought they had me confused with Mitch Albom.

But it was true. USA Today named the Top Ten Most Influential Books of the past 25 years (not the best, mind you) and said that both J.K. Rowlings' instant classics and my book -- because it was the first of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club books -- changed the face of reading in the United Stated.

Changed the face of reading.

That made even me proud.

And even though I fervently wish I had the 263 million dollaras it was estimated that Ms. Rowlings made for the first Harry, well, at least I was atop 'The DaVinci Code.' (I fervently wish I had that bounty, too, greedy little philanthropist I am.)

You can see the story if you hit the 'News and Notes' section on this site.

I had a glass of grape juice and went back to work. But it was one of the only times I saw my kids' faces gleam with approval for my work.

That was worth it.

Jackie M.

The choice is made.

The housing contract is sent.

The letter of intent is signed and mailed.

It is real.

There are two steps in my family. On the first sit the three sons I had with my first husband, who died fourteen years ago. On the next, sit my two daughters and "the little boys," Will and Atticus, aged 3 and 1.

Marty used to be the youngest of "the little boys."

Since last November, we have spent an unwonted amount of time together, traveling from city to city, as he auditioned for college programs in Musical Theatre. These programs are tiny and intense. Some to which Marty applied -- and one to which he was accepted -- "took" only three boys and three girls.

An audition is a grueling process for the parent and the teenager. He has to dance and to sing, whether he's in good voice or whether he isn't. He has to act, even if his mind is elsewhere, and make his auditors believe he is a 15-year-old in Kentucky or a 21-year-old in Missouri.

Who knew he was so good? We didn't. We thought that theatre was possibly a vocation and possibly a hobby. Truly, we didn't think Marty had what it took to go all the way. The assessment of the heads of several respected programs convinced us he might.

He did it.

Except for the school where he first auditioned, Martin was accepted into every program. And then the truly agonizing part began -- choosing. Choosing on the basis of quality and cost and comfort and .. distance from home.

Not only is Marty in love, he's a sort of "home boy." He's the kind of boy who picks up his 3-year-old brother and carries him downstairs to keep him company while he dresses for a date.

During the process of choosing a college, Martin and I said things to each other so cruel I can't imagine saying them to another person. He called me a witch. I called him a nutcase. Each of us, at one point, pulled the car over and got out to take a breath and count to ten -- or thumb a ride, if it came to that. There were times he had to sing one of his audition songs -- the old classic 'Mama, A Rainbow' - which says in part, "What do you give to the lady who has given/All her life and love to you/What do you give to the reason you are living/I could window shop the world before I'm through.." -- through clenched teeth.

And now, it is finished.

And now, my heart is truly breaking. It truly hurts.

I open Martin's door and look at him as he sleeps. I insist on a hug when he leaves to go out.

I know that he has needed to tear his love for me limb from limb in order to make this separation bearable; but I can't do that. I'll miss
Marty's voice raised in song, his jokes, his crazy-lavish use of cologne, his teasing. I can't bear to think how quiet this house will be, still with five kids in it. I don't even know how his two-years-old brother feels. They fight to the point of injury sometimes. They disrespect and abuse each other. They love each other with a loyalty like no other. Dan goes to a college in our hometown. He can still live at home for another year. He complains about it; but he's grateful.

Martin would have done that too.

He made noises about attending the university in our hometown, to save us money (and he was genuine about wanting to do that). But the program there didn't offer all he needed; and we had to pretend to be hard in insisting that he venture just a little farther. We even had to say that it would... probably be a good thing for him to be on his own, that he was ready, that he was pushing all the buttons and bulldozing all the fences.

We didn't mean it.

I didn't mean it.

For a nickel, I'd take it all back. And that wouldn't be good for either him or me. When my husband died, Marty was my pal, my little human teddy bear, my 3-year-old sidekick on the unfamiliar mountain path of grief. He slept at the food of my too-large bed some nights. He learned to ride a bike under my hand.

I will never forget the day he took off alone. He tossed back one triumphant glance.

I wonder how it will be this time.

Jackie M.

If you would write a memorable male hero, mind my words.

Let him not speak.

Write him down his way -- without tears, shrieks, cries, thoughts but allow occasional grunts. Give him a last name. He may once have had a first name; but he has forgotten it. Do not make his last name or Allegro. It must be a name that sounds like a rock: Munch. Crunch. Click. Roak. Deck. Stone. McDeck. McRoak. Jones.

If he is an immigrant, call him O'Declan.

If you wish to be a famous writer, beloved of critics, when McStone does speak, do not use quotation marks. Famous creators of male characters shun quotation marks. They shun all expression of emotion or even sensation.

If your character cuts off two fingers with a mitre saw, have him blink and wrap the gushing stumps in a (dirty) rag.

Never use the word "feel" in connection with a male character. "Think" is permissible but not favored. A little, tiny boy character may feel -- but only rage, premature sexual urgings or abandonment. Happiness and love are outside the octave.

Successful male characters in fiction are not fulfilled or joyful. Ever. They may have some kind of pleasurable reaction during combat or orgasm -- and these activities should be roughly similar.

George Bailey was a wimp, as was King Arthur and Atticus Finch. They spoke, suffered and felt fear. They yearned. Real men don't yearn. If they do yearn, they don't know it. Hamlet was a wimp. Oedipus was not. When he got upset, he poked out his own eyes and winced./

A successful male character will not experience fear -- anymore than regret or happiness. He may experience desperation, usually having to do with how to survive a war or get out of a longterm relationship with a woman - and these activities should be roughly equivalent.

A real may must hate his father and be disgusted by his mother.

A real man (in fiction) must be possessed of a positive genius for misunderstanding his child.

A successful male character must be able to walk away from the great love of his life (or his child, his mother, anyone but his comrade in war) while his mind screams to him that he is making an irredeemable mistake. But he must never acknowledge this, especially to himself.

He must face death nonchalantly -- his own and that of others -- although be very serious and avid about money, cards, espionage, fishing or even golf. He must eagerly engage in physical fights, of the schoolyard variety.

If you must choose between two behaviors for your successful male character, choose the one most emphatically self-destructive. Make his response to death, intrigue, loss, castration, blindness, mass destruction, fraternal suicide or deportation the over-use of any kind of liquor -- except wine or (God forbid!) champagne. He must drink too much without ice and, if possible, without a glass.

If he sees his best friend blown to bits four feet from him, let him eat a hard-boiled egg. He must not speak or grieve openly -- or grieve at all, except perhaps a quarter century later, and then only through hard drinking or suicide (activities that should be roughly equivalent).

Let him make a climactic statement at the end of whatever you are writing. But not with punctuation! And not with contractions.

Great literature was never written by using the words "don't" or "can't." Everyone in the story (or novel) must sound as though he has stepped from the pages of a Civil War diary. (Charles Portis, the author of 'True Grit,' also used formal and archaic speech; but he WAS writing about a period shortly after the Civil War, and also is a genius.)

Make your modern hero say something not unlike this: It is all right. They are all whores. Or..You cannot expect a woman to know this. (This may veer dangerously close to emotion, so beware.) Capitalization is iffy as well.

When you need an ending, try this: Describe a broken and barren landscape. Make the only color a splash of blood, not RED blood (too vivid and likely to provoke emotion) but dark brown, with a thatch of hair embedded in it.

mcquade looked down at the pool of dried blood and noticed that the strands of hair in it were blond and those of a child and they were hairs belonging to his infant son mcquade did not know where his son's body was the wilderness was vast and the wilderness was brittle

it is better to have no expectations, mcquade said

he peeled and ate his boiled egg there was no salt he found a packet of pepper and ripped it open with his teeth the pepper was old and smelled of paper

THE END.

Jackie M.

First, yes, enough has been said about the shooter at Virginia Tech. The lost need our attention -- their friends and families, their hopes and losses.

Enough, and still, there is my need to say one final thing.

There was been much hand-wringing and expression of regret and disgust over NBC's decision to air a portion of the video images sent to them by Virginia Tech mass killer, Cho Seung-hui.

He called it his "manifesto." It was beyond disturbing; it was evil personified.

It was also, if we are honest, all too familiar.

As a mother, whose life after the death of my child would be dirt and ash, I understand with all my being the disbelief and agony of the families, the brothers and sisters, the mothers and fathers, the aunts, grandchildren, grandparents and sweethearts, who saw it.

And so, part of me cries out "Foul!"A part of me says that it was wrong to show America the hateful, self-pitying ramblings of a young man's last look into hell -- before he blew away so many dreams.

But as a mother, also, I support NBC's choice, perhaps not quite for the reasons the network would wish.

I have been the mother of one boy whose childhood wounds left him friendless and angry -- although never violent.

I have been the mother of a boy whose learning problems left him scorned and avoided -- although his basic sanity and sweet soul, along with his family's love, rescued him.

They were angry boys. They were hurt and tormented boys. Some of this was of their own making. Some of it was not. Because neither had a predisposition for violent acting out, because they let us seek active solutions, they expressed their pain only in words and poems. They grew up. They found peace.

But what is the response in a child who is predisposed to act out bizarrely -- who is predisposed to mental illness? In 'Now You See Her,' my most recent book, I wrote about a girl obsessed with celebrity, driven by her own longings to an incomprehensible, although victimless, crime. This was a tiny example of what unbearable interior pressure can force an impulsive mind to do.

Although Cho Seung-hui's hardened face and spiteful words are terrifying to watch, would they have been so terrifying had they been part of a music video? Or a film? Or a Showtime series, such as 'Dexter,' a yarn about a sociopathic Robin Hood who exercises his inescapable urge to kill by killing serial killers?

Are they so ghastly because they are linked to something real? Haven't all of us seen worse in the films and television shows we love?

I think we have.

I think that had it not been real, it would have been called 'edgy,' 'dark,' insightful.'

Like Phil LaMarche's book about a boy whose friend shoots his own younger brother while they are examining a rife -- a tragedy that wins the gun owner the adulation of a group of high school vigilantes -- we would have accepted it as an insight into our collective soul.

"Monster!" one public radio host cried. "Compassionate Americans were subjected to to the rantings of a monster!"

Cry monster. Go ahead.

But then admit that we are the doctors Frankenstein who made this monster.

Yes, there were many failed attempts to help or stop Cho Seung-hui, when he was a boy and when he was a man. Many were chilled by his obsessive writings and his icy demeanor. Many were frightened. But either they drew back or ran into roadblocks that prevented by those who couldn't -- or didn't -- take this mortal threat seriously. Among the first things Cho Seung-hui said was, "You had a hundred billion chances to have avoided today."

Are we responsible for every nut with a gun who snaps? We are if he's intent on killing our kids.

Does uniting in our disapproval of NBC News absolve us of that? If we do not have to face the sight of Cho Seung-hui, or hear him speak, is it easier to believe that he was one of a kind?

Is it easier to believe that none of us knows anyone like him?

Or are we afraid to look at him because he is our own?

We all know someone as angry as this sick young man -- someone who may never harm a soul, but will live forever in torment, hating the world. We all know that he could have gone amok if raised if raised in a Quaker village, never exposed to the media feast of gore that surrounds us. We all know that being bombarded with these images blunts our children's normal response to violence, almost from the moment they learn to talk.

We are a two-headed, two-hearted society. We are the most tender and giving of people.

But we also are a society soaked in violence. We exalt and worship violence. We don't consider it an unfortunate part of human nature. That's just rhetoric.

"Action" movies are not about action. They are about violence, just as "cowboy" movies were not about herding cows. They were about gunfights and genocide.

We cheer for those who create our violent entertainments. We make them rich.

We don't just need our guns. We love them. In Japan, a country with a samurai history, a nation of warriors, a country of nearly 130 million people, the number of gun deaths among young people last year... was zero.

So, as we mourn the death of the victims and heroes at Virginia Tech, let's not be hypocrites as we do. The bell tolls not just for those who loved and laughed and learned and died there.

It tolls for us.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

I spoke the other day at a luncheon for Women Against MS in Washington, D.C.

I arrived, uh, late.

I arrived at four p.m., went on a monument tour until midnight and had to speak at 11 a.m.

And that sounds like plenty of time to get onself sorted out.

But because my daughter, although an excellent person, is 11 years old, I had to spend the morning hunting under the bed for lost shoes and answering questions about why the tips of the green and rose-colored pencils always break off first and explaining about war in the Sudan and trying to stuff five ("But they were fifty percent off!") CIA t-shirts into a backpack before I could put on my makeup.

And that was discouraging.

At the beginnings of a reformation, after a winter that devastated body and soul, I look ... not so hot. It's difficult to start over. For a couple of years, I felt good. I felt like myself. But then I put on some weight and lost some emotional tread and it's back to square one only slower.

Anyway, before I went to sleep, I watched a video intended to show me how to put on this excellent new makeup I'd purchased.

And at 1 a.m., I thought, "Help me, Saint Anthony. I am watching a makeup application video and I am at the halfway point of my life on earth if not past it."

Then I got down to the ballroom to give the speech, and saw that it was not just good, it was grand. The mistress of ceremonies is a political reporter for NBC, an absolute doll, and at 100 months pregnant with twins, weighed less than I.

But she was sweet and giving and so were the organizers -- all of whose lives have been touched by MS -- because either they have it or a relative or spouse does.

So when I began to give my talk, I felt.. not horrible.

And the talk went well. I could see my little daughter's eyes on me (and on how many of the packets of gift note cards she could liberate) and felt proud that it was, coincidentally, Take Your Daughter To Work Day and here was mine. I know she noticed the words I said about her Aunt Jeanine, which is why I travel to raise funds to fight MS in the first place.

I talked about my beloved best friend from childhood, Jeanine, who ten years ago could dance all night and sing in the morning and now... she can't do that.

She is still as beautiful as she ever was. But her gait is shuffling and sometimes her eyes slip away. MS has done this. All her life, she has had a mortal terror of needles and now must give herself shots every two weeks. And she does. She fought to start a brilliant home baby business, but she just couldn't keep up with it and finally stopped. And I'm proud of her for that.

She's a loving mother to my godchild, Gemma, and her laugh comes from deep within. She puts up with no bull from anyone. Never did. When she was stricken, she had finally, after twenty years of raising her daughter as a single mom, become an actor. She was good at it.

When she could no longer act, she taught. She was good at it.

Now she cannot do that.

I spoke about being in a Broadway theater with her as Brian Stokes Mitchell sang about fighting the unbeatable foe and being willing to march into hell "for a heavenly cause." Her face was lit from within.

These are emotional events, but it's dopey to watch a speaker cry; so when I feel as though I might, I try to think of something else. And I never do cry. I always make it past that point.

That day, I thought about my pores. I wondered if this audience of 750 was able to see into my pores to my soul as my face was projected 50 times its size on two screens that flanked me.

At the end, I got a surprise.

Jeanine had sent the organizers a letter.

In part it read, "When we were kids, I was shy and tended to blend in. You were popular, and yet you chose me to be your friend. You made me part of what I never would have been part of. You got me through every literature and writing course in high school and college, as you constantly remind me. And now, you pull for me in this, with all your might. As you have been for 35 years, since we were children, you still there for me. You are all that and more. I love you."

I had to take a deep breath then, but still, I didn't cry.

And then, when it was finished, I went back to a table to sign books (as my daughter began busily collecting about five pounds worth of left-behind note cards). It was only by chance that I glanced up at the still picture on the screen, as the ballroom filled with the sounds of Billy Withers'song "Lean on Me."

It was a picture of me and Jeanine, one I'd never seen. We were laughing about something and my head was on her shoulder -- her tiny and frail shoulder.

And I realized, as tears I could not stop ran freely down through all that expensive makeup, that it truly is she who lets me lean on her, not the other way around.

Yes, I raise funds to fight the vicious disease that plagues her. But it is little compared to what she has done for me, done for me always -- for the hours she has spent on the phone, talking me through my ever-flourishing disasters, with lovers, husbands, children, work .. makeup.

When we were first able to drive, and going out for a big night to get tacos at Pepe's on the west side of Chicago, Jeanine and I would go to Carson's department store and drift through the cosmetics section.

Neither of us had any money, so at one counter, we would "try out" the mascara. At another, we would "experiment" with different shades of the blusher. Finally, we would top it off with a spritz of some horrible cologne ("Cie" or "Charlie") and dash off for our elegant evening in my mother's Chevy Impala.

And you know, those were the best nights of my life.

They weren't the nights I loved my children or my husband. They weren't grand. But they were great. They were SO great. They were the reason people can watch the movie "Grease" over and over and never tire of it. They were the nights we sat on the hood of the car and smoked cigarettes without inhaling because we didn't know how and flirted with boys in black leather jackets and were JUST SO COOL.

And so this is my letter back to her.

Dearest. I'm no longer popular. Half the time, my husband wants to break my neck for being obsessed with my writing instead of with him and my kids sass me all day long. I have friends, but no time to see them -- except for you and a very few others, who understand how little time I have. I'm not a pretty girl anymore. But ... those nights. And how we talked then, how we talk now, with no holds barred, oh no, they can't take that away from me.

No, they can't take that away from me, ever.

Jeannie, I love you, too.

Jacquelyn Mitchard