n. It was the exact way I’d signed my name since the fifth grade. Then I scrawled out the date, February 28, 2005, the day our marriage was laid to rest.
“Good girl,” Annabelle said, inching a fresh martini closer to me. “So are you going to write about Joel?” Because I am a writer, Annabelle, like everyone else I knew, believed that writing about my relationship with Joel as a thinly veiled novel would be the best revenge.
“You could build a whole story around him, except change his name slightly,” she continued. “Maybe call him Joe, and make him look like a total jerk.” She took a bite and nearly choked on her food, laughing, before saying, “No, a jerk with erectile dysfunction.”
The only problem is that even if I had wanted to write a revenge novel about Joel, which I didn’t, it would have been a terrible book. Anything I got down on paper, if I could get anything down on paper, would have lacked imagination. I know this because I had woken up every day for the past eight years, sat at my desk, and stared at a blank screen. Sometimes I’d crank out a great line, or a few solid pages, but then I’d get stuck. And once I was frozen, there was no melting the ice.
My therapist, Bonnie, called it clinical (as in terminal) writer’s block. My muse had taken ill, and her prognosis didn’t look good.
Eight years ago I wrote a best-selling novel. Eight years ago I was on top of the world. I was skinny—not that I’m fat now (well, OK, so the thighs, yes, maybe a little)—and on the New York Times best seller list. And if there were such a thing as the New York Times best life list, I would have been on that, too.
After my book, Calling Ali Larson, was published, my agent encouraged me to write a follow-up. Readers wanted a sequel, she told me. And my publisher had already offered to double my advance for a second book. But as hard as I tried, I had nothing more to write, nothing more to say. And eventually, my agent stopped calling. Publishers stopped wondering. Readers stopped caring. The only evidence that my former life wasn’t just a figment was the royalty checks that came in the mail every so often and an occasional letter I received from a somewhat deranged reader by the name of Lester McCain, who believed he was in love with Ali, my book’s main character.
I still remember the rush I felt when Joel walked up to me at my book release party at the Madison Park Hotel. He was at some cocktail party in an adjoining room when he saw me standing in the doorway. I was wearing a Betsey Johnson dress, which in 1997 was the ultimate: a black strapless number that I’d spent an embarrassing amount of money on. But, oh yes, it was worth every penny. It was still in my closet, but I suddenly had the urge to go home and burn it.
“You look stunning,” he had said, rather boldly, before even introducing himself. I remember how I felt when I heard him utter those words. It could have been his trademark pick-up line, and let’s be real, it probably was. But it made me feel like a million bucks. It was so Joel.
A few months prior to that, GQ had done a big spread on the most eligible “regular-guy” bachelors in America—no, not the list that every two years always features George Clooney; the one that listed a surfer in San Diego, a dentist in Pennsylvania, a teacher in Detroit, and, yes, an attorney in New York, Joel. He had made the Top 10. And somehow, I had snagged him.
And lost him.
Annabelle was waving her hands in front of me. “Earth to Emily,” she said.
“Sorry,” I replied, shuddering a little. “No, I won’t be writing about Joel.” I shook my head and tucked the papers back into the envelope, then put it in my bag. “If I write anything again, it will be different than any story I’ve ever tried to write.”
Annabelle shot me a confused look. “What about the follow-up to your last book? Aren’t you going to finish that?”
“Not anymore,” I said, folding a paper napkin in half and then in half again.
“Why not?”
I sighed. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t force myself to churn out 85,000 mediocre words, even if it means a book deal. Even