I’ve been so focused on writing my novel that it never occurred to me to wonder what life would be like when I was no longer writing.

True, I’m not finished. I wrote a first draft. I spent several days at the library, reading it and marking it up with different color markers and highlighters and attaching Post-It guideposts. It was exceedingly pleasant, in the fall weather, to walk the half hour downtown to the post office and then back again, with my book tucked into its own cardboard box, stopping for coffee and maybe a nosh somewhere along the route.

Then I took a week to revise based on my edits. This took longer than I thought it would. I’m a former copy editor. I’m accustomed to editing other people’s work and to following other people’s edits in my own. But there are many types of editing (check out this list) and I was never trained to edit for structure. Grammar, word choice, tone, dialog, rhythm—that I can look for. How it all fits together—for that I need help.

So I printed a fresh copy of the manuscript and handed it off to the head of my order. No, not my Chief Rabbit. My wife. Deborah has so far said, “It reads like a book.” She’s still immersed in it. Maybe she’s also consulting a marriage counselor. Haruki Murakami, in his memoir Novelist As a Vocation, mentions his wife exactly once, and not by name. He does say that she reads his early drafts. Then they argue and “harsh words are sometimes exchanged.”

In our house, we reserve harsh words for the occasional canine caper. I’m eager to hear what Deborah has to say. I’ve worked on my book almost every day for a year and I feel bereft without it. What am I supposed to write now? What do I do with all my notes, background material, and writing that led me down detours or into a cul-de-sac? Or do I pivot out of the book and into all of my abandoned stories and narrative misfires? Maybe I should write a memoir. Say something nice about my wife.

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

When I was working, Theodore Bernstein was my brother, my captain, my king. His books would seem antiquated now; this one, his last, was published in the 1970s. But for me he was a far more readable helper than Henry Fowler of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.