how to

i never read new york magazine because it's--and everyone has their own personal new york magazine diss--like people magazine but just about manhattan. or: it's full of advice for people who have a ton of money but no taste, or for people who think they're going to magically have a lot of money someday. i don't know. i don't even get it. but i did buy the last issue, because the cover said it was all about "how to: open a restaurant, a boutique, a bar, become an expat, raise sheep upstate...." (puncutation mine.) it was the "raise sheep upstate" that caught my eye, since that is a fantasy of mine. each of those topics, and more, has a nice-sized blurb about someone who really did one of those things and a breakdown into real numbers, like start-up cost, rent, how many cupcakes, or whatever, you have to sell per day to break even. i really appreciated the info. i learned, for example, that you can't make any money selling chicken eggs.

one of the blurbs was "how to publish a novel," note: it wasn't "how to write a novel," because here in new york we don't care about the actual thing, we just care about how to make money or get famous because of it. debra galant, author of rattled, just released from st. martin's press, advises you to "buy a software program that helps you create a plot. 'i used Dramatica Pro. My husband ... called it 'plot-o-matic.''" her novel is about a "woman in a suburban McMansion who gets in a fight with everybody after an endangered rattlesnake dies in her backyard." is new york magazine's tongue in its cheek? i can't tell. anyway, i think we should dispense with the whole writing and reading of books altogether and simply take pills that give us the sensation of just having read a book, which, for me, is, if the book was any good, slightly wistful, a little excited and maybe a little sensitive.