Yesterday, was pub day for my book THE AFFAIR. And as I was knee deep in cobwebs in the back of my basement, sorting through old National Geographic Magazines, I finally realized the difference between being an author and being a writer. The latter is a lot less glamorous.

This is the oh-so-unglamorous day in the life of a writer on publication day: I woke up. Ate two hardboiled eggs, drank a cup of black coffee and sat down at my computer. It’s pretty much what  I do every day. Not so glamorous.

I wrote from eight to one, working on the novelization of my play Sister Cities. I took three breaks; one to walk my dogs, one to stretch my back and one to check my emails. I got the requisite congratulations on pub day emails from my agent, manager and publisher (only my mother forgot).  Still not particularly glamorous.

I then had lunch: a tuna salad sandwich with vegenaise and pepperoncini. After lunch, I cleaned my basement, which was in desperate need of sorting out. I try to exercise an hour a day, healthy mind/healthy body sort of thing and while I’m committed to Pilates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and cycling on weekends, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I get creative. And I figured clearing out ten years of National Geographic magazines would count as heavy lifting. But as I was covered from head to toe in a cocktail of dust, dirt and cobwebs trying not to have an asthma attack, I wondered how Danielle Steel spends her publication day. I imagine it’s drinking expensive champagne at some exotic restaurant overlooking the French Riviera with her adoring posse and paparazzi. My champagne was cold coffee which I couldn’t heat up because my microwave is on the fritz, my posse were my two greyhounds who watched me lug magazines like I was insane and my paparazzi was my mother who had just received her copy of the book and finally called.

I took a long hot bath, got into my work clothes…which are yoga pants as I have officially reached the wrong side of forty year old women who wear yoga pants every day even though they never do yoga — and got back to the computer. I went through my emails and enjoyed the adulation from friends and spent some time working on social media tweeting and faceboking and pinteresting to promote the book. I scanned a few lovely reviews by talented bloggers who are the Internet’s version of  Michiko Kakutani and Charles Isherwood and worked for the next several hours on a project I am ghostwriting.

Cereal for dinner. Jumped into bed and read a few chapters of Gillian Flynn’s mesmerizing Gone Girl and fell asleep to Abby Lee Miller pontificating on Dance Moms.

Not quite the glamorous life of an author. But certainly the satisfying life of a writer.