Back from a writer's conference, I sit in my home office surrounded by piles of paper. I just completed the second draft of my novel and have a stack of changes to make. I have three months to get it into shape and send it off to New York. Why? When...

At the YMCA music blasts from the upper floor, where a roomful of women flap their arms, climb on and off steppers and swing their bodies around. In the Fall everything shifts into high gear. People get into shape, start classes and plunge into their...