I hate Word. No, really. Mine seems to be run by an evil reformatting gnome who, for no reason whatsoever, occasionally inserts a space between paragraphs or at the end of a line, requiring me to use way too many of my depleted supply of braincells to fix it.

Just when I persuaded them to turn off the horrible, third rate, makes-you-want-to-slam-your-head-against-the-wall Reggae in my coffee/writing place, the fire alarm has a nervous breakdown and begins flashing like a strobe. Of course this only happens when I absolutely must finish something ASAP.

The score of Cinema Paradiso works very well when writing YA Magical Realism. Ok, let’s face it. The score of Cinema Paradiso works well with everything. Also, it’s drowning out the high-pitched giggles of the woman at the next table.

The woman behind me in my favorite coffee/writing place has been talking on her phone to various people for 90 minutes. Luckily for me, it’s all about food storage in Nigeria (no, honestly) so I have no desire to do any serious eavesdropping.

*If you are expecting a scholarly discussion of Hillel, you will be very disappointed.

Every writer* has experienced those moments of self-doubt, those “I’m not talented, wasting my time, my writing is crap that nobody but indulgent friends and family will ever read, what was I thinking” times.

So It was astounding to get such high praise** from an agent who requested a full manuscript and another who asked me to query. Best of all, I really like both of them a lot and feel we’d make a good team.

All of this happened at Saturday’s Unicorn Conference. Thank you, Jan Kardys.

*I base this on a scientific sampling of the #amwriting Twitter group and a few writers I know.

**Don’t worry. I’ll go back to my old self-deprecating self soon.

Some of them are even good.

At last night’s murder mystery in Newport News, VA, my cast complained that I so often get to be the victim*, thus giving me the last ten-fifteen minutes of the show to relax and drink bottled water. One of the perks of being the director.

*20 years ago, I was usually the murderer. It all balances out eventually.

Many times reading  The Quality of Silence I said to myself, this supposedly realistic book has a totally unrealistic premise and many unbelievable plot twists, yet I read the whole thing in two days, because it was well written and very exciting. Also, I haven’t read anything that interesting about the Arctic since seventh grade.*

There is a lesson for writers in this.**

*It was called The Friendly Arctic by Vilhjalmur Stefansson and it was 2,000 pages long. No, honestly.

**Let me know when you figure out what it is.

Here is my new absolute rule for responding to a critique group’s suggestions

Don’t bristle. Silently take what you like, ignore what you don’t, especially when it sounds like a line from a class.They haven’t read the whole novel and they may not remember the last section they did, so some things won’t make sense to. Also, taste varies from person to person.**

*File under, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

**And nobody’s will ever be as excellent as yours. HAHAHAHA

In celebration of crossing the 36,000 word mark in a first draft, I bought an extra cup of coffee and a brownie. Now I can’t sleep. You can’t have everything. Given the choice again, I’d still go with the extra coffee and the brownie.