Gratification can be defined as seeing your daughter-in-law who works for CBS laugh her head* off at one of your shows.

*Note my restraint in using the more polite term in this blog.

It’s been ages since I’ve dropped a name, so give a hearty welcome to..

Judith Light* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Light  We were at Carnegie Mellon together. She might even remember me.

 

*As absolute proof she is famous, her name came up first when I searched ‘Judith.’

 

 

Tape manuscript to fridge. Throw thousands of tiny comma magnets. Keep the ones that stick. #amwriting #amediting

For the past HOUR two people a few feet away have been loudly discussing how to divide up the cost of a party for EIGHT PEOPLE. No, honestly. I am tempted to say ,”I will pay for the whole damn party if you shut up.”

*In my writing place. Though I believe it’s a leading contender in the “Anywhere ever” category.

That’s what the couple next to me is doing. But they are doing it quietly, not so much as a lip smack. So I’m fine with that.

Just when I thought I’d had every interruption known to man in my writing place, something akin to fire alarms sounded all over the room. It was nearly everybody’s cellphone alerting us to beware of flash flooding. Man the lifeboats.

A small press was actually seeking submissions so I sent in a completed manuscript** today. Now I feel bereft, like a parent sending one of her many, yet equally brilliant, children off to college, if college were a dank dungeon from which they might never emerge.

*Not to be confused with fifty shades of anything.

**There is no such thing.

Note to woman with 18 month old: no it’s not impossible to stop him from dragging chairs across the cement floor. Try harder.

Somehow I didn’t get the memo and showed up at at a cancelled critique session (30 miles away). However, my critique partner was having a lousy week.* And we had tea and she gave me a really good idea for my manuscript.** All in all, it was an excellent critique session.

*When the best thing that’s happened all week is your dishwasher broke, that is one lousy week.

**Like cut down on the phrase “what you should do” if you’ve used it 8 times in 23 pages.

I know some writers find writing frustrating, even agonizing.* I, on the other hand, feel transported to some mystical alternate universe.**

*and a bunch of other terms, some of which aren’t appropriate this more or less PG blog

**where the phone doesn’t ring and I don’t think about the laundry I left in the dryer. Oh, hell. Now I’m thinking about it.