Nip/Tuck

What is this, the Dead Author Society (in reference to how the den has looked this week)? More like the half-dead author society, sweetie darlings. My babies gave me my first flu of the season, so I haven't written to you much this week. Well, neither have the Brontës. What's their excuse? Oh, the annual DASCon. Okay.

I gave myself a deadline; a story I wanted out of my hands by the end of the week. That's what I've been doing the past seven days, every moment I could spare; nipping and tucking, getting rid of the boring parts, breathing fire into the rest (at least that's what my throat feels like, as if I actually had), and drinking gallons of tea since coffee tastes like cigarettes when your whole head is congested.

You know what? It is done. That's what I wanted to report, but alas I can't since it isn't so I won't, but: I got close, very close, close enough to feel good about my progress. Am I going to send out a half-assed manuscript because by God I said by the end of the week I would? Of course not. When you're running a fever (and when you haven't had coffee for a week and may I please have this one addiction in addition to this awful, awful!, writing bug?!), you don't know your shit from your Shinola. And you only want to polish your stuff with one of them.

So, I won't be writing to you much until it's done, over with and out of my hands. I hope to celebrate it with a jumbo mug of café au lait from Brazilian beans I'll grind myself and sniff sniff sniff away in abandon, if I can. Ah, the small, simple pleasures. I wish you a week filled with them.