Good afternoon from beautiful, sweltering New Jersey. Every single flower around my house is drooping from the soaring temperatures. I’ve been watering them twice a day during this heat wave and it barely helps. It’s too hot for outside activity. I’ll stay in the house, but there’s not all that much to do. My indoor options are as follows:
Eat myself into oblivion
Binge yet again on Criminal Minds
Write
I’m on a diet, so eating is out. If I watch another episode of Criminal Minds and Thomas Gibson doesn’t step out of the television and into my living room, I’m putting my foot through the screen (similar to his alleged kicking incident involving a writer – and most of the writers I know deserve a good, swift kick now and then).
Gee. I guess I’ll write.
My posts have been few and far between this year with good reason. There’s no real news to share about anything I’m currently working on. Having work published is, of course, the goal of most writers. Stories in the planning and editing stages, as well as waiting to hear back from agents and editors, takes lots of time. The rewrites are torture and also time-consuming. What’s a writer to do?
I ran into my good buddy Jane this morning and she asked me if I write anymore. I explained that yes, I’m writing, but writers go through all kinds of steps before their work is published. I suppose if an author chooses to self-publish, it’s a whole different story. I don’t do that and I doubt very much I ever will. The process seems complicated and some of the work out there presented by self-published authors, to be frank, isn’t up to par. The continuity of the story lines wouldn’t make it past a professional editor, there are spelling errors, grammatical errors, and many of the plots aren’t all that interesting. So I’m going the traditional route for the two stand-alones I’m working on, as well as sticking to traditional publishing for the new series. I hope to God all of you out there will recall my name and remember that I do, indeed, write!
Stay cool everybody. Drink lots of water. And if you happen to run into Thomas Gibson inside some nice, air-conditioned place, please send him over!