words today: 2798
words total: 22,547, and the draft is DONE!

I am hereby officially not ever saying again that I’m going to get up and go to B&N, because every time I say it, it doesn’t happen. Sheez. I’ll just let ya’ll know _after_ I go.

Getting a late start, if you can call mid-afternoon late. First I’m blasting my new theme song, Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For”. That’s better. Time to get to work.

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Mmmm… We went out for sushi goodness with Albra & Hans, Morgana & Brian, Kelvin & Debbie, and Ismay, for Hans’s birthday. We were there for three hours, eating and talking and laughing. Poor Morgana had the worst of it. First the waiter spilled a glass of water on her (luckily she was wearing merino wool, so it all wiped off—and luckily it was water and not her root beer). Then they took forever to bring her a new water and all our edomame, probably because they were freaked out from spilling water on a customer. Then they didn’t take her order (she doesn’t like sushi). Finally she was able to order a chicken dish. After the rest of us had finished our soup and the first and major round of sushi, they told her they didn’t have any chicken. So she asked for the same dish with pork, and then went away again, and then she asked for soup, and it arrived too hot, just before her meal finally showed up. At this point we were on the second round of sushi, so it balanced out. And I have now tried sushi with feta, which is…weird. I adore sushi with cream cheese, but I don’t think the feta works for me, ultimately.

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So, it looks as though having a top New York editor ask to read my stuff lights a fire under my butt. (About f-ing time, wouldn’t you say? About the fire, that is.) “In Her Hands” is headed for its conclusion, and when I’ve glanced back (normally not a good idea, but I was putting in notes to myself) I’ve really liked what I’ve read (and subsequently forgotten). It’s good. It needs work, but it’s good. One of the things the editor said to me, as a generalization about the contest entries, was “if you can’t write, the game is over. If you need an editor, then we’re in business.” She’d already said that the writing in the entries was fantastic. So.

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Oh my gods. The draft is done. Stick a fork in it. Done! I came down here thinking I might write 500 or so more words, but then Ken got caught up in stuff upstairs and didn’t come down so we could watch TV, and I just kept going. And going…

It needs work, there’s no doubt about that. I have lots of notes in brackets of things to add or change, and it’s about 2500 words too short, which won’t be a problem given that I need to add things.

Which I can do tomorrow.

Wow. Hot damn.