A jumbled and jangled day so far, which is what happens when one is still recovering from the flu (seriously: next person who visits me knowing they have a cold? Southern hospitality be damned). Planning to redeem it with an evening of solid word- and paper-wrangling, but in the meantime, thinking about:

Ronlyn Domingue on recovering from getting panned by the NYT

Nineveh on a woman who wanted to be a midwife ...which could alternately be linked as "why it fucking well matters that Cameron hasn't a man on his Christmas card list that hasn't been to Harrow," or yet again could be tagged in the category of "you do not know when you will be exactly the right person in the right place for someone who needs to hear what you know" --

-- which is pretty much my raison d'operandi, as detailed before here and at the end of here (under "Plans for 2008" and "Modus scribendi" - and rereading all that, well, plus ca change. Change the year to "2010" and there you have it.

(Revisiting of past declarations triggered in large part by Lori-Lyn's This story. Writing this week has not gone badly so far - improved a couple poems, started a third, and am wrestling with a demon plotbunny that is almost certainly going to end up as two separate stories (at least), because it is just that demented (and more important, already way too epic for the assignment in question). On the plus side, I've caught myself grinning maniacally at some of the bits I've been jotting down, and that usually bodes well.

"make some pasta" on changing careers: "Journalism is a misunderstood field that many dabble in but few do well. I've heard people say that everyone's a journalist. No, they are not."