that nagging little instinct telling me I don't really want to be an editor has a point. For those of you who don't know, I'm the Senior Fiction Editor for Lumina, SLC's graduate writing journal. I've spent this week trying to corral three of the four fiction pieces going in the journal -- one which I'm personally editing, and two which, as senior editor, I'm responsible for making sure get into the production team by deadline. The deadline is tomorrow. My piece is finally done, after one last marathon edit (Thank God, the author was not a prima donna and actually quite pleasant about working with me). One piece is currently who-knows-where, we were apparently waiting for the sign off from the author on the final edit, but I can't seem to find the editor in charge of that piece to find out if we got it or not. The other piece was ahead of schedule -- until its author was in a fire. She's now in a hotel with smoke-inhalation induced laryngitis, which means our communication is restricted to her husband's work email. To make matters worse, something funky is going on with the file she sent us, and we haven't been able to make corrections and send it back for her final approval. I haven't got any work done on my own writing in three days because I've been dealing with this instead. AARGH!

I think I've finally figured out what my thesis novel is about. Problem is, it is a mild shift from what I thought it was about, and requires the introduction of a new subplot with a character that has previously been pretty much scenery in three chapters. I can't decide whether I should start writing at least the first of these new chapters, or just keep revising and leave the subplot out of my thesis. Guess I'll have to talk it over with Lucy. Unfortunately, I'm not meeting with her for another two weeks.

Meanwhile, I have one roommate with a UTI and one roommate who doesn't seem to have been to work in two weeks, and apparently thinks she's the only one in the apartment who doesn't have to do housework. And I'm exhausted. I went to a lecture yesterday evening (Rosemary Wells, the children's book author/illustrator -- it was very good) and when I got home at 8, it felt like it was 11 p.m. I took a shower and stared at the T.V., which isn't easy to do on a Wednesday night. (Side note: do people really watch the American Idol results shows? It's so boring -- and they repeat everything three times!) I hope it's just stress, because I can not afford to get sick right now.