I am a writer. I can’t help it. Don’t judge.

December: 2012 goals.

Well. This is it. The final check-in with my 2012 goals, which is delayed because I’ve been kinda lax these past few months.  But still this is a big deal for me, because this is one of the few years in which I’ve held myself accountable for the resolutions I made at the start of the year, and actually, I’ve made progress. Care to see how I’ve done? Read on. Can’t be bothered?* Below is my favorite Epic Rap Battle of History. Enjoy.

Now. Of the five concrete goals I set for myself in 2012, I accomplished three:

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. My book came out in January. By March I had accomplished this. I am not rich. I doubt if I’ve broken even on my expenses with this book, but I have made more than $20 and that’s a record for me.

Send out at least three short stories. Done. I’ve sent out three short stories and some chapters from my novel. I have more rejection letters for my office door because of this,  but I also have more finished work to send out.

Read one two novels a month in 2012. I set out to read 12 novels this year, because although I love to read, I tend not to do the things I enjoy and instead fret about things I don’t enjoy at all. The only time I read anything is when I had to, and then I did it in a state of stress. That’s counter-productive for someone whose job is to read and write. So I thought 12 novels would be a good way to make reading a habit again. I started out by re-reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a sort of holiday gift to myself last year and then I began to pick other books to read, starting with the shortest in my bookcase: The House on Mango Street, Heart of Darkness, Turn of the Screw and The Stranger.  By the time I finished those, l was binge-reading, like I used to read when I was a kid. The 12-novel goal turned into a 24-novel goal, and I am currently on novels 30 and 31.

So it’s been a great reading year. I’ve moved from very short novels and novellas to very long ones: Anna Karenina and The Count of Monte Cristo. I’ve read work that I’ve been wanting to read for years, and authors I know who published their first books recently. It’s been a great year, and I have to give some of the credit for this goal to Goodreads’s reading challenge, which helped me keep track of all my books.

Nest year’s reading goal will be however many books I’ve read in 2012, including one piece by Charles Dickens that’s neither A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist. Any suggestions?

I did not accomplish two goals: I didn’t finish the second draft of my novel or send it to agents, mostly because I was working on another manuscript for half of 2012. That manuscript I did finish and send out.  I didn’t know at the time I set my goals that the manuscript was in my future, so I don’t feel too badly about not finishing my novel. That said, it’s time to get back to work on it.

I also chose to work on two conflicts that have been giving me difficulties for a long time: My feelings about faith and my issues with anxiety. I worked on both, on and off, throughout the year and although neither is by any means resolved (and may never be) I do feel like I have a much clearer idea about faith now.

The idea was that I was going to write an essay about whichever issue I came closest to resolving, and I still might try to do that. But the problem I face, ironically, has to do with the other issue: anxiety. I’m not sure I want people to know how I feel about faith and religion. I have people in my life who are both very religious and who aren’t religious at all, and I enjoy not coming down on one side or the other. For now, it might just be enough for me to know how I feel and what I believe.

And that’s it. I will be putting together a new list of goals for next year. I’m wondering if I should include more personal goals and not just writing goals this time. I don’t want to have a huge list of goals, but I also have some things I’d like to do that are not writing-related. Thoughts?

*Dear people who can’t be bothered and for whom I am posting distractions,  if you are truly out there, why have you been clicking on these posts all year?

/4 Comments/by

November: 2012 goals

Well, I should have posted this monthly update on my New Years goals/resolutions a good two weeks ago, but thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I’ve been abandoning my blogging duties this month. But better late than never. Don’t care? Have a distraction: Busty Girl Comics, which has been cracking me up all year.

On to the goals:

Finish the second draft of my novel by April (September.) This month, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to finish up my other project for Dec. 1. My novel is a little neglected, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing research, and that’s meant interviews with drag queens, documentaries about drag and transgender culture, and a lot of articles from the ’90s about drag culture.
I think my husband is a little tired, actually, of all the research I’ve been doing, because as we’ve been working to remove the mud from our belongings, or to truck waterlogged items out of the basement, I keep hitting him with drag factoids. For example:

“Did you know that voguing got its start in prison?”

or

“Whatever happened to Crystal La’Beija?”

or

“I am so not paying $3,000 for a VHS copy of The Queen. I mean, come on.”

He’s a pretty good sport about my research. I mean, he sat through something like 10 or 12 versions of Macbeth two years ago, but he’s going to be happy when this phase of research is over. If it’s ever over, that is. Because this stuff is fascinating.

Get it sent to agents before summer. It could happen.

Send out at least three short stories. Done. I’ve sent out three short stories and some chapters from my novel.

Read one two novels a month in 2012. Done! I’ve met my goal of reading 24 novels in a year, and in fact, am up to 29. This past month I read books written by people I know: David Fitzpatrick’s memoir, Sharp,  Nick Knittel’s collection of short stories, Good Things, The Whipping Club by MFA alum Deb Henry and Twilight of the Drifter by family friend and prolific author Shelly Frome. Then I moved on to manuscripts that haven’t been published yet by people I know.

And then the lights went out and reading was hard to do for a while. Now that we can see at night, I’m finishing a manuscript and then turning to The Count of Monte Cristo, which was recommended to me this summer by a friend. I’m really looking forward to that.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. Done in March. I got my first royalties in July. I can confirm that I made more than $20.

Other goals: I also set to work on two of my big conflicts this year: My feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety. All I can say is that in the last month I did some praying, although some of it was involuntary, and I was anxious.

/2 Comments/by

I’m on the The Fairfield Writer’s Blog today!

,

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Alex McNab, a novelist and journalist who writes for the Fairfield Writer’s Blog, to talk about revision and drink caffeinated beverages. McNab began reading The Garret a year and a half ago when I began revising my novel, and – since he’s revising his own novel – he was interested in knowing more about my process.

His post about our chat went up this morning. I am so excited about it, and I hope you check it out.

We talked about re-typing work, when to look at notes from writing workshop during the revision process, strengthening prose, and returning to written work after a long time.

I should disclaim here: This is just my process of revision, and it’s an ever-evolving mishmash of ideas and tips I’ve picked up from members of writing groups, books I’ve read and professors I’ve had.

/0 Comments/by

October: 2012 goals

October is here, and with it, weather that definitely feels like fall and not some watered-down version of summer, which is basically September’s jam, amirite?

Despite the balmy weather of the last four weeks – which would normally lure me out of the house and away from my office –  September brought on a stiffer work ethic than what I experienced in August.

Now, without further ado, before I light a fire in the grate, put on a sweater, and make some applesauce, let’s review what I accomplished in the last month.

As always, if you’re not interested, let me direct you to YouTube. Please rock out to this song , which describes the state of our furnace from this week until April.

On to the goals:

Finish the second draft of my novel by April (September.) Despite the fact that I’ve spent a large part of my time on another project, I’ve been making progress on draft two of the novel. Will it be ready by the end of the year? Maybe not. But it will be substantially done and that’s something.

Get it sent to agents before summer. It could happen.

Send out at least three short stories. I’ve sent out one short story, to a contest, which I think brings my sending-out-of-stories count to two.   And this might not count, but I’m sending out chapters of my novel to two contests.

Read one two novels a month in 2012. Done! I’ve met my goal of reading 24 novels in a year, rounding out my total with classics like Revolutionary Road, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and Anna Karenina, (which really ought to count as three books.)
I’m not done though. This fall I’m tackling the books written by my friends and colleagues. Last night I finished David Fitzpatrick’s memoir, Sharp, and I’m now reading Nick Knittel’s collection of short stories, Good Things, which came out last week. David and Nick both went to Fairfield University’s MFA program with me, and actually, I’ve read some of Nick’s stories in workshop, so it’s exciting to see them in book form.
Also on the nightstand: The Whipping Club by MFA alum Deb Henry and Twilight of the Drifter by family friend and prolific author Shelly Frome.

I haven’t read with this kind of abandon since I was in high school. It’s been wonderful.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. Done in March. I got my first royalties in July. I can confirm that I made more than $20.

Other goals: I also set to work on two of my big conflicts this year: My feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety. I don’t really know what to day about these right now.

I’ve made up my mind about my own faith, but still face a dilemma about religion.

As far as anxiety goes, September always brings more stress with it. Some of that is habit and some of it is a teaching thing. I don’t think I’ve made any progress in dealing with it, but I do think I’ve managed the stress well this past month.

/0 Comments/by

Making time to daydream (or, Aliens are more exciting than anxiety.)

, ,

I need some daydream time, or what Julia Cameron calls in The Artist’s Way an artist date, or what educators now call free play.

Whatever you call it, I need to get back into the mental state I used to occupy as a kid, back when my head was filled with aliens, pirates and pegasi, and I need to get back there pronto.

There aren’t enough unicorns in my life.

I’m writing the first draft of something, and I’m writing it on a deadline. The first 25 pages wrote themselves, but then  – like Wile E. Coyote, stepping off a cliff and looking down – I started thinking.

I started worrying about my deadline. I started fretting about the plot. I started mapping out the intricacies of each character’s individual problems and backstories. I created a complex timeline.

In Hindu mythology, nothing would be created if Vishnu didn’t spend all his time dreaming. (“Shiva Dreaming,” shared courtesy of Alice Popkorn on Flickr.)

That’s when the writing began to be a problem.

Not only did the joy go out of the work, but the plot snarled up. The characters ceased to have direction. I couldn’t get into their heads. In desperation I showed what I had done to people and they asked me what happened to the good work I’d started in the first 25 pages.  I didn’t have an answer for them at first.

But then I started thinking… I haven’t given myself the space to play. I haven’t allowed myself to sit back and daydream, and that’s the space in which I develop my best work.

Aliens are more interesting than triple-digit subtraction.

I think a lot of writers will sympathize with the following statement: I was at my most prolific when I was young.

As a kid I was an incorrigible daydreamer. I enraged my second grade teacher by staring out the window* during every math lesson. I didn’t sleep at night.** I tuned out for the tedium of school bus rides or disappointing recesses.***

At some point, someone gave me a Walkman, and then,from  the time I was a pre-teen right into the first years of college, I spent a lot of time listening to mixtapes, making movies in my head, just imagining characters and adventures.

I wrote them down as an afterthought at first, but by the time I was 16, I had six novels, one screenplay, one collaborative piece and a sheaf of poetry in progress.

When I was in my early 20s, I didn’t have a car, so  I spent a lot of time walking places or sitting on buses or trains or whatever, listening to a CD player, and imagining stories. And then I wrote them down. And that’s how Beware the Hawk started.

Pirates & spaceships are more interesting than that guy you hope will call you,
but in your 20s, you don’t always remember that.

Then I grew up. I got a car, I got a job that required a lot of time and mental energy, and I started dating. My imagination was directed at my love life.† My mental energy was directed at problem-solving. Anxiety took the place of daydreams.

It’s time to bring the daydreams back. I need them if I’m going to be able to work, and honestly, I prefer them to anxiety.

Show me the unicorns!

This is tough. Today I feel like I’m always with people who need me to have my ears open to them at all times, and with the Internet and smartphones, it’s hard not to be available to the world. And honestly, I feel a little guilty putting on a pair of headphones and tuning people out, like a teenager.

But some of my best work has come out of music, so I’ve put together a playlist for the piece I’m working on, written a page about why I chose the songs on the playlist, and told my husband that I’m going to need an hour each day to listen to it. I spend that hour doing yard work, because I thought, well, at least if I don’t get anything out of my daydream time, the lawn will look decent.

Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, because for it to work, I need to enjoy the process, and I’m often keenly aware that what I’m doing is playtime on a deadline.

That can be counter-productive, like trying to fall asleep when you know you have to be up early in the morning: if you worry too much about falling asleep, you can’t fall asleep because you’re not relaxed.

But for the most part, the playlist is working wonders.

For the first time in a while, some of my plot issues are being resolved, and new scenes – scenes of which I’m proud – are being written. I feel like the characters, allowed to roam freely through my head, are growing again. The story is much more sound than it was before.

I’m convinced that when I present this story to my editor, it will be a better story than the one I would have written without this daydream time.

There have been some unintended side benefits of daydreaming as well: I’m calmer and happier, and the yard looks great. Also, although I’m not writing about them, sometimes my head is filled with aliens, pirates and pegasi. It’s nice to know that they’re still in there.

*and imagining that aliens were about to invade the school. Only I could save us!
** because I was telling myself stories about the wall next to my bed opening up so that I could enter a world in which I rode a unicorn through outer space.
***by imagining that spies were hiding in the nearby shrubbery.
† Should have stuck with aliens.

/0 Comments/by

A clean office is a bad thing for a writer.

Anne Lamott, the author of Bird by Bird, opened one of her lectures with this: “I used to not be able to work if there were dishes in the sink. Then I had a child and now I can work if there is a corpse in the sink.”

I don’t have a child, but man, does that hit home.

My office has three states:

  1. Hot mess – If the office usually looks like it’s exploded, like it does now,  I’ve been busy working in it. The closets are open, the desk is surrounded by paper, pens, packages of Kleenex, chargers and a few unidentifiable objects. Things (plants, books, papers, cats) are hanging off my bookshelves. My closets are open and things are falling out. That’s what it looks like now.
  2. Cold mess – If there are a lot of boxes and laundry baskets in the middle of the floor and it hasn’t been vacuumed in a long time, I’ve been avoiding it – and my novel – for a long time. I’ve just kidnapped my laptop, closed the door and fled. This is what it looks like after the holidays.
  3. Clean –  Have you ever seen Poltergeist? Remember the little psychic lady who says “This house is clean”? If so, you know how creepy “clean” can be. It is the worst state for me office by far. Everything is tidy. Spotless. Dusted. Everything’s been filed. The carpet has been cleaned, the laundry is gone, and worse, the desk is immaculate. If my office looks like this, it means something’s wrong; I’ve spent a lot of time in there but all I’ve been doing is cleaning.

I’ve done that sort of thing for weeks at a time; gone up to work and ended up dusting the room instead, or rearranging the books on the shelves. It’s a habit I started in college, when during my sophomore year, I convinced myself that I wouldn’t be able to work unless my tiny room looked like a glossy page out of Dorm Beautiful.

It was the sort of habit that kept me  – for years – from working on my writing, which is strange, because when I started writing as a child and teen, I was able to write anywhere, under any conditions – it didn’t matter if the room was messy, or the radio loud, or conversations happening around me, or if my mother was asking me to please come downstairs and do my chores. I just wrote for the sheer joy of it. Very little was able to stop me. I think that year in college, is when I realized exactly how badly I wanted to be a writer, and also, that if I sat down to write, I’d have to take the next step and finish something. Then I’d have to show it to someone else. And then they might reject or criticize me, and I could very easily fail at what I most wanted to do with my life.

So instead, I cleaned.

I carried my Clean Desk Rule out of college and into the world with me, and I allowed it to expand. At one point, I couldn’t work until my whole apartment was clean. It’s worth noting that the Clean Desk Rule never applied to my workspace in the newsrooms I worked in; I was always on deadline, regardless of the state of my desk. The work had to be done.

Those days are over. Right now, my office is a hot mess.

Allegory of Music.

The Allegory of Music, by Filipino Lippi.

There is just enough room on my desk for my laptop and my hands. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is taking up half the left side of the desk and threatening to slide off a copy of my manuscript. The bookshelves and tables overflow with tangles of charger cords and craft books. One of the walls is hung with rejection letters. The floor under my feet is strewn with copies of literary magazines. I look like an allegorical painting, only without the flowing robes and hair and classical allusions that you see in Renaissance works like The Allegory of Music. Instead, I’m The Allegory of The Contemporary Fiction Writer, clad in grubby jeans and a tee shirt I got for free somewhere, hair stuffed under a baseball cap from my MFA program.

What changed? I think I started looking at writing differently when I joined my MFA program, but when I left my newsroom job, that’s when things really changed. Writing became my job; not something I wanted to do in a distant, perfect future, but something I was already doing.  Just as I didn’t bother cleaning my workspace in the newsroom before getting to work, I don’t clean my home office before getting to work.

The work needs to be done. Even if there’s a body in the sink.

I’m pleased to report that the office hasn’t been clean in some time.

/6 Comments/by

September: 2012 Goals

September? Already? Normally I like fall, but I’m having a hard time coming back from this summer. Maybe it’s because the last few months has been a blur of activity: I met half my in-laws for the first time, two close friends got married, several had children, I saw my college friends more than once, we camped, I had writers’ retreats and gave readings and signings of my book. I didn’t swim nearly enough. Now fall is staring me in the face and I keep squinting at it and thinking “You again? Didn’t you just leave?”

Well, let’s just get down to it, before I retire to my office to shuffle the papers I will pass out to my students in class tomorrow.  Here’s my progress on the goals I set out for myself in January.

Here’s my progress. (Not interested? Check out this Tumblr full of ashamed dogs. Let me know if you see mine on there.)

Finish the second draft of my novel by April (September.)  I’m pushing this back again, but I don’t feel too bad about it, because I’ve been making  progress on it, revising a chapter every week. I’ve revised a good chunk of the first part, and I’m happy with the work. I will have to stop again soon in order to work on my other project.

Get it sent to agents before summer. This is looking like it actually might happen at some point.

Send out at least three short stories. I didn’t send out a thing, but I did do some research on that front, so I could send things out to editors this month. I also revised an essay.

Read one two novels a month in 2012. I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as planned, then moved on to Ursula Le Guin’s Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu, neither of which were favorites of mine, although I enjoyed reading fiction with dragons in. Now I’m slowly moving through Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. It’s beautifully written, but sometimes I can’t stand the characters, so it’s slow going. No clue what I’m going to read next.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. Done in March. I got my first royalties in July. I can confirm that I made more than $20.

Other goals: I also set to work on two of my big conflicts this year: My feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety.

My issues with faith were resolved, I thought, two months ago. And then things got a little more complicated this summer. Once, again I have no answers. I’m beginning to think I may never have answers and that I might have to be cool with not having answers.

As for anxiety? Well, it hasn’t been a problem this month. I don’t feel like anxiety’s even been an option for me lately. I’ve just been doing things because I have to.

/3 Comments/by

This post is not funny. Because writing humor is hard, y’all.

Today was the day that I was supposed to take a break from my labors and work on a humorous essay that I could sell/publish/give to a journal. Or any publication, really.

I was looking forward to this task, because I like writing funny, because I needed a break from revising some decidedly unfunny parts of my novel, and because August is trickling away to nothing and if I don’t write now, I’ll be up to here in class prep work and nothing will get done.

So I sat down, hellbent on being funny. And you know what happened? I pulled a Fozzie Bear.

Nothing I write today is funny. Oh sure, I managed a funnyish status on Facebook and a moderately amusing tweet this afternoon, but really? Everything else is so much wocka, wocka.

This is not a problem I often have. Normally, I can find the funny in my writing, but I think the trouble today is that I’m trying to be funny. Writing humor is like writing love or writing scary. It only works (for me) when I sneak up on it.  I do best at writing humor when I’m concentrating on some other aspect of the piece.

Photo courtesy of Roger H. Goun, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License on Flickr.

It’s like hunting. Actually, no. My  only knowledge of hunting comes from watching Elmer Fudd in Warner Bros. cartoons, so let me relate it to something I’ve actually done.

Writing humor is like being a jilted education reporter on deadline. You see the school board member who hasn’t been calling you back at a press conference for something else at City Hall. You know she sees you. You need her quote, but you can’t head straight for her or she’ll bolt. So you pretend you don’t even see her, and you sidle up to the Superintendent of Schools and the Teacher of the Year because they’re standing between her and the door, and hell, you could use a quote from them as well, why not? And then, just when she thinks you haven’t even seen her and she can make a quiet escape back to her Suburban in the parking lot, you step right out in front of her and BAM! That slippery vixen is trapped. What’s she gonna do? Vault over the Teacher of the Year and make a break for it? I think not. “So sorry your phone doesn’t seem to be working, ma’am. Lucky we happened to both be here at this fine event. I might have never gotten your comment.”*

And that’s how I think humor ought to be written.

 

*This specific situation is fictional, but the tactics are real.

/2 Comments/by

Appeal for a fellow writer.

I should probably admit this up front: I’m a world-class ignorer of appeals. I hate them. Just ask my diocese or my undergrad alumni association. Ask my National Public Radio affiliate.

So what I’m doing here, I know, is hypocritical. I’m posting an appeal. But it’s not for me. It’s for an author who needs some help right now.

Let me present Porochista Khakpour. She is a novelist, and a former instructor at my MFA program.*
Porochista has been ill for quite some time. I don’t know all the details, but she’s recently been diagnosed with late-stage Lyme Disease.  As you well know, writers don’t generally have health insurance (unless they’ve got another job that provides it) and except for the most successful of us (King, Patterson and Rowling, I’m looking at you),  writers also don’t make a lot of money, even when their work is recognized and well-received and even when they sell a lot of books.

Porochista needs help paying her medical bills, and as a fellow writer I feel the need to pass her appeal along to other people in the writing community.

You can read more, in her own words,  here. You can also donate at that site, if you’re so moved.**
That’s it really. I’ll be posting more about writing and revision soon. I just wanted to get this out there quickly.  I’d want someone to do the same for me.

*Full disclosure: I never studied with Porochista. We’re almost the exact same age and as a staunch ageist, I might have had a hard time studying under someone born in the same year. Call me weird, but I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on any of the nuggets of wisdom she dropped on  me because  my mind would keep wandering to the shared experiences we might have had – an interest in grunge in sophomore year of high school, maybe, or a love of Clarissa Explains It All, or memories of that Romeo + Juliet movie that Claire Danes was in during the first year of college, or perhaps a shared dorkiness in middle school that happened at the exact same time. I get obsessed with these timeline things. It would have all been too much for me.

** I should also mention that I’m not just making an appeal here. I did put my money where my mouth is. I have more mouth than money, but I did donate. I don’t ask people to do things I wouldn’t do myself, because I adhere to the Aragorn School of Management. But that’s a whole other nerdy ball of wax.

/1 Comment/by

August: 2012 goals

Is it August already? Lord. I thought the summer had just started. I’d better get working on this Irish tan. The summer’s practically over and I’m not nearly red enough.

Anyhow, it’s time (past time, actually) for the update on my resolutions for 2012. Not interested? Who could blame you? Click below for this month’s distraction. (Last month it was Beauty and the Beat. This month, the same folks put together a very different but equally cool video, Cinderfella.  And bonus: It’s got Glozell and Shangela.)

Anyhow, I’ve been MIA due to vacations, weddings, funerals and then a lot of work. But I did manage to make some progress on my goals in July. Part of this is due to an agreement I made with another writer – we’ve sent one another contracts with our goals and weekly, we send updates, telling one another what progress we have (or haven’t) made. The accountability has been very helpful to me.

Here’s my progress.

Finish the second draft of my novel by April (September.)  I’m pushing this back again, but I don’t feel too bad about it, because I’ve been making  progress on it, revising a chapter every week. It won’t happen before September because there are more than four chapters in my novel, but it might happen in the forseeable future.

Get it sent to agents before summer. This is looking like it actually might happen at some point.

Send out at least three short stories. Let’s pretend that I never put this down as a goal, ‘kay? Just for this month?

Read one two novels a month in 2012. It’s either feast or famine when it comes to me and reading. It took me months to finish Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, but I did it. Then, encouraged by finishing a novel, I threw myself into my bookshelf with abandon. Since the beginning of the month, I’ve read The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa, all three Hunger Games novels (pro tip: Avoid that last book unless you enjoy being in Bella Swan’s head in the Twilight books), Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins and now I’m in the middle of True Story of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. And after I finish with all that Booker Prize goodness, I’m going to need some more genre junk food, so I’m planning to finally read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Of course, I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. For all I know, my reading bender might be coming to an end any day now.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. Done in March. I got my first royalties this month. I am by no means independently wealthy, but I did make more than $20.

Other goals: I also set to work on two of my big conflicts this year: My feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety.

I did nothing with either one of those. Because it’s summer and I don’t feel like being anxious or thinking too hard about existential questions.

That’s it. If you need me, I’ll be doing my damndest to do all my work on the beach.  Pass the red pen and the sunblock, please.

/3 Comments/by