"Don't you dare blog until you finish that article," warned Gina's voice darkly on my answering machine.
Yeah, the same Gina who sent me the very email I blogged about this morning. So helpful. So caring. So totally TOO LATE!
So it's the weekend, when I let myself get a bit journaly. (Travis hates me to insult journals, but I'm just mean that way.) And so now you get to hear about the desperately difficult life of a writer. See, I know all you non-writers think writing is really easy. One of my former bosses, who shall remain nameless, sincerely believed that anyone could write, and had absolutely no respect for writing or editing as a profession - until one day, after I no longer worked for him, when he contacted me about possibly helping to fix the incomprehensible utterings of a non-writer he was paying to do some writing for him. I suggested sweetly that I'd get to it as soon as I was done doing a cardiac ultrasound on someone's dog. OK, I didn't. But I wanted to.
See, writing is actually hard. Of course, it's not hard all the time. Sometimes it's hard NOT to write, and sometimes the words just flow out and all fit together beeeyoooteefully, and you re-read it the next day and think, shit, did I actually write this? Damn, I'm good.
But the problem with writing for a living is that you often have to write when that doesn't happen. You have these things, I can barely type it..... DEADLINES. How is THAT for an intimidating word? And I had one this week. It was on Wednesday. And what I was writing was just not frigging working, so I sent it to Gina for help. I've never sent Gina anything before, but she's the writer I most respect in the world, so naturally I thought, given that she's in the middle of a frenzied burst of last minute writing on a book deadline, that she'd be really happy to take time out of her busy schedule and save my ass for me. Which she did, by informing me that my article sucked, and that she knew I knew that or I'd have never sent it to her in the first place. Which is so true, but nonetheless, doesn't in and of itself fix the article or extend the deadline.
So I called the publisher to see if I could get a small deadline extension, exploiting counting on the fact that we have a close personal good working relationship to blind her to the total inappropriateness of my asking her for an extension make it possible for her to work this out for me.
So, the new deadline was this morning, and I did send something in. And really, it's not bad. It's well-written, well-reasoned, and the right number of words. Many publishers and editors would be very grateful to get it, I'm sure. But it wasn't really ME, and so I have a slight bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention having spent way, way too many hours working on it this week, to the detriment of other, more lucrative things I really should have been writing. Or even blogging (which as I tell people wondering what's the point of blogging, has gotten me both work and sex, and it doesn't get any better than that, does it? Well, maybe if it got me shoes).
Now, one of my current employers, the darling and somewhat insane JeffB, has great respect for writing as a profession. He humbly sends me all his press releases and other public utterances for proofreading, because he knows that, while he does have a way with words and a lot to say, He. Can't. Spell. Or punctuate. I mean, not to save his life and the lives of all his family. It's bad. Then again, you know, my dad is a genius, I mean that quite literally, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley. And he once asked me how to spell "babies." Some people's brains just don't work right. I try not to judge them, and not just because whenever I criticize someone else's ability to spell or punctuate, it's almost guaranteed that post will be riddled with typos.
Do you dare me to post this without spell checking it first?
Sunday I'm spending with the world's cutest baby, who doesn't care at all about spelling or deadlines. Or work, sex, or even shoes. He just likes to bounce around on my lap and laugh joyfully as he grabs big fistfuls of my hair (usually with at least one earring) and pull. Hard. And he's teething, so biting down on my fingers is another important hobby for him. His loving mom and dad asked me to bring back their coffee maker that they lent me last Christmas, so I'm guessing sleep deprivation is becoming something of an issue at their house. Being an aunt is nice, you get to play with the darling boy then go home before he keeps you up all night.
Oh, and I'm sort of wondering, maybe I'd better take another crack at that article before I go tomorrow. At some point I'm sure to actually make it better instead of worse, right? Right?
Maybe I'll stick with bouncing babies and criticizing people who can't spell.
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