No beer?

I read this article about Haruki Murakami and it got me to thinking about runners, writers and misconceptions.

He is a serious writer. He is a serious runner. He came by running at the same time he decided he wanted to write a novel. He figured that if he was going to write he would need to be in top physical condition in order to sit as many hours as writing requires.

So many of us are working our full-time jobs and squeezing writing in on the commute or in hours when we could (should?) be sleeping. But Murakami took a more scientific approach believing the body had to be in shape in order for the rest to follow.

Yesterday for Mother’s Day, I went for a four mile run. It was on a beautiful, hilly limestone path that cut through a forest preserve. My oldest son went ahead on his bike and my youngest went with my husband in and out of his “batcave” (stroller sounds way to babyish for him to consider) as they went for a leisurely stroll/roll/full-out sprint/back to roll.

I don’t think about writing while I’m running. I think about breathing, about my form lest my back start to act up. I think about the sounds and I wave at other runners as they pass. I think about how poorly I treat my body most of the time and how fortunate I am that I can still set out for a run.

We got home and as any good mother would, I kicked the rambunctious duo out of the house to go play in the backyard. Soon, they had invited themselves over to my next-door neighbor’s where they proceeded to hang out with them for Mother’s Day. Yes, I know, so wrong.  I thought of that as I curled up on the couch under a blanket with a book.

Alas, Mother-of-the-Year I am not.

So, as my kids celebrated Mother’s Day elsewhere, I read about writing and thought about my book, where it is working, and where it is not. I didn’t do any writing/editing because I was too tired. The run wore me out as did the night before when we stayed up late watching a movie.

I love movies and I love staying up late. I love drinking beer, nice heavy yummy beers. But I hate being tired in the morning. And I hate sleeping in.

Herein lies the dilemma.

If I really expect to do this writing thing, to be in it for the long haul, I have to modify my extremes. Sometimes you can’t have it all. I can exist on five hours of sleep a night indefinitely as far as I can tell, but I’m no good. What I mean by that is I am short-tempered with my kids, and the most I want to do after an hour running is sit down and watch a movie.

My joie de vivre up and left after the waffles were burned off.

The late night hanging out and drinking does not coincide with the life of a serious writer, despite the urban legends you may have heard. The reality is that I’m going to have a day job for a long time.

I think Murakami has a point. He decided what he wanted to do and then logically figured out his best chances for success. Very basic. (For this discussion we’ll leave out the talent he has.) If you are going to be spending a good deal of time sitting and expect to bring your full concentration and your best ideas, you’ll need sleep and exercise and to eat well enough to keep your brain in sugar, and out of beer. Sad but as far as I can tell true.

Makes sense.

Now, the only question remains is how to get from here to there…

Happy writing.

Huddle

Last party of April. Yes, you guessed it, the Olympics.

So far in the month of April we have had, Birthday Blizzards, a Blizzard cake,  a cheesecake, a banana chocolate chip cake with peanut butter frosting and lastly this, an applesauce chocolate chip cake with store-bought frosting after I overworked the butter cream. Alas.

Tonight I went for a run. I ran around the block with my older son riding his bike and my youngest in the batcave along for the ride. We only went a bit over a mile, but it was a beautiful night and if felt good to sweat in the half hour we had between dinner and a promised game of Apples to Apples.

Did I mention I am a board game junkie? Oh yes. Bring it.

I looked through the photos from the party after the kids went to bed and this one caught my eye.

That’s us.

We’re a group of writers all looking out for who has the plan, who knows how to get this thing done, who knows how to spike the ball and who can be counted on to bump it up, a nice sweet set so that someone else can hit it.

Although writing is a solitary pursuit, this picture reminds me so much of all of us trying to figure it out, someone blazing a trail and the rest of us spying on the competition.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what happens, it just matters that you have your peeps to huddle with. I thank each and every one of you for being in my huddle.

When you work full-time, you have so much time away from everyone to think. Then the second you get home, you’re so far behind you just hold your breath while you try to catch up. I’m trying to get better about that.

Because I really want to enjoy the ride. Not the publishing one, although that would be grand, but rather the life one. It’s all about the balance. Well, that and knowing you’re surrounded by friends who have your back.

So, there we are looking around. But I remembered something else when I looked at that picture. With the state of publishing and bookstores and on and on and on, there are times that I read online and it seems a fruitless battle to even try to get a book published.

But you know what? We are the writers. We create. We work hard to make it better. Without us? There would be no books.

Doesn’t that feel better? Think about it. Most of us have other things that preoccupy us ninety percent of the time. We have to. It’s the way mortgages get paid, the way that kids are raised, the way that families are formed and nurtured.

And then in our spare time, we work to create something that has been done a million times before, a million times better, because that is what we do. We aren’t the sellers, we’re the creators.

And with a team like we have one by one, it’s going to happen.

As long as we don’t give up, or at least don’t give up permanently. If you need to, look around and pick yourself up. Because I guarantee you, I’ll be standing right there in the huddle with my arm reached out to pull you back in.

What A Girl Wants

Definition of LIMINAL

1: of or relating to a sensory threshold

2: barely perceptible

3: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional <in the liminal state between life and death — Deborah Jowitt>

I feel like I’m in a liminal state with my writing. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. I’m good enough to be able to pick out the words/phrases, okay chapters, that don’t work, yet I’m not good enough to be able to know whether they should go or whether they should be salvaged.

I love the word  ‘liminal’. Putting a word to something gives me hope. If I can tell myself I’m entering my liminal writing phase, that gives it heft. Instead of someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, I become a writer entering a new phase, a transition towards the better. There is suddenly a lightness about the work because I know soon I’ll know what to do. After all, the liminal phase can’t last forever. It’s in the very denotation.

My body is in a liminal stage as well. Right now, at forty-odd years, I get to decide if I want to be an active fit older person, or call it a day and spend all my time writing.

Maybe the answer is to find a less demanding job, one in closer proximity to those I hold dear, and find time to do all of it. Maybe my back would stop reacting to my stresses if I didn’t force my body to spend so many hours a day sitting in the car, on the train, at my desk, on the train, in the car, down to dinner and then finally here to write. Maybe the extra time would allow a slower pace.

I spoke to a friend about how he liked Milwaukee where he grew up compared to Chicago where he lives now. He said he really loved growing up there and the mentality was very much like Chicago. It was just slower-paced.

I’ve always wondered about that phrase “slower-paced”.  I, for one, would love to live somewhere slower-paced, yet in the words of Inigo Montoya, “I don’t think that means, what you think that means.” I picture a place where you can arrive to work late because you have a meeting with a teacher or wanted to squeeze in a run. A place where people aren’t taking three different modes of transport just to get from their house to work. Surely these places exist.

I’d like to put my work into a slow-pace mode so I can expand the boundaries of my writing/fitness life. I want it all out, balls to the wall for those. I want to be one of those women that you see that has a chiseled face and you say, “she’s a runner.”

I know many people think that it’s too much. They find the look androgynous verging on masculine, and all I can say to those people is to each her own. I, for one, saw Linda Hamilton in The Terminator and thought, “I want to be like her. Look at those arms.”

I want the time to do it. I want to be able to keep up with my kids as they get older, not be the woman lying on the floor on her back because her back is “acting up”. Is that how my kids will remember their childhood? The way they’ll remember me?

I’m putting it out into the universe that I want to spend my days writing and running, and work coming somewhere in the margins, not the other way around, the way it has always been.

A good friend once told me that you have to put it out there in order for it to happen. So there it is. I want it.

Bad.

Do Not Attempt This

I am a wound spring.

So, because my back is refusing to return to 100% I made a decision last week. Let’s see what the old back has in it.

That day I went for a short mile and change run. I felt a little pain in my leg, but tried to adjust my form. I pictured the bones pushing on the nerve and pulled up, butt tucked, stomach in and kept going. I was sore afterwards, but you know what? It hurt before I ran.

Saturday I woke up, a little old lady unfolding out of bed. I went and got my hair done. For those of you keeping score at home, it’s now blond on the underside, and red on the top. My hair guy called it ombre. I know. Fancy. I got home and my sore back, leg and myself went for a run. Two and a half miles with my oldest son riding alongside me.

Sunday came along, and, well, you get the picture. Three and a half miles done, because my youngest wanted to ride the first mile and then I pushed him in his batcave on wheels for the rest of the way. He decided the route.

Yep, I’m still getting the twinges, but you know, this is going to end one way or the other. It’s time to push the envelope.

So today at work it occurs to me it’s been awhile since I’ve run a marathon. I’ve never trained where I began injured. Should be an adventure, no? Before the thought was fully formed, I started looking at fall marathons and came across a couple of contenders.

Not that I would do that. I mean, I’d have to be certifiable to have a disc issue and even consider it. Ahem.

Before I knew it, I felt the buzz. Do you ever get that? Maybe you’re writing, maybe you’re thinking about a new job, a new house, a new baby, something new and exciting and your brain goes to warp speed? I get excited and happy and think BIG. My brain swishes and swooshes and I think only of how grand the adventure will be. I am unstoppable in this mode.

I found one race in Indiana, a trail race. The reviews said that it was the hardest race the reviewers (multiple) had ever run. If it rains, your sneakers will get wet and you will have mud up to your knees. If it snows, you run 26.2 miles over treacherous terrain climbing 3500 feet in the snow, over rocks…

Oh yes.

A funny thing about me is that on a normal course, I have run 5 and a half hour plus marathons. The only trail race I’ve run was my fastest time ever. Granted it was only five miles, but I dig running in the woods, over twigs, over hill and dale. I ran about three minutes faster per mile. For those of you who don’t run, that’s considerable. It is the only time in my life I have actually passed people not dressed up as the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. (They in fact passed me in Chicago, the people in large boat costumes, not a proud moment.)

I see this and I instantly e-mailed a friend who lives down in them thar parts. My enthusiasm can be contagious…

I’ve signed up and not run more marathons than I’ve run. This would be an absolute moment of complete stupidity on the level of Jackass-The Middle-Aged Mother Version.

But isn’t there something really exciting about saying, “What the fuck. Just do it.”

I mean, my book is currently in “This absolutely positively sucks stage.” Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but if I thought for a moment of things that are logical, writing a book doesn’t even fit on the list.

Because it isn’t logical. Because it’s hard. Because it takes forever. Because it may amount to nothing.

But there is this moment, right in the beginning when you say to yourself, “I have this idea and it could be extraordinary.” And you are right. It just takes far longer to get there than you thought.

I’m beginning to think that the only difference between the published and unpublished is that the published kept going when the unpublished dropped out. The published slogged through the crap writing, the crap plot, the crap characters until they figured out how the hell to write a book.

Comparatively, running a marathon is easy. You lace up some shoes and you practice for six months or so. Then you get to the start and go. You decide ahead of time you just aren’t going to stop.

Then when your body says to stop, you tell it “no”. NO.

Actually it’s quite a bit like writing, isn’t is?

Jump In

Happy Bunny day!

Spur of the moment we decided to drive to Florida last week. The kids above were terrified of the water. They love those shows on National Geographic, the ones about the ocean where they show in detail the life living far below.

Three midwestern kids, terrified to set foot in the ocean. We stayed with my brother-in-law and his family and went to the beach exactly once, the only seventy degree day of our stay. And there the kids stood, all declining to go into the water.

Then they inched out, all thirty toes, only one set of ten turning back, the little guy. Within five minutes, all had changed into their suits. Within ten…

…and the older two looked like this.

I didn’t tell them that I had read earlier in the week that there were numerous beach closings for a shark migration north of Cocoa Beach. I didn’t tell them the undertow could sweep them out to sea in a nanosecond.

They were fearless. And I watched what brave looks like.

Right before I left, I decided things had to change in my life. My body, my back specifically, was rebelling against me. I felt the opposite of brave. My body was weak and my mind was despondent.

Then we drove for twenty-odd hours, the five of us in a van.

Right before we left, I sent one of my oldest friends the first two chapters of my book. I had to know. I sent it to her because she isn’t a writer, but she reads and I knew she’d tell me the truth. Kindly.

I occurred to me that right now, I didn’t want someone to critique my book. It was the wrong time. What I did need was to have someone read it and tell me whether or not she could get through it and if not, where it sagged. I told her to be honest with me. We’ve known each other thirty-seven years. We tell each other the truth, but we know how to tell each other things others are too scared to say.

She’s a Scorpio and I’m a Sagittarius. For those of you who go in for such things, this should make it clear why people may be fearful to tell us the truth sometimes.

The closest I can get to describing the feeling of sending unasked-for chapters to a dear friend is the first photo, those scared midwestern kids looking out to sea.

So I didn’t get as much revising as I wanted done in the car. Technicalities of motion sickness and my wonky back prevented it. But I got back her response and am so relieved and thankful to all of you who said I should get some feedback.

Because there is nothing so scary as staring out at the water fearful of possibility.

That kid in the second picture? He gets the joke. The fun is in the water swimming with the sharks, hoping things go his way because he realizes that not swimming isn’t an option.

Sometimes you put on your suit and jump in the waves.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

 

Synchronicity

In June some girlfriends and I are going away for a weekend. The amount of planning involved to get four women away from their collective 10 children, husbands and jobs was quite the undertaking.

Out of one year, we came up with one weekend that would work. One. We grabbed it.

Of the group, we have one doctor, one lawyer, and one retired social worker/yogini/pilates instructor/personal trainer/hospice volunteer/student nurse. The latter is a busy woman. And then there’s me, business girl/writer.

As a group we could cover your finances, your legal needs, your physical well-being (whether by medicine or exercise), your mental health and if all goes well, live to write the tale. Thinking about it, I don’t know what spectrum of life we couldn’t cover.

We decided I’d fly to them as they’re all between Upstate New York and New Jersey. And then things got complicated.

The two downstaters are flexible and let’s say lax in their planning abilities. The upstater and myself, well, we’re, ahem, driven. One million e-mails flew through the ether and it was decided we’d go to Lake George. I’d fly into Albany and the responsible one would pick me up, while the Doc and Jill-of-All-Trades would meet us up, up, upstate. We got to the hotel part of the planning and found out that a motorcycle rally was being had. There was no room at the inn.

Upon pricing airline tickets, I found it would cost me double to fly into Albany as opposed to Newark, NJ. More e-mails flew. Being the person I am, I told them I’m flying into Newark, we’re going to stay nearby and one of the flitty flexible women had better be there to pick me up. It’s a bonus when you’ve known people since kindergarten. They know how I roll. They don’t expect me to be flexible. That alone is worth the trip.

We booked our stay at a lodge in the mountains just outside of NYC. Who would go to NYC in order to stay at a lodge, you ask? Hi. I’m Lyra. Nice to meet you.

And now for the synchronicity which you know I love. As I was reading up on the place we’re staying at, I found out it is on a section of the Appalachin trail. I was just at the library checking to see if Wild had come back yet. No such luck, a popular book. Where does the story take place for those of you who like me haven’t had the good fortune to read it yet? Yup, the Appalachin trail.

On the same day, I was over at Teri’s Place where she did a lovely tribute to Bonnie Franklin. I had commented that I loved that show but my favorite was Facts of Life. I just loved Jo. I wanted to be Jo.

While at work, I received an e-mail from my dear Esquire friend saying she found a brewery that we should check out right near the Lodge. That would be Peekskill Brewery. Where was Fact of Life set? Oh yes, Peekskill, NY.

We shall imbibe. Yes we shall.

I thought about all of this, seemingly nothing little coincidences, and thought there has to be something to this. I don’t know what. Yet.

What I do know is I have a plane ticket and plan on hiking the Appalachin trail during the day then hanging out at a microbrewery at night. I think it gives me a good time frame for the book, that I should have this draft done before I go so I can leave it with my husband and not be around when he reads it.

I know that I will spend two nights and three days with people who I have known for almost my entire life and who still love me despite that fact. And I know that whatever crazy ideas I come up with, they will follow me anywhere.

And that, perhaps, is what this whole thing is about.

Love.

The Edits

I sat staring at little bits of paper laid out on my kitchen counter. Each piece had a chapter number and a brief synopsis of what the chapter contained.

Two options presented themselves. I could remove the girl from the beginning who then makes an appearance at the end, or I could rewrite chapters in the middle, threading her through as if she had always been there.

Then the poem, “Separation” by W.S. Merwin popped into my head.

Everything I do is stitched with [her] color

The easy answer was to remove her. Instead, I spent this weekend sliding around these pieces of paper, chapter 15 becomes chapter 4, chapter 20 becomes chapter 10, while adding the chapters that do not exist, chapters in certain places that will stitch the story together provided the thread is bright enough, the fabric is strong enough. In place of those nonexistent chapters on my tiny pieces of paper, I have written, Chapter 11: Elsa driving. Cover boarding school.

Two sentences to fill in for the gaps because for whatever reason, I don’t want to cut her loose.

My choice was between a boy who had a tragic young life, or a girl on the brink of suicide. While revising the beginning scene last week, the one up for grabs in the edit, I could feel myself resisting the girl. I felt a bitterness in the back of my throat, a mild panic that perhaps I shouldn’t be writing about her at all, that some doors need remain closed.

I saw a pattern of almost touching something sad, and quiet and painful, and then I would write a sentence immediately following that was stupid and sarcastic and meant to be funny. I’m certain many people would have found it funny. I read it and had to ask myself if I could write this scene, if I could write about her, without my own defenses coming to the front. Could I write this scene and allow you, the reader, to hurt with her, to hurt for her, or would I sabotage that moment of intimacy because I couldn’t sit in the dark with it, with her, with you?

I went through the chapter and rewrote, line by line, taking it where it should have gone but where I didn’t have the balls to go the first time around. I deleted every dishonest moment of sarcasm, every defense to step out of the intimacy. I sat in that scene and it sucked to sit there and not have a way out, but I did it.

Then I had the chance to cut her out, not as a way to get rid of an issue I can’t handle, but because the story sincerely could be done with her if I built her up, or without her, if I redirected my camera at another.

So I kept her. And I relabeled all of the chapters. And now in the coming weeks, I will go line by line, chapter by chapter, until I can make sense of it.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll have to go back to the beginning, go back through the blanket and pull out the yarn until I find the place that I dropped a stitch. Please don’t let me find out that I dropped a stitch.

 

101,749

101,749 words.

312 pages.

Oh. My. God.

It is typed! I’m not prone to exclamatory excitement, but, but…

I just had to let you all be the first to know.

The end.

Now, I do realize this is only the beginning. But I have taken a lump of clay and turned it into a rough shape of a book, an actual book.

The typing although really time-consuming also effectively worked for a second draft. Believe it or not, the numbers above, well that’s the first round of edits. I have taken out many, many words, phrase, paragraphs and chapters. Entire chapters.

I think the next step, the third draft, will be where I start shifting chapters and filling plot holes. I know where some of them are, but as I move chapters from one place to another, I will discover more.

Then a read through.

Then another edit.

And it’s off to some readers.

Holy cow.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

And what a tunnel it has been.

Love.

The Rest of the Story

The other night we watched the latest episode of Portlandia. In the skit, a man invites a girl he’s been on a couple of dates with to go with him to Italy. He takes some pictures of them on the plane with his phone then immediately posts them to Facebook.

They arrive in Italy, she is horribly jet-lagged and sleeps the day and a half they are there. They go from plane to hotel right back to the plane and home. A weekend excursion bust.

His friends see how exhausted he is and comment about the pictures, what a wonderful adventurous weekend they must have had.

“People aren’t having as much fun as you think they are having, ” he says.

That statement reverberated around my brain. People aren’t having as much fun as you think they are having.

We are surrounded by instant updates on friends who are writing a book a week while taking swing lessons and taking their kids to toddler yoga. Full documentation upon request.

Their family photos are smiling, carefully planned, all of them in white t-shirts and jeans with a backdrop of a covered bridge. They go hiking every weekend and volunteer at the soup kitchen.

We flip through their brief accounts of Joey’s black belt in karate and Susie’s church solo. Dad is in the kitchen making a gourmet meal (pictures as evidence) and mom is training for a triathlon in between her doctoral studies in basket weaving and astrophysics. They took the kids on an African safari over spring break and fell so in love with the place, they’ll be adopting a baby boy in the spring.

These people do not exist.

If I went out to dinner, an actual dinner out, with a grown up, and my spouse got out his cell phone to photograph the food and then paste it on Facebook or Pinterest, I would have him shot.

I am exhausted by the need to constantly document. I think people are losing the ability to actually live. If I am taking a picture of the food, I am not observing it with all of my senses. There is a movement among chefs to ban cameras from restaurants. They have noticed a surge in this phenomenon and have had patrons go so far as to stand on the table to get the perfect shot.

If this isn’t an omen for the end of the damn world, I don’t know what is.

I know that we writers are an odd group from the get-go. I fully admit to that. But have we hit critical mass on this thing yet?

So here’s the deal. Here’s the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would have said.

Little Joey joined karate because his teacher was ready to have him kicked out of school for disciplinary issues. Susie was forced by her controlling mother to sing that church solo and after wetting her pants, she threw up all over the pastor. Dad is in the kitchen cooking the meal because if he has to deal with his wife or his children he’s swears he’s walking out that door and never coming back. As for mom, she trains so hard because she knows she will never be good enough despite her rampant anorexia keeping her forty-year old frame in a size 2 jean. Yes, she does have a degree in astrophysics but that’s because she doesn’t want to be around her family either which is where the nannies come in. They are raising the two children. The nannies, it should be noted, are never in the photos. The world does not know they exist. The child will never be adopted and they will blame corruption in third world nations but the truth is they will bore of the idea as they have of many others.

They will continue taking beautiful pictures. And we will continue to think they live the life they don’t.

And that, as they say, is the rest of the story.

Let’s go live our messy, unplanned, unscripted  lives and maybe write something great every now and again.

xoxo

Main Character

Muddled and befuddled.

When last we left our main character, her son was recovering from a tonsillectomy. On the eve of his two-week check-up, he was approved for all rowdy and raucous endeavors and our main character nearly wept with relief.  A good night’s sleep was in sight.

The following evening as she returned home from a day of workity work, a larger version of that boy lay on the couch where he had been for the previous six hours, ever since his father picked him up from school. He said his stomach hurt, but not the throw-uppy kind. Good, thought our main character. It’s just a cold. He’s always been the drama king. It did disturb her, however, that the older boy laid listless as his younger brother ran around like a madman trying to disperse two weeks of boy energy stored while he was recovering from surgery.

At eight o-clock, just after she made him drink ibuprofin, he proceeded to throw it all back up. He crawled into her bed and there he slept while she rubbed his back, hoping selfishly that he wouldn’t throw up on her nonrubberized mattress. She also hoped for some sleep.

It was in the midst of this sleep-deprived state, that she decided the time had come to send out a piece of her writing after much encouragement from her friends. She got the information together, wrote to a senior writer of this particular magazine and hit send before she could change her mind. She had never sent anything out before.

She thought it best to keep it under wraps so immediately e-mailed a couple of friends and swore she would at least not tell the huge news to her husband. She poured a glass of wine, plopped on the couch and lasting all of a minute, blurted out, “I sent something to ______.”

He glanced up from his book, said “Oh.” and went back to reading. Clearly he was keeping his enthusiasm close to the vest. She drank another glass of wine and secretly plotted to send out one thing a week to get in the habit of it. Then, she went to bed for a couple of hours before being joined by a child, maybe two. She has trouble remembering.

The next morning, she found out her e-mail was hacked and proceeded to spam everyone she knew including (she surmises) the first person she ever submitted something to. Timing is everything, ladies and gentlemen.

Luckily, she also woke up with a cold. Our main character is foggy and befuddled and wonders what the chances are that she would be hacked the night that she submits her first essay.

This week she crossed the 91,000 word mark on her book. She thinks she knows where it needs to go. Her brain is a little mushy for the work at the moment.

Other pertinent things regarding our main character’s activities this week.

1. She loved The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers.
2. Her go-to beer is presently by Magic Hat Brewing Company.  #9
3. The Mermaid Collector by Erika Marks is a fantastic book to read when  under the weather and she needs to relax into a book.
4. Umbrella by Will Self is not. She doesn’t know if she was ever smart enough to read this book, but she does know that as she tried to make sense of it, her brain hurt. Her brain hurts on its own these days so back it goes.
5. For the first time, it doesn’t bother her that she looked at a book and just said, no, she can’t do it.
6. She is in the seventh and final journal of her book. The typing is almost done. The relief she feels is monumental.
7. Yes, she realizes the real work has yet to begin, but she’s taking her victories where she can these days.
8. If she hacked you, she’s sorry. For the record, she doesn’t send out links to people and if she does, it will be really clear why she did. She’s sorry again if you opened it like she did.
9. Why was she looking for her husband’s approval that she sent something out? So ridiculous. She’s rethinking having him be her reader as she may put too much stake in what he thinks. Good with children matters, bad for writing?
10. She really needs to get to the bottom of nine. Maybe if she gets to the bottom of #2, #9 will be clear…