Deborah -- Why are you letting the book rest for a week now? Rather than after the last chapter and epilogue? Just curious.

Short stories are a form I absolutely love and never mastered. Haven't attempted one in a long, long time, but I have a file full of ideas and false starts and random scenes. I've come to the conclusion that I simply write long (not, you know, Gabaldon long, of course). But in a perfect world (oh, for the no-calorie-chocolate and the required sleeping-lateness and the...Sorry. I digress.), one in which I had the time to give them, I would love to get them out and rework them and polish them till they shine like the bright, tight little jewels they're supposed to be.

Hi back to Nilly and erikaj and Betsy HP. Thanks ever so for the welcome.

Hello AmyLiz. It's so nice that you've joined us.

I'm working on my first novel. I'm stalled again, though, so it's sitting on my hard drive taunting me. It does that about once a month or so. I'm much happier writing short stories, but this one refuses to be short.

interested to see what everybody's working on.

I'm nearing the end of my first novel, trying to launch a magazine, writing an abstract for a new alt. weekly, poking at book on writing and dropping all of my freelance contracts.

Then I'm going to the zoo, and then I'm going to China, and we did a lot of things today, a-yup.

Why are you letting the book rest for a week now? Rather than after the last chapter and epilogue? Just curious.

Normally, I wouldn't. But I want to make sure the pacing on this one hasn't hiccoughed, and I think a long deep breath at this point, just before the big kaboom, is the way to go. Gut feeling. I can do it without any time constraints; this one is scheduled to come out in October of 2005, so it's about a year early. The ms is at 68,000 words right now, and I want to feel more comfortable with the build; it seems to have a statelier feel to it than the first two books, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be consistent.

I have wondrous beta readers, without who my life would be a shitload harder than it is, and a few of them (Deena, Beverly and Nilly included) live right here.

Then I'm going to the zoo, and then I'm going to China, and we did a lot of things today, a-yup.

Bill Cosby reference!

"Well, we're going to the zoo, and then they're taking us to Japan, yup, yup, yup."

Have I ever mentioned that DH and I knew we were destined for each other because we each had half of Cos' albums in release at that time, with no duplicates? Or that when our sons were in middle school they "discovered" the albums, and suddenly realized where conversational fragments they'd grown up hearing, and learned to use themselves, ("Where're my socks? Thunk. "I don't know, I don't wear them." "Nine HUNDRED cop cars." " I have a sore throat." "Thump-thump, thump-thump!" "Faster, faster, you fool, you fool!" "Come around, idiot, come around!") had come from? Or that that summer on clear nights we had a deck full of kids in sleeping bags listening to those albums?

Welcome, AmyLiz. Apparently I'm writing memoirs, at the moment.

"Why is there air? To blow up basketballs with!"

• happily reminiscing about listening to the Bill Cosby albums, back in the day*

Not that I'm a writer, I just like to visit the unfamiliar threads every so often.

"Thump-thump, thump-thump!"

Chicken heart!

Apparently I'm writing memoirs, at the moment.

Sweetie, we're over forty; some of us are fifty or over. Aren't we all writing memoirs?

A cartoon, for Writers with cats

Sadly, I'm not real familiar with Cosby's comedy...but if anybody loves old Steve Martin, I'm your girl. The sheer goofiness gets me every time. "He spoke French!" "Some people have a way with words. And some people...not have way."

And even more sadly, I have no beta readers. *pathetic whimper* Right now, I'm writing the second book in a young adult series, and if anything, my betas are the editor, publisher, and packager. I created the series, which underwent a lot of changes after the sale, but because I did it with a packager, there are way too many chefs and what's become a kind of muddy "let's please everybody! all the time!" soup. I gave the first chapter of the first book to the people in my writing group last year, but by the time they'd read it, it had already undergone so many changes, their input wasn't really helpful. It was to me, I mean, but when you have Revision Requests From On High, it often doesn't matter.

And that concludes the whining portion of our program. Right now I'm trying to get the second book finished so I can take a few weeks in March and get back to a proposal for something else that I really love, and maybe even feel the joy again.

Edited because I hate typos.

AmyLiz, do you need a beta?