I have a thing about messing with other people's content, but I line-edit pretty well.

I'm the opposite. I can suggest restructuring or reworking but I suck at the details.

I suppose that's why I am forever finding typos in my own work months after the fact.

Nah, Kristen, I'm way better at editing other people's stuff -- my own, I know what it's supposed to say, so in my head, it does!

Hi all. Just bopping in to pimp a friend's book:

Barbara DeMarco Barrett--an old, dear friend of mine and the person who knows more about writing than anyone else I know, and let's face it, I know a lot of people--finally has her book on writing out, "Pen on Fire."

Everyone knows I sniff at writing books, but Barbara's the real deal. Visit her Web site.

End of commercial announcement.

Oh, Victor, congrats to you and Thessaly on the award!

Thank ya. We're both still bouncy about it.

I'm not surprised.

I'm not surprised.

I am. I think it's because we both won, and that all three of the poets come out of the Poet's Asylum.

A little backstory: the JKA is given to three poets from Central Mass. each year, as well as to a number of visual artists (not sure on the details on that side, except that the award is a bit more prestigious in painting circles, but anyway...

For years, it's been dominated by poets out of the terribly, terribly dull "lit journal" crowd, who very much look down on those of us who work the coffeehouses, slams, etc. In other parts of the country, this phenomenon has smoothed out a bit, but around here it's more polarized than I've ever seen. Never mind that I'm from a different scene entirely,and actually better published than most or all of them.

So the Asylum scoring two-thirds of the winners last year, and a clean sweep this year is pretty damn vindicating.

I'll toast that.

Big congrats to Victor and Thessaly!

Last-minute entry for the "escape" challenge.

----- She dreams of someplace clean, bright, and spare. Pale walls, wide windows left uncurtained, a soft rug. A worn, comfortable chair. A broad expanse of polished pine, her computer set squarely in its center, manuscript pages anchored with a heavy stone, worried into smoothness long ago.

There would be tea makings, and a bowl for grapes. Chocolate stashed on the bookshelf, which would lend the room its color, each row crowded with orange, black, red, blue, cream.

A place to write without Nickelodeon squawking in the background, or laundry in a nearby pile. A room of her own. An escape.