Thanks, Betsy and Ginger. I changed the last sentence and included a brief clause on the tongue tie thing.

Susan, that's better, but I would take Betsy's advice on the one final edit of the last sentence. But...do you "think" you "must have" done something right, or do you know? (I think you know, deep down, but this is your essay.) I don't want to make this rah-rah positive if that's not where you're going (and I know it's a personal essay, and a very personal subject), but I have my own issues about this (coming from where you did, and getting over those issues in a major way), so I might not be completely rational here.

I also agree with Ginger -- what's tongue-tie? I was tempted to look it up, but I'm too tired and lazy today.

Oops. Too late. Sorry. I'm working at half speed today. I think I'm coming down with something.

Tongue tie is when the little membrane attaching your tongue to the base of your mouth is restricting the tongue's range of motion too much. As such, it weakens a baby's suck, and in severe cases can cause speech impediments, though Annabel's is mild and seems to be resolving nicely on its own. (The essay explanation is shorter than that.)

I had a very good Freelancing Day. (Frequenters of Bitches may recall that I decided to stop trying to do everything every day, and that until I finish the Lucy edit, I have five Novel Days and one Freelancing Day per week.) I submitted the article posted above for consideration for a regional magazine--low pay, and pay upon publication rather than acceptance, but higher odds of acceptance. I also did two queries for medium-scale national magazines and sent some clips to a custom publisher who'd requested them in response to an inquiry I sent about a month ago.

So. I don't know that anything will come of this, but it sure felt good, and it's only 6:00 p.m. I have the rest of the evening for relaxing and housework and hanging out with DH and Annabel. And I think the queries I did were of better quality than what I was doing before, because instead of rushing through them so I could get one more thing checked off my list, I was really thinking about how interesting or important my topic was and why I wanted to write about it.

Next up: Making my next few Novel Days that productive so I can get my partials and synopses for the editor and agent from the conference mailed no later than the middle of next week.

A fateful encounter, the reverse of the romantic kind:

Intruder

She’s not expecting Jack that night, and in any case the last few days she’s been more tired than ever before in her life. Too many late nights, she thinks, and grins naughtily. So she goes to bed early and sleeps deep.

Yet she wakes instantly at the sound of a man climbing through her window.

“Jack?”

“Not Jack, Mrs. Arrington.” His laugh is cold.

Without conscious thought she reaches for the pistol on the table by the bed and rolls to sit upright, pistol cocked and aimed at the intruder.

“Get out. Or I will shoot.”

That laugh again. “You?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” The second. And this time she has some idea of what she’s doing.

And, for an experiment, I decided to try both my hero-heroine first meet scenes from the POV of the one who's not the POV character at that point in the official version:

Tumble

How long has it been since he last fell from a horse? His shoulder hurts, but the sting of humiliation is far greater.

And to have such a witness! A girl, a sallow girl in a yellow dress, as calm and intrepid as can be as she catches Ghost’s bridle, calms her, and ties her to a low-hanging branch.

With the horse secure, she turns her attention to him, asks if he is injured. Her eyes are big, brown, and forthright, and he doubts she’d look half so sallow in a color that suited her.

Healthy Man

She hardly looks at the sergeant at first. A glance is enough to tell her he’s bursting with health and vitality, and she’s here to minister to the ill and injured. And the first few things he says to her are commonplaces, nothing to make her look closer.

He speaks again, and something about it makes her think that he sees her. Most people only see the facade. So she looks up and meets his eyes.

A strange jolt, like recognition, runs through her veins. How can anyone she’s just met seem so little like a stranger?

Susan looks around and realizes she's utterly alone in the thread. She shrugs, and lies back to drift off to sleep upon a sea of words.

Not utterly alone, I'm just lurky. Congrats on the accomplishments of the day, Susan! I'm getting really sucked into Lucy from the stuff you've been posting.

I really want to do this drabble; all of them have been so fascinating, but I'm not inspired. Oh well, there are still a couple days left.

There was one more in me, the one I didn't want to write. Damn it.

The One That Didn't Happen

4 September, 1994. We're in the car, and here it comes, a familiar piano riff.

I go stiff. I can't help it; it's reflex, hardwired. I try not to visibly react , bank down the fire that won't die, show nothing that could hurt. Wasted, of course. Nic knows me.

He glances at me sidelong, and pats my knee. "Someday," he says, no particular intonation, "you're going to bump into him. You know that, right? And you're going to keel over and faint, and that's it, you'll be fine."

I consider it. Finally I say "Damn. I hope you're right."

Two days later, my phone starts ringing.

I'd say this was a fateful encounter.
---------

Ten hours of labor, a gush of liquid that floods the floor, makes the midwife shout, “She’s in a hurry!” Six burning pushes and she’s out of me, my cranky fullback baby.

“Why won’t she nurse?” I’ve got tears in my eyes and the lactation consultant pats me on the shoulder.

Every nurse at every shift thinks she’s got the answer. My nipples burn from the pokes and twists as each attempts to force the baby to suckle.

The pediatrician laughs. “She’s a lazy-sucker; strong-willed. It happens.”

I laugh with her, clueless, stupid. I have no idea what this portends.