Beverly, well, make it the 2nd or 3rd time! I haven't had the laughing out loud so much lately (which I attribute 1. to the bad weather in my town, which translates to bad moodiness and unfunniness in people 2. this wasteland of television season we are having) and your comment made me snort, so, I wasn't going to let it slip away if I could help it.

I like this drabble topic, alot. Perhaps I will overcome my drabble posting fear.

Aww. That's right. Welcome back, btw. You were missed.

I found my writers' groups through continuing ed classes at a local college, too. They both have been bastions at various times in my writing evolution, and even at the point where I'm producing little or nothing, now, they won't let me withdraw. And I admit, staying invested in critiquing and workshopping their work does keep the table open for business, and occasionally I do manage a drabble or a poem.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that my calling may be editorial rather than writerly, however. Now I just need not to be so damned bossy and autocratic when in workshop. "Lose that phrase, it's unnecessary and it wrecks your rhythm." "You have three 'the's in this stanza. Pick one." "You don't need a comma if you break the line there. Of course if you put the preposition at the beginning of the line then the line above it would end on a power word." "What? Don't look like I kicked your puppy, it's better this way, trust me." "keep up."

Oy.

Writers need editors only to the extent that editors control payment.

Having uttered my pithy thing, I depart.

Gus, have you read Anne Rice?

Yes, even though my last edit resembled nothing so much as a long-distance Pap test, I think in many ways it improved the piece. Although I prefer to be edited by people who enjoy what I do more than the last editor did.

Well, and Beverly, you're good at it. I remember that you've moved a word or two of my poetry or pieces here that made a world of difference.

Also, yes, good topic. I must mull.

Beverly, you wrecked my exit line.

I shall forgive you, when the laughter dies down. Around 2007 or so.

Okay here's my loose interpretation of this challenge. (114 words with title)

Expiration Date

He hates the way she shops. He mocks the effort she puts into the hunt, the hours spent clipping coupons, combing dollar stores and pharmacies for reduced victuals to sustain reduced lives, with garbled rebukes between shots.

When he comes to pick her up from work, that is, if he even remembers to, he blocks her with his fist from the back wall, insisting that he didn’t immigrate to “the land of plenty” to season his Fleisch with past-due ketchup, musty sauerkraut.

That Christmas, as the laughter, echoing the collapsing of his face, begins to wane when he unwraps a tenth jar of Hengstenberg mustard, his fear of disintegration seems justified.

Gus, I hereby throw down challenge. My editor is 86 years old, she is known as the doyenne of American mystery publishing, and I would trust her with a machete. And she asks me before she edits a word of mine.

If Anne Rice and Thomas Harris aren't painful enough examples of why a good editor is worth his or her weight in gold, may I point you at Hemingway's To Have and Have Not? He wrote a huge overlong muddled mess which buried a very good story and heavy atmosphere in, apparently, shitloads of political outrage. When the editor said, this needs fixing, Ernie gasped, clutched his masterpiece to his undoubtedly hairy manly bosom, announced that no editor would touch it, and proceeded to edit himself.

Lillian Hellman was a junior editor at his publishing house at the time, and she got to read the first draft. It was, quite literally, incoherent; missing entire scenes to connect other scenes. He'd tried to do it himself and he simply didn't know how to edit, especially his own stuff.

I will give my editor anything on this earth she wants, money or no.

Heh. Brynn, I was about to comment - that's a charming piece of work, there. One word is puzzling me, though: the mention of "our" reduced lives. Everything else in the piece is at a distance, so was that sudden inclusion of self deliberate or accidental?