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?

Deb Hmm. I didn't even realize I did that. Probably, I missed it when I was converting the perspective from a first person memory piece, since distance seemed more fitting. I could cut the "our" having it read "to sustain reduced lives" instead? Now I'm noticing weird comma stuff. Not usually a comma gal, but I think I'm wordy and the drabble format has me doing a bit of syntactical contortion to fit everything in.

Sure, DG, that will teach me to be flippant.

I think I was referring to that editor who is not real, the one that lives in the mind of the first-time writer, the one who stomps on every word choice and scene setting.

That editor can bite me.

The distinction between input from the editor you describe and input from a writer's group (situated anywhere) must be readily apparent, no?

That editor can bite me.

Dude. The one in the head, who tries to eat newbies?

Should be killed on sight. I'm with you.

The meatspace editor who not only knows what they're doing, but who respects the work and the voice?

Anything he or she wants. Dancing girls, groupies, cocaine, chocolate, anything at all.

OK, that Editor, Station manager at KFKD. Bitch.

And then there's my crew, with the machetes and the weedwhackers. Love them.

I think we call Gus's version of an editor a superego.

The other kind does not fall into a Freudian category.