On the whole I have, in many ways, my dream career. There are still plenty of soul sucking days and I do all kinds of stupid shit where I drop the ball and miss the details on things. At times I get down on myself about it, but I try to cut myself a break when I can. The fact is, even with a job you adore, work is work. Sometimes it is very rewarding, sometimes it is just long and arduous and you just want to take a nap. At least, that's my experience with it.

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The sparkling red I linked to above is pretty sweet, it tastes like red grape juice with a little bit of alcohol kick. But it's not cloying—I've had a wine from Israel that was so sugary I couldn't get past the first sip.

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Sometimes it is very rewarding, sometimes it is just long and arduous and you just want to take a nap.

And sometimes you watch a giant Mr. Potato Head doing choreography on the stage in front of you.

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self-sabotage and just a general mid-20s slackery sense that time was limitless and I could fuck around for ages before bearing down professionally. And now I'm a few months off from 40 and trying to find some way to do something more productive than kick my decade-younger self's ass.

Except for the bit where I'm not quite as close to 40 (I turned 37 at the beginning of the month), I could've written every. single. word. quoted above.

I absolutely know what I want, and I'm 99% confident I have the raw talent plus determination and willingness to stick with it to get there. I just have the nervous fear that the luck part, the having the right book at the right time in front of the right editor, is never going to happen. Because if it doesn't, all the talent and hard work in the world won't make a damn bit of difference for me.

I know that I'm putting too much of my identity in how the rest of the world perceives me, and that's never a good thing. But I hate that I know I'm a writer and a storyteller to my core, but what the world sees when it looks at me is an admin assistant/operations manager/etc. It feels so wonderful whenever I get to be a writer--to spend time working on my story, researching, critiquing, talking with other writers--and I hate coming down from that writer high to slog away at what pays the bills.

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I think it's $2.50 chuck, now, though.

Only on the East Coast.

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It used to be $2.99, now its $3.29

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FWIW, Susan, I have such huge admiration for your ability to stick things through and finish them -- you may not have sold them yet, but you've finished, what? two, three novels? I've spent the last couple of years feeling crushed to a fine powder by the demands of pregnancy and baby-rearing and job-hunting, and you've done all the same things and managed to carve out private time in which to give voice to the people in your head, make them live on the page.

Even if no publisher has given you money for them yet, even if it's just you and your writer's groups and your beta readers, that's still much more than I've managed. You made those stories, those characters real. You saw them, and you brought them out into the world and made other people see them. That's a huge achievement.

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I just remembered that when I last donated blood, I got a coupon for a free ice cream scoop with one mix in at Coldstone! What should I get?

Not sure what I'd say my dream job is. I'm in a pretty sweet position as it is in terms of pay and schedule and boss, but I have no passion for it at all. I think I'd enjoy teaching, but I couldn't give up the pay I get now. The thought of teaching kids to read is really appealing to me, especially since I remember how wonderful that experience was. I could see having passion for that. I definitely have passion for the work I do with the juvenile hall kids. I also had passion for music when I was in the band (still love music), but I never liked the performing aspect of it. Just the writing, singing, and recording parts. I'd like to create a job in which I work jointly for Apple and Sanrio and pitch, design, and market ridiculously adorable products (pink Hello Kitty laptop! black Bad Badtz Maru iPod!).

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My dream job would be to work in an immigration law related non-profit. And they'd have to let me work 20-30 hours a week.

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you may not have sold them yet, but you've finished, what? two, three novels?

Three, and I'm on p. 175 of the manuscript of the fourth.

And thank you for reminding me that to be able to keep writing with everything else I've dealt with the past 4-5 years is an accomplishment in itself. Because I can always find someone who writes faster to compare myself to. Though I'm not sure I know anyone who writes faster AND has as many non-writerly responsibilities. A lot of days the only thing holding me together is sheer stubbornness. I'm not going to stop writing. I'm just not. The universe can't make me, no matter how much it tries.

You made those stories, those characters real. You saw them, and you brought them out into the world and made other people see them. That's a huge achievement.

Thanks for this, too. It's hard, it really is, to see other people pass me on the road to publication. I'm 100% thrilled for Allyson and Jilli and all my other friends who've sold in the almost 7 years I've been at this now, but there's still this little voice inside me saying, "What about me? When will it be my turn? I'm good, too, I really am." And then when something like this Cassie Edwards plagiarism scandal goes down...well, then I get a little angry at the universe.

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