Hello Everybody. Just a post to let you know that I really, truly, am alive. I promise.
It seems that the interview I had a few weeks ago with the killer ad agency went as well as I thought — because they brought me on as a freelance copywriter on a really innovative direct mail piece. Yippee! I have to say, it feels awesome to be working with agency-folk again. A writer’s life is a lonely one — that much is true for novelists and freelancers. I’m both, so I guess that makes me doubly lonesome at times. But not now; it’s great to be brainstorming with actual people and not just my living room sofa.
And when it rains, it pours. The same day that I started my new freelancing gig, I received not one, but two golden emails in my inbox. One request for a full and another for a partial. After a string of rejections, and a slight reword on my query, those two requests were heaven-sent. Woot. Of course, I’m doing my typical re-re-re-read through of my manuscript prior to pressing the “send” button. It’s amazing, but I catch typos and clunky sentences every time. It makes me second-guess my skills. I mean, if I’m still rewording sentences after the eighth or ninth pass — how terrible was edit #1? (I don’t even count the first draft. First drafts never pass for real writing.) — And that little sentence just reminded me of a typo I caught several times on my latest read-through. … periods outside, when they should’ve been inside, full sentence parenthesis. Duh. It kills me that an agent is currently reading my manuscript with that typo blaring in her face — several times.
Another reason for celebration? I made my first official I’m-A-Mom-And-Now-I-Raid-Other-People’s-Trash move today. Prior to children, I thought garage sales were disgusting. Why would I want somebody’s old junk? And pillaging other people’s trash — even fabulous trash — forget about it. Gross-o-rama. Ehem.*Clears throat.* I scored a completely fine, nearish-new, Step2 playhouse climber for The Toddler — for free. Sure, someone had thrown it out for trash pick up, and sure, I had to recruit a passing cop to help me dismantle it and get it into the back of my Rav4, but it was totally worth it. Now The Toddler has a slide to play on and a castle to hang out in and one landfill was saved a rather large hunk of plastic to painfully digest.
Of course, with all of this jubilation comes a little Debbie Downer. I’m getting sick. You know, the whole sore throat, achy knees, body-dragging-two-feet-behind-your-soul bit. Which is why I’m cutting this post short to chug some oj and crawl into bed. Ahchoo.
