My deadline for revising ORDINARY BEAUTY is looming and so this last seven days is crunch time. I've done this many times before and you'd think it would get easier but it doesn't because each manuscript is different, each story has different people who want different things, and so each time I go in and try to excavate, try to hear them and carve away all but the raw nerve of the story, try to whittle it down so I can see what they see, feel what they feel and what they need. And I have to listen hard to the characters, and trust them.

And while this is happening my studio cat G, who I inherited about six years ago when I bought the house before this one, is pacing, and jumping up and down off my desk chair, walking across me, sticking his head up in front of the keyboard and just generally being a nuisance, like his job is to add to my role of tormented artist. And I would like to get mad at him for doing this but really, look at this face:


G has been abandoned at least twice so far, the first time by whoever originally dumped him on the owner of the first house I bought out in Pennsylvania, and then when I bought the house, she abandoned him to me, saying he came with the house. He's an old cat and an affectionate one, and so when I moved from that house instead of leaving him, he came with me and always will. I have no idea what his original name was but he came to me with the name G and he recognizes it, so that's what it stayed.

Anyway, it's time for fresh coffee and to get moving again. Have a great day, you guys.