This Little Piggy

People's appendages seem to be in serious jeopardy lately.

Maybe it's because I ripped off my own toenail (getting into the car) last month, but I seem to be seeing and hearing a lot of toe and finger tragedies.

There's the guy at Dave's fire department who severed his pinky at the knuckle when it got caught in a ladder.

Another brother sliced his finger a few days later.

My little friend Riley tore off her big toenail.

And my friend Linda was run over by a grocery cart, then stepped on by a coffee shop customer.

What's interesting about these stories is not so much the plot of it all, but the characters' reactions to it. Honestly, it's quite telling, the way one responds to driving a hammer into one's thumb.

Though I'm sorry for these folks' suffering, I am, admittedly and sickly, except for the lost finger, amused by the effects. There's been some crying, some swearing, some shrieking, some grace.

I guess there are two things to learn from all this: to study people in appendage crises, and to be extra careful right now when walking barefoot or shutting doors or using electric knives.

43, Luckily -- Kerry

My sister-in-law died on her 42nd birthday a few years ago.
I made it to 43 today and celebrated with, among others, her three remaining children.
I threw a covert glance in her eldest daughter's direction. She resembles her mother the most. I wondered if she felt the injustice of a life cut short every day, like I was feeling right now.
Perhaps every birthday I should glance in these children's direction and remind myself that I too am mortal, that I should never ever forget what an amazing miracle it is that we walk on this earth, for whatever amount of time we're here.
Me, I'm glad for 43.

WOW!

I knew 7/8/9 would be a lucky day! I got my first WoW (Waiting on Wednesday) post - which means a YA book reviewer has marked my book as one she's excited to read! You have no idea how cool this is to a newbie author. Seriously. I'm levitating right now. Thanks Catt!

Click here to check out at Catt's blog, The Dreamer Reader, and see the 7 reasons why she wants to read the book!

Another one flies the coop

When is enough enough? How do you know you are done with a manuscript? I find it a lot easier to write "The End" on a first draft than I do with subsequent drafts. I just sent off my work-in-progress manuscript (Astrid) to my agent and I had a hard time figuring out if I was “done” or not. When someone questions your work, pushes you to strive for more, it’s hard to know if you’ve reached that goal they had in mind for you.

For me, the biggest surprise in this publishing process is how little line editing is done early in the process—mostly you receive “notes” in letter form, describing overall things that need to change with not a lot of direction about how to do it. And it seems you could do one of a hundred things to fix each thing! In my experience, revision has been a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. But then again, I have a very editorial agent who wants to go through a revision (or two!) before ever sending to editors.

So, Astrid is gone. She’s flown from my email to a desktop where she will be printed and scrutinized. Good thing I have so much to do in the coming weeks—stewing over whether or not the spaghetti is sticking to the wall is no fun at all.

How do you know when you are done?