Of all the things slash really should or shouldn't be, it shouldn't be dull.

It's my own fault, this story didn't want to be slash and I'm forcing it because...well, because that's what I write. Slash. I don't know how to write anything else.

Maybe that should be my next challenge to myself? To write a gen story?

Nah. I don't even read gen. What would be the point? (Ed. - Well, you could change this to a gen story and save yourself a lot of pain.) (Me - That would be an admission of defeat.) (Ed. - You're already defeated. Don't be pigheaded about admitting it.) (Me - Don't you have somewhere else to be right about now?)

Anyhow.

I'm regretting giving up the political blog. It seemed like a sensible thing to do two months ago. It was taking up far too much time and I wanted to do some writing. Today, with a crucial election 24 hours away, I'm biting my nails and resisting the urge to talk-talk-talk about all of those things I spent two years learning about.

On the other hand, I have 54,000 words of fictional crap to show for the last two months, instead of about 100,000 words of soci-eco-political babbling. That seems like a fair trade-off, considering that no one has had to read the 54k and about 10,000 people (or maybe 60,000, I never really did get the hang of that stats program) would have read my political blog and gone away convinced that one doesn't necessarily gain wisdom with age.

A thought has been percolating in my brain for a while about that. Reading the story, I mean. When I mentioned in passing that I was writing a new story, someone I know asked me to be sure and let her know when it was done, and to send her the story even if I didn't finish it.

That's been bothering me ever since, you know? I mean, this is someone whose opinion actually matters to me. So, if I abandon the story as a piece of crap that I don't want even total strangers to read, why on earth should I actually send it to her, someone whose opinion I care about?

I have to think she just wasn't thinking about what she was saying. Or maybe she thought it would be good but I'd just get bored of writing it or something. That's probably it, yeah. I just misunderstood.

So...less about me, more about the rest of the world.

Bernie, DiamondGirl, and the Tweenybopper have a new coworker. Poor girl walked in this morning at 8:15, not understanding that there would be no one here but me and that I wasn't told she was coming. She seems very nice. We'll have to wait and see what personality disorders she reveals as we come to know her.

I (yeah, we're already back to me) went shopping Saturday and bought a new sweater which turned out to be unfortunately similar to another one I bought two weeks ago and forgot about. I really do need to clean out my closet and get rid of the things I never wear. Again. I swear, that closet is some kind of trans-dimensional rift. No matter how many bags of stuff I yank out of it and put in the dumpster, it stays full.

Anyhow. I bought three sweaters and a pair of gray pants. And three books. And $40 worth of junk food at the grocery store. And some white-out. And a phone stand to use to hold the box with all my post-it notes and index cards and flags on my table. And...something else, I think, but I forgot. I shop the way some people drink...until I hit oblivion.

It's possible to report, after exhaustive testing (I ate one of each) that the Dove chocolate-chocolate ice cream bar is far superior to the Hagen-Daaz chocolate-chocolate ice cream bar. Naturally, since the Dove is $2.69 each and the H-D is $5.49 for three. The Dove has 20% more calories and, in my estimation, 75% better flavor. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

Also, after binging for 24 hours, I found myself sick to death of junk food. For dinner last night I turned, with gratitude, to the piece of grilled salmon and cupful of watermelon I had waiting for me in the refrigerator. Being sick of junk food didn't stop me from eating cheesecake for dessert, but I ate it out of a sense of obligation...because I'd spent money on it. I'd much rather have had some nice, steamed broccoli, I promise.

Last night it snowed, so I got to wear a couple of new sweaters today. (I bought them to layer...another advantage of completing The Diet. I haven't been able to wear layered clothes for years. Not without looking like Humpty-Dumpty, I mean.) It's unfortunate that I caught of glimpse of myself in profile in one of the mirrors that litter this building's first floor, though. I had not realized that my hips are, or at least look, smaller than my chest. Possibly someone, even though Post-Diet, who wears a D-cup should avoid layering lots of material across the old anatomies unless she aspires to look like someone in danger of falling forward from the sheer tonnage of boob she's toting around. It seems a bit unfair that I lost weight in every part of my body but those two glands, okay? Surely some of that has to be a layer of fat. I worked hard at that stupid diet. I was entitled to lose a cup size.

I also wore my new jacket. At least, I carried my new jacket. I left it in the car when I was scraping my windows this morning and when I parked and ran into Starbucks, because I didn't want it to get all wet. It's my new jacket.

And, since I'm talking about me anyhow, the S.E.N. I didn't do much writing this weekend. A couple of scenes here and there. A few deletions. Fixing some typos. Inserting a few missing quotation marks. Removing some excess quotation marks. More editing type of stuff than writing.

I also did some Story Planning stuff. Writing out new outlines. Making new index cards for new scenes I'd written or am planning. Removing index cards for scenes I've deleted. More stalling type stuff than writing.

The thing is, you see, I'm At That Point. The next thing that has to be written is the Dreaded Sex Scene. The story isn't exactly dripping with UST, so I can get away with something rather close to fade-to-black, which is good, so now all I have to do is learn to write fade-to-black.

In the meantime, since this is the Written Out Of Order story anyhow, maybe I'll just skip that and move ahead to write the next couple of scenes. I have some fairly comprehensive notes on them already. I know just what ought to happen. (Well, I should by now. It's the end of the story, after all.)

You know, maybe I should go back to political blogging. I mean, yeah, the death and destruction you write about are real, but on the upside, no one expects a sex scene and you can write one paragraph to a story, then move on to a new topic.

(Blogger is running like molasses this morning...but in some ways, so is our network, so I can't decide whether to blame them or us. I'm glad I'm getting a new blogsite, though. Look for annezo.net to appear some day soon.)