General Updates

Well, jury duty was a quick and painless affair for me, once again. I got as far as voir dir on a civil case involving a car accident, but was dismissed once I revealed that I’d also been in a car accident. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. I’ve always wanted to serve on a jury, but never get picked. I know it’s considered a huge pain in the ass by most people, but the justice-loving bossypants in me would love to be able to debate the finer points of a case. Then again, that bossypants side of me might have been the reason I was dismissed. I noticed that everyone else answered the judge’s questions in a very subdued, small, deferential voice – as if that was the voice people thought they should answer with in a courtroom. By comparison, I spoke in diaphragm-supported all-caps: FUCK YEAH I AM ALL ABOUT SERVING PICK ME PLEASE! Yes, that might have influenced my being shown the door…

In writing news, I’ve had a ultra-short (1300 words) story accepted, but can’t divulge the name of the anthology until I get the go-ahead. Today I’m finishing up another anthology invite story – and this is how my weekends are going to be spent through all of February and part of March. Novel-writing will take place Monday through Friday in the late afternoons, and short story writing will be on the weekends. This type of compartmentalization isn’t something I’ve done before, but I wanted to try something new, and push myself a little in the process – in the past I’ve always maintained that I can’t write short fiction and long fiction at the same time, but that’s a luxury that I think best works for writers with more time at their disposal. My daytime job dictates that I need to learn how to do multiple things at the same time, or lose out on a number of opportunities. So, I’ll try it this way for a couple of months and see how it goes.

And now it’s back to writing. And possibly baking cookies later. Because apparently baking and writing is one group of things that I can do at the same time. Go figure.

.