Black Friday tactics

... or, how to waste a perfectly good writing day.

Congratulations again to all the Strumpet Crumpets who have finished project(s) or are basking in the glow of a brand new release. I have to start something new following the lukewarm reception of my latest partial, so far. This was my Arabian Nights project that I blogged about back in April, and has met with editors' reactions like "not sexy enough" or "your voice didn't speak to me."

I have, though, discovered the version of the Arabian Nights that would have been familiar to the Georgian era, the Mille et Une Nuit by Antoine Galland--the Arabian Night's Entertainment, translated by Robert Mack.

I'm trying not to dwell too much on the editors' comments because I write is what I write, so today, after eating too much yesterday, I'm all fired up to write. It's mid-afternoon, and here's my writing progress:

Got up at 10:30. Went back to bed with tea. Read.

1:00 Husband announced as he left for work that the kitchen fan, one of those old fashioned things that's in a hole in the wall with a flap to the outside, was stuck on as he'd tried "to pull it all the way closed." Daughter simultaneously announced that the dishwasher had flooded but she'd almost finished mopping up.

1:15 Daughter and I deduced that if we turned off the kitchen breaker the fan could stop, and she of the delicate little hands could unplug it, braving the filth and grease of fifty years or so. The outside flap is now jammed shut with an old soda bottle. The kitchen floor is much cleaner. I swiffer it a bit more; the swiffer is the first household item, ever, that I have fallen in love with. Did you know the swiffer is environmentally sustainable? Read this interview with the swiffer designer.

The inside of the dishwasher is covered with black specks that I suspect the plumbing has burped back up. I give it another rinse. Still there. I run it again. So much for environmental sustainability.

Lunchtime.

I tidy my desk hoping to find wonderful things on it. I don't. The contents of the dishwasher are mostly clean.

Put on CD of Callas singing Tosca that I did find on the desk clean up and consider how to make my writing sexier. A bit worrying since the last one started in a harem and the next one, I think, will start in an ultra polite drawing room, so it seems I'm regressing. But I find it far more interesting to discover the erotic possibilities with everyone on their feet, fully clothed, and talking about the weather, or in this case, making music.

Make yet more tea, put on CD2 of Tosca, and consider myself fortunate that I am not so desperate not to write that I have gone to a mall (ugh!) or outside to rake leaves.

So what are you doing on Black Friday?