My Reflection In A Fogged Up Mirror
an excerpt

“Being witty in person is much easier than being witty in writing Amanda.” My friend, and editor, Linda informed me as I laid out the premise for my new book. “I am bored with the same murder mystery genre.” I whined. “Well, then you should get busy trying to be funny.” She countered.

That was a while ago. A while being twenty days, seventeen hours and forty three minutes. I know the amount of time precisely because that is how long I have been jotting down half-baked ideas only to crumple the paper and throw them in the general direction of the trash can. The first few ideas were just to warm up my pencil and make sure I had my head in the game. As I tossed them aside, I tried to score points by getting the balls of paper into the trash can. That explains why there have been so many ideas. You see, I am a fairly competitive person, even when I am my only competition, (OK, especially then). Therefore, writing silly ideas gave me ample balls of crumpled paper to score points with. Hence the term “head in the game”. Approximately four hours of this idea tossing brought me no closer to a story line, but quite a lot of points had been scored. Also, I had managed to lose sight of my objective in my earnest pursuit of scoring points. So, after considering this, I decided that to throw the crumpled papers into the trash can was a distraction my writing could do without. This conclusion brought me to a decision. “I am no longer allowed to aim for the trash can”. Yes, I realize this is a game I am only playing with myself and so why cheat. However after a few more attempts at outlining a good idea, I found myself aiming my crumpled paper at the trash bin. That is when I admitted that I lack self discipline. So, I removed the trash can from my line of sight and tossed the discarded ideas willy nilly. This lasted for quite some time (twenty two minutes) when I realized that having the papers scattered was too much of a distraction. So, the trash can was moved far enough away as to be impossible to score points and since then I have been throwing the crumpled bits in that general direction. I am sure if anyone were to watch this process, they would suggest that I try a computer because deleting unwanted words is so much tidier than throwing them about.

Now I have come to realize that writing something witty is difficult, but being the stubborn girl I am, I have also decided that it is not beyond me. I had given myself a deadline of three weeks to come up with a workable plot to present to Linda so that she would be humbled by my wit and willing to take my beginning in to the publisher and stand behind it with all of her considerable might. Now impressing Linda is no small feat. She has read some of my earlier novels that I felt were pure genius and found fatal flaws that had to be fixed before she would even consider going before the publisher with them. And by fatal flaws, I mean large gaping holes in plots, missing evidence in conclusions and characters that were meant to be dastardly and came out just dumb. Because of her editing prowess, I trust her judgment completely. Her discerning taste has proven itself time and again by my books getting published and even read by many admirers of the mystery genre. I am by no means a New York Bestselling author, but I am pretty good in my own neck of the woods.