New blog design!

Like everything else in my life, my blog is a work in progress. I'm in the middle of a redesign. So please forgive my blog for being monumentally ugly and frequently illogical while we transition. :)

Wine and reminiscing for the win

My best friend visited me this past weekend.  We've been friends since college, and she's one of the few people I feel totally comfortable with. I know I can share any random thought with her, without being judged (she's like a cat that way, but a much more satisfying conversationalist). We watched trashy TV, drank lots of lattes and raspberry wine, and talked about our lives.

The ways our husbands piss us off. The ways they make us melt.
Our jobs and our schedules and our co-workers. Our medical issues. Our parents.  She let me go through the story of my miscarriage again, in grisly detail (though we were in a booth at Panera at the time and I had the car keys, so I guess she didn't really have a choice on that one...). We talked about Cam, how he died, the funeral.

We reminisced about the past -- the time my car died in an intersection and we hung out with a cop in his patrol car until AAA came two hours later, the parties, the boy-troubles, the psycho roommate who stole our stuff when she moved out. We still both really hate her, by the way. We talked about where we'll be in ten years and where we'll be next summer. We made plans to see each other in Boston and to visit Indonesia and to road-trip through the Midwest neither of us have ever seen.


And somewhere along the way, between talking about all the good times in the past, venting about the hell life's been lately, and planning the good times for the future, I really started to believe I'm going to be happy again soon. The power of a best friend is an amazing thing.

What's okay for us to say, as writers?

This question's for all of us who are trying to make it as writers.  What's okay for us to say on our blogs and Twitters?  I'm not talking about bashing other writers, or publishers, or even the ZOMG-Let's-Not-Go-There-Again book review debacle that washed over blogs & Twitter a while ago.

I've been pretty open about my recent life issues on this blog, though I haven't posted half the posts I've written.  I worry that an agent won't want to sign someone who sounds, well, miserable (For the record, I am still really normal in person. Well, my version of normal. I will never call you up and cry wordlessly into the phone, even if you send me a rejection letter, promise).

We always try to be so happy and upbeat about writing and publishing, even though sometimes the industry drives us nuts, doesn't it? So does that just apply to when we talk about writing and publishing specifically, or should we keep relationship woes, illnesses and general suckage out of our blogs -- even though those are the very things that can inform our writing?

I have no idea. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Remembering 9-11

Ten years ago, something terrible happened that changed the world we live in forever.  Today, I think we're all hurting for the families that lost loved ones.  Our country was changed, and with it the course of many of our lives.

But people also came together, on that day. There was some beauty amidst all the horror, selflessness and concern for others and love for our fellow Americans. In the aftermath, we've pulled apart again, divided by political lines, war, security measures versus civil liberties, religious prejudice, different concepts of patriotism and nationalism.

But let's remember when we came together. We can disagree, but we're still Americans together, still stuck facing the same challenges. We can never have our country back the way it was ten years ago, but we can try to come together and keep rebuilding the one we have now.