The professional part...

It's the professional part of every profession that I really loathe. The paperwork and the connections and...well, what some might call "the work part."

Currently, I have two projects that I am attempting to pull together.

First, the final revision of The Absurd Coincidences of the Vicarious Woman and the subsequent submission to agents everywhere. Revision is work. I'm a little weary of revising now, having already revised this particular novel three times, and I'd like to put off this last go round for a while longer, but I've been putting this book off for years. It's time to bite the bullet. Buy the ticket.

Then, there's the sending it off to agents. This is the kind of thing that I need a personal assistant for because my mind does not deal well with this sort of secretarial labor. While I can be counted upon to sew monsters from felt and the vaguest blueprints drawn by a six-year-old and to complete a ridiculous novel in a month, putting a stamp on an envelope and putting the envelope in the mail is chancy. Ask my mom. She'll verify. Simple tasks are not my forte.

The second task: devising a strategy to fund the road trip that will become the travel memoir Always Time to Go. I have this truly brilliant idea to persuade Michael Sprague, VP of Marketing and Communications at KIA, to give me a KIA Soul to take across country in exchange for free publicity. Imagine the commercials! Single mother, public school teacher struggling in an economic crunch, seizing the opportunity of summertime, against all odds, to show her son the world...well, at least the North American part of the world.

Initially, I had intended to create my own home video style commercials, but my friend Molly insists that KIA will want to send along a handsome cameraman to shoot the commercials, and she promises that will lead to a wonderful romance as well as a best-selling book.

Do you see what I mean? The dreaming part I've got covered, but I have quite a challenge reigning in the dreamer in order to access my inner staff assistant. Or either my inner staff assistant is like the secretary from The Carole Burnett Show who just sits around smacking gum and filing her fingernails, looking pretty.

Now that I've put it out there, maybe I'll be shamed into getting the work done.