of the pickiest kind

Nice to know that people out there, friends, they know who they are--all right, their names are Camille and Jea--are still writing. (So much for blind items.) Point is I'm relieved to hear from them, and to get to read their stuff; just so I could tell myself that my writing job is no excuse to freeze up my own tilted-world essaying and sudden fiction writing.

Camille sent me her re-envisioned short story, an earlier study of which she submitted to her fiction class, under Butch Dalisay. Her class must have scooped up her story like a handful of sand, and squeezed hard; later, they unclenched their hands to see what's left. I did my own squeezing: I emailed Camille my comments. She wanted it brutal and honest. Brutally honest. Good girl. That's the writing workshop spirit.

First person point of view narrative. Manipulative mother-protagonist. Work in progress, but the neurotic character of the mom and her world view is the twin allure ("is" because the two are properly one). That's my "unputdownable" back-of-the-book synopsis of Camille's story, which doesn't tell much, really. We like to keep things mysterious around here. Tends to keep the publishers guessing. (Har har.)

Jea is going through her pickiest-kind blogging phase again. Her current blog is the umpteenth reincarnation of her ADHD'd brain. That's Aversion to Dim-Hwitted Doodling. (I just made that up. But that explains things.) She has had so many blogs, which she edits and edits--resizing header text and margins now, changing titles and labels later, and finally settling on a backdrop color that doesn't redirect your eyes from the life-stuff on the webpage. In at least one previous blog, she told of her terrible tales of teaching tupid tudents. She has picked up on that theme in her current blog. Lucky me. I love those posts. A handful of sneers.

One should take lessons from these two. Camille and Jea, who both happen to be teachers.

Writing is a neurosis.

Of the pickiest kind.