I have honed my insect torturing skills with a new device--spray can air freshener! Works like a charm and you don't even have to get that close to the little bastards. The only thing that scares me is imagining that a colony of roaches is peeking through my vents and nudging one another to say, "Look what that bitch is doing to Johnny down there! Let's get her!"

I am having an exterminator come on Tuesday to assure that this will not escalate into a full-scale war between myself and my militia of six-legged boarders.

I'm still thinking about that "Opal Mehta" plagiarism thing. I don't feel bad for the "author" anymore because I think it's total shit that she didn't even write the book before she was given half a million bucks. Can it really be constituted as "writing" if someone else comes up with the idea and then reworks it and polishes it and, um, well...basically "writes" it? Not in my world. In my world, a writer spends all his/her free time either sitting in front of a computer, scribbing on a notepad or developing a story in his/her mind. For example, even though I haven't been typing on a keyboard or scribbling on a notepad much of late, every morning I drive past the Spanish Trail community in Las Vegas, just to inspire myself. I think internally, "That's where my characters in OTL live!" and imagine their lives playing out in one of those pretty houses. That's just me, of course, and some people would say I really don't know shit. But I do know that there is a huge difference between having people critique your work, and having them edit your work, than having them "package" your work.

I agree with something another writer said, too, and I think it was Valerie Frankel, something about this girl only being 17 at the time of her signing and subsequent "writing". I'll be the first to say, quite nonchalantly, that I was writing novels when I was 17, too. I was writing novels when I was 10. I thought they were good at the time and they probably are pretty good, or at least pretty cute and funny for the efforts of a 10 and then 17-year-old girl...but then again, I wouldn't go down to my parents' basement and dig up one of those handwritten manuscripts (on which all the letter i's are dotted with big, round circles instead of dots) and think I should hand one of them over to a publisher. I guess because with age comes maturity and that includes a more mature style of writing--or at least, a more mature style of looking at one's own writing. My juvenile manuscripts probably contain some winning plotlines that would actually be very acceptable these days--because back when I actually wanted to be a young adult writer, exclusively, it was unfortunate that the young adult market was pretty much dead and today it is alive and kicking. I still wouldn't grab one of my juvenile manuscripts and submit it to an editor without first rewriting it with the knowledge of a 30-year-old woman. At this point, I wouldn't even submit anything I wrote when I was 24 or 25 without editing them with the insight I've gleaned from my life experiences since those now (sigh) tender ages.

Of course, when I was 17 I thought I was a prodigy and that everything I was writing was spot-on. Maybe it was. Maybe being young sets you free just as being more experienced (er, old) can hold you back.

I still say--17 or 30 or 90 or whatever--if you don't write it from start to finish (and that includes giving pieces of it to someone else to mark up, and then you rewriting those pieces based on their suggestions), you did not really write it.

It is a beautiful day in Las Vegas, very sunny and bright and warm. I got a dose of religion from some church elders earlier today (it was a work thing) and now feel completely prepared to get my sin on.

Have a nice weekend!