Still trying to get to the Salinger documentary at the theater this weekend. I know it won’t be around for much longer than one week. Probably not going to make it tonight. Tomorrow is the M-i-L’s epic moving-slash-garage sale of the century.

I’m sure we’ll have to prep and plan this evening. My Beautiful Wife and my M-i-L take their garage sales seriously.  Ike and Montgomery spent less time planning D-Day.  The biggest fight my M-i-L and I ever had was because she laid into me at 6:30 in the morning over not having enough signage posted for a garage sale. Marketing had been assigned to me, and I had failed her.

And that is why I’m the second-favorite son-in-law. Oh crap. That reminds me. I have to get a Craigslist ad cooked up, pronto.

I also have to knock out an ever-expanding chore list for the M-i-L. Maybe we’ll get to the cinema on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon.

Sigh. I’m getting the itch to write, but…

1. I don’t have a story idea ready to go.

2. I’m still processing queries from two books ago.

3. I’m a whiny little bitch and I swore I wasn’t going to waste any more time writing if Selfie went nowhere. It’s still chugging along. Keep chugging, baby. May my partials become fulls and my fulls become offers of representation. We’re not eliminated from this game yet.

Maybe I’ll try to rewrite or clean up something dusty.  I understand now that The Haunting of Room Sixteen was disqualified by a lot of agents because it was first person. First person writing carries the stigma of amateurism. I did not understand (or accept) this when my first agent tried to explain it to me, but I understand it now.  I see it in other people’s writing. First person writing is much easier to do. When it hits, it can be a very satisfying read. When the reader connects with your one-and-only perspective, it’s a home run. But you’ve only got a single batter coming to the plate in a first person.

With third person you can bring a full team of characters to your offensive line up and the chance of a reader connecting with one or more of them is much greater.

I can’t help but wonder if shifting HoR16 to third person might be worth two months of sweat equity.  Meh. Something to think about.

Happy Friday, everyone. Have a great weekend, stay cool, and come by the M-i-L’s garage sale and stock up on porcelain kitties. You can never have too many empty picture frames or too many goddamn porcelain kitties.

Apparently.