I munched on my cakes while lying by the pool. The sun was a bit hot but not so scorching as to disrupt the pleasant feel of it resting upon my skin. I had a great dinner, delightful dessert, and everything was just about right. Just about. There was much tedious pleasure today and that kept my mind occupied with the idea of resting and enjoying things around me. I was content and my mind was kept in good company. But, there were moments when my mind wandered; moments when it went on a blatant search for something it couldn’t find.

It was as if I had forgotten something, something very important and I couldn’t remember what. I felt the feeling several times throughout the day and my brain would simply panic. A siren would go off in my head and alert the search teams to go out in all directions. Of course, there was nothing to tell the search teams to search for because I couldn’t quite place it. The teams would vanish into the various locked compartments of my mind and every time they returned with the same simple and agonizing answer, “I miss him”. Have you ever felt that way? Ever just enjoyed being with someone so much that their absence seems to form a void?

It’s not as if the void is heart wrenching and it doesn’t really interfere. There isn’t a desperate need and you don’t fail to be you when you can’t be with them but still…your mind knows something isn’t right. Your body aches as if you have lain in the wrong position for too long. Nothing fits perfectly without their hand in yours. Have you ever felt that way? Ah, the agony and the ecstasy of life! It aches the bones to fill this way and it thrills my heart to feel your arms remove the ache. The feeling is incredible, delightful if only for the sake that you have the power and ability to make it cease.

Where would literature be without such emotions and what would I write could I not feel such things? On that note, I will end this because I am turning (very quickly I might add) into something and someone I very much despise. Yes, I am that into him and no, I do not think it’s cool. I much prefer bitter diatribes myself so I will indulge my fancies and slip into a fictional world of unending heartache to assure tomorrow’s entry is much less happy and much more enjoyable. Night world.

Two things. ..

First, if you can see us, we can see you. I am not entirely certain why men simply do not feel this is the case but it is. If you feel the need to hang your tongue out and drool while gawking at a girl who anyone with a brain stem would accurately label ‘jail bait’ then she can also see you. I know, I know this seems foolish but there is a point somewhere in here. Ah, my point, she can see you and she thinks you look as stupid as she looks appealing.

So, take a personal note, while people watching at the beach, to only glance and/or admire with appropriate facial expressions for a very minimal amount of time. This will keep you from looking as stupid as I am sure you are and will also keep her muscle ridden hunk of a seventeen year old from kicking your perverted ass. Oh, not only can she see you but I can see you too and that speedo is not appealing. But I thank you for being the next character to be killed off in my next novel. You will be so easy to write and you require no back story. Thanks.

Second, I must choose to label this thought, “what were you thinking”. I understand, as a mother and a woman that extra pounds accumulate without our willing them to do so. In fact, I firmly believe these pounds conspire against us in an attempt to take over our bodies and get us to fund this fast food nation. But…there is a but…because this could not be an accurate beach observation blog without mentioning the fat issue I must point out one thing. Beaches are covered in scandalous outfits which are all entirely permissible because it is the beach. In my younger years and when I feel particularly daring, I find this delightful and slip into my ‘itsy bitsy’ with a bit of pride and admiration. However, there are also times when I am very aware that I simply cannot pull that off. Just because wearing almost nothing is acceptable at the beach does not mean it is your best look. Ladies (and guys sometimes) we know what we look like. If we have the extra pounds, we know how to still wear something flattering without showing what we would rather people didn’t see. So, why do we not do this at the beach? Why is it that at the beach we throw our arms in the air and say, “I’m fat and I don’t care who sees it”? This is just not a good policy and I don’t recommend it. I would be very thankful and pleased with women in general if we dressed according to what we know rather than what would be okay because we can ‘do whatever we want’. People watching at the beach, oh what fun.

Third, I know I only said two but I have a third. Little kids at the beach are adorable. I miss being completely fascinated by the waves and watching parents play with their kids just makes me grateful for all the things I have stopped taking the time to see.

The query letter is the most important one page you will ever write…and here I thought it would be the first page of my novel! How foolish I was in my youth. It is possible to get an editor without an agent but the odds are slim to none and if you do, by some miracle of alignment amongst the stars, you will most likely get a lower advance then you would with the help of an agent. Still, if you decide to seek out an editor, I recommend you submit to agents at the same time. You will also have better luck with both agents and editors if you meet them in person or have some sort of connection. Writing conventions are the best way to accomplish this if you are new to the publishing industry.

It is also nearly impossible to get an agent. Yes, I am aware this seems hopeless but there is hope which is why I used the word “almost”. It is possible to get an agent but you first need to understand some things about agents which will prepare you for approaching them.

Why is it that when I walk into a mainstream bookstore in search of something new from the mind of one of my peers, I find an entire section of books by different authors all based on one character who they didn’t write? I went into Barnes and Noble with the intent of finding out a bit of what is currently popular. On the end of one of the aisles, where one would normally expect to find the newest in brilliant literature, I found an entire section of books (by different authors nonetheless) entirely dedicated to different story lines based off Mr. Darcy…does anyone else see the problem with this?

First off, it suggests to me that there has not been a single person since Jane Austen to create a character of such depth and brilliance. Can that really be true? I mean…I have spent the majority of my life (let’s narrow that down to my entire life minus about the last eight months) being completely in love with Mr. Darcy so I do understand his appeal. However, is it really possible that we have nothing original to say? Must we try and create good literature by stealing what has always been good literature?

I know I am being fairly harsh and that there are original things out there but why is it that I am even able to find that many books published by that many authors all stolen from one book written a very long time ago? I want a new Mr. Darcy…at least with a new name and perhaps a better car. I want…I still want literature to mean something.

That document does exist, the one that’s password protected, it lurks somewhere on my hard drive and I never know when it will jump out and beg me to be swept into its agony all over again. I don’t go there, not anymore. But how many of us want to? How many of us want to be caught up in our past as if it was as real as we remember it to be? None of us will admit it, of course we won’t. If we admitted we wanted to live in our pasts then we would have to admit our lives aren’t perfect, we aren’t perfect. What good would that do? But we do. We want to go back because we have pretended that was better, that was real. It wasn’t. We know that too.

Somewhere deep inside ourselves we are aware that nothing was the way we believe it was. There were no happy endings or summer romances worth repeating. There was nothing but life and we somehow lost hold of it. Maybe that’s what we remember most about the past, the living. We were living then like we aren’t now. The teenager inside of us still screams when something doesn’t go right, even though we sit idly by and call it life. What happened to the screaming? The emotion? The breaths we took for the sake of silence itself?

Maybe that’s why the document is password protected. It’s not because I might alter something but because something might alter me. If I was honest, if my eyes were open, and I looked back I might see something worth changing me. It wouldn’t be something to run toward or someone I left behind…it wouldn’t even be the person who left me behind. It would be me; the girl I was and the hope I had. Looking at her, remembering her dreams and her passions would alter me. It would have to. She knows me in ways no one else ever will. So, I keep her locked away behind closed doors in secure files. I keep her there because she can touch me. She can make me see. Thank heaven for password protection or all my ghosts would run wild. Technology really is quite a delight.

This panel of experts gathers solely to decide which meals will rid doctors and nurses of horrid patients in the most time-effective and cost-sensitive manner without actually making the correlation clear between patient deaths and patient food.
  Though, as I am sure you are yourself, I am deeply disturbed by this realization I have come up with a solution to the problem which may very well save your life.  I have discovered a way in which to avoid any terrible, or at least deadly, repercussions of these “gatherings” as I have come to call them.  I should not be telling you this.  For the sake of the few this knowledge is currently protecting, I ought not to disclose this information.  In fact, I am probably one of the last people on the face of the earth who should be giving this direction but, in search of journalistic integrity (of which I am not in the least concerned with), I will tell you anyway.

The loophole is to be a Jew.  For all intents and purposes, you actually only need to appear to demonstrate a limited association with the Jewish community which raises enough speculation that you may in fact be Jewish yourself and in so convincing the hospital staff you will rid yourself of all manner of trouble.  You see, in a hospital, you begin by ordering the traditional hospital food and then eat it because you are directed to.  You eat because it is given to you and then, as you discover the vile nature of the food itself and the wretched manner in which it decays your flesh, you fling yourself from the building, by means of the roof if necessary.  The “gatherings” discovered this and they are pleased with their findings.  But they also discovered something else.  You see, if you begin by ordering the Kosher diet you will immediately be served fresh fruit and vegetables as if the land of milk and honey still flowed with some ease.  There is method in the madness and perhaps it is the method more so than anything else which procures a certain chilling calm.

There are panels you see, of that I am sure, who determine each meal in a manner that will assure each patient flees the hospital speedily.  But “gatherings” concluded something else entirely, something more sinister, something they wish to keep from the general public, something which might eventually save your life, and something that is quite the religious stereotype if I do say so myself.  They discovered their policy with regards to Jews is this: “The Jews: well, if they’ll pay, we’ll feed them”.  And that, my friends, is what the doctors are not telling you.

So, when you read this following blog, please take to heart that there will always be things we think about doing with no actual intention of doing them.
  Terms you may want to be familiar with prior to reading this segment: yatch (derived from the word “b-yatch” which was derived from something else entirely and fell into my vocabulary somewhere near the end of my sophomore year of college).  And here the blog begins…

I thought about apologizing to the yatch.  Then, as my better judgment kicked in, I thought about precisely what a sincere apology from me on the subject would sound like and came to the conclusion that this was most nearly it… “I know you are so horribly incompetent that you feel it is appropriate to stick a needle in a patient who is hyperventilating while taking away the patient’s ability to communicate their concerns so have no respect whatsoever for you or your ability to practice medicine in a professional manner.  That being said, while you continue to stand over there since I don’t trust you as far as my feebly operated body could manage to throw you; that being said I do sincerely apologize for how I treated you yesterday.  I should not have allowed your incompetence or inability to behave appropriately to change who I am. The End.”-like I said, I did think about apologizing to the yatch but I didn’t really think it would help considering the circumstances.

I don’t worry about the lines on the pages because I wonder if they will be enjoyed. They will be; that much I know. I worry about the lines because I wonder how much of myself will be revealed. Every line on every page tells something, about the author or the world in which she lives, and there is nothing I can do to stop that. Novels tell the truth but only in fiction.