I overthink things. Constantly. For example, if I’m changing mannequins in the window (I work in a women’s’ clothing store) I will dress them, position them, then walk onto the concourse to check how they look to passersby, as standard practice. Sometimes I swap their positions. Sometimes I’ll tweak a hem or collar just to get it perfect. All this after changing my mind several times with regards to which garments would be best featured.
I agonize over color choices, styles, where to place the mannies so ones in the same stance aren’t side by side. It’s really no surprise that One For Another took eleven years to write. Sometimes I wonder how it didn’t actually take longer.
I wish I could do things at the drop of a hat trusting they’ll look fabulous or read as though I conjured this one-liner out of thin air in a second. But I can’t. Posts on social media can be a nightmare, and these days there’s the added worry of offending someone, or a lot of someones. As a result, things that should take me a couple of minutes take forever.
Usually I spend hours, if not days on my newsletter. Take a word out, put a word in. Today I’m free-styling, letting go the reins. It feels odd, but in a good way. Perhaps this old dog can loosen up and learn some new tricks. And continuing in the vein of busting outside the boundaries, I’m sending my July newsletter in August. There will be no stopping me!
Did you know . . .
- ‘Scraping the bottom of the barrel’ origin: Barrels were used to store food at sea, so when a barrel was emptied the sailors would scrape up any food morsels left at the bottom of it.
- ‘Loose cannon’ origin: The chaos caused on deck when a cannon literally broke loose during rough seas or battle.
- ‘Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea’ origin: It is thought this relates to the practice of using hot tar to seal the seams between the wooden planks of a ship. The longest seam was called the ‘Devil’, since it was the one most likely to leak.
I came across these beauties while searching for dialogue for one of the characters in Hennessey’s latest adventure–at present sitting at 16 000 words. I decided in my wisdom that this character, Finneas Ledbetter, would use the nautical terms of a sailor even though he has never ventured out on the briny.
Take care and happy reading,
Andrea
P.S. Feel free to send a message. I’d love to hear from you.
On my bedside table at the moment is We Lie Here, by Rachel Howzell Hall.
Yara Gibson is back in her home town of Palmdale, California, to organize a party for her parents’ wedding anniversary. But things don’t go swimmingly right from the get-go. She is approached by a woman claiming to be an old (estranged) friend of her mother’s, who stresses she has something she must tell Yara that will change her life. Events take a sharp turn when this woman’s body is found the following morning in the local lake, which leads to secrets revealed and twists and turns that affect Yara in ways she could never have imagined.
This story is clever and extremely well written. I loved everything about it and will be reading more of this author’s work.
“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
– Tennessee Williams
