Alison's Journal

Oh, cool. I just found out my essay "Mom's Chair" is a finalist in the short non-fiction category of the San Gabriel Writers' League contest. It's gotten good feedback from people I've shown it to, but I've never found a home for it, or even a good potential home for it. I submitted it to one magazine & still haven't heard back 14 months later, so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to! Now I'm kicking myself for forgetting to enter it in the personal essay contest I meant to in January!

This week I once again dreamed that I sold a book--a rhyming picture book about fathers, which apparently had a unique take on things. I was thrilled as I looked forward to seeing a book with my name on the shelves & feeling like a "real" writer, & felt lucky because I'd written it in one day & would be getting a nice amount of money for it. However, I was a little concerned that the publisher was a small, possibly fly-by-night company called "Dollar Books"!

My 4-year-old is so funny. A few minutes ago, after I told him he must be tired because he kept dropping things, he threw some small toys across the room while acting silly. When I told him not to throw things, he happily excused his behavior by saying, "When I'm tired I don't make the best decisions."