The things I did this week to avoid writing:

Excerpt:

• Spent five-and-a-half hours making beef stew from scratch
• Re-read Bridget Jones’s Diary in its entirety
• Purchased hot rollers and curled my hair almost every day this week
• Ironed everything I own.
• Attempted to give Kennedy Kitty a bath.
• Went on a Band-Aid run after the great Kitty-Claw Massacre of 2011.
• Decided Kennedy’s character in my book would be named Abe Lincoln. He’d be a tuxedo cat.
• Realized I need to spend less time with my cat.
• Went to a hockey game.
• Wrote three paragraphs in my new book! Joy!
• Danced and jumped up and down for an hour, and e-mailed three paragraphs to three friends in celebration.
• Came up with a detailed proposal (which I plan to submit to the Westport Police) for blinker-check stops. Because cops do seatbelt checks and all those things, but the problem in Westport is that people just don’t use their damn blinker, and one of these days one of those jerks is going to get me killed.