The last time I had cause to go to the laundromat I ended up writing my wedding vows, the words sticky-slipped from ink pen to page, sucked reluctant as my thighs from the seat of the plastic chair when I rose to move laundry from over-sized washer to dryer. I remember thinking it was almost as romantic as having written them on a napkin, which says a lot about what I think of romance. Today a trial of another kind, without my husband's heart to consider but my own - which must be put aside utterly, it seems, for edits. I didn't need a score of industrial dryers or a wall of glass windows at my back to heed the excessive heat warning. My fingers slogged across the keys, each keystroke a sacrifice to the gods of copy and paste, murdering more than my darlings. I've reached a point in the editing where there's no stepping back, no perspective but the biggest, and the word "continuity" is like to give me nightmares. I don't know up from down. Right from left. Context from crap.

I'm raising the stakes, alright. This one's going straight through my right ventricle.