Oh, did I say that out loud?

by Linda Robertson


"Some weeks, this blog is a pain in the ass." My eyes widened and I scanned around the Word-Whores meeting room. Some of the other bloggers were glaring at me. "Did I say that out loud?"

I asked the question, but I knew the answer. I had. I'd typed the damn quotes around it, yanno?

Not only had I shown myself to be a complainer, I could see that I'd offended them. I hadn't meant to. It's like that old Dan Hill song...sometimes the honesty's too much. And I was worried. They're writers too, after all. They know that by revealing these concerns within my own thoughts, those sentences conveying what's in my head without the quotes, I was showing the reader that I felt insecure.

I wished I had the guts to be all up in their faces. I wished I could have had an internal monologue more like: Yeah. Screw them. This blog IS a pain. I'm just saying what everyone is thinking. They should be thanking me.

But I'm just not geared to build myself up like that in my own thoughts. But a conceited character would. And they'd say such things all embraced by quotes, too. You bet your ass they would.

Maybe it would be better if I showed my character to be sweet and likable instead of an offensive complainer, they would all forgive me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be irritating. It was just an example, really. To make a point, yanno? I love this blog. I truly do. Sometimes life gets ahead of me and it is hard to get the blog written in time--Y'all know what that's like, right?--but some wacked idea will strike and I manage to meet my obligations. We're good, yes?"

They nodded.

My shoulders relaxed and I sighed. Yeah. These were my buds. My pals. My Word-Whore Posse.