She writes posts in French. She writes badly. She prefers the third person. She does something stupid, writing in English: it serves no purpose. She does something stupid, using the first person: it serves no purpose.

A friend told her about a friend who had an old Cadillac. The engine was, it was so big, there was space under the hood to put a chair and sit inside, working on the engine. You could see how it worked. You could buy a book and sit on the chair and fix the engine, following the book.

People read the blog. They read about the bad times. People send emails. People talk. People say two kinds of thing.

They say: I wish I could do something (but there's nothing I can do).

Or they say: Someone I barely know knows an agent I know nothing about! I could put you in touch!

She lies on the bed.
She turns her face to the wall.

She's been dealing with the biz for 14 years.

She showed someone 2 chapters of a book in May 1996. He got very excited. He showed it to his wife. The wife got very excited. The wife had a half-assed idea. The wife wanted to option the book on the basis of two chapters. There was an an agent the wife barely knew. The wife made an introduction to the agent. It went horribly, horribly wrong, as half-assed ideas tend to do.

There have been many, many people with half-assed ideas over the years. It gets worse every time. She is older every time. She is tired. She is always trying to recover from the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. And because she has seen so many half-assed ideas, she tries to think ahead, she tries to get information, she tries to do things differently. Causing endless offence.

She'd like to write a post. She has written a post and put it in the drafts folder. A post explaining why a half-assed idea is worse than nothing. A post explaining how much time and energy it takes up. A post explaining. A post explaining that when a half-assed idea goes horribly wrong, the person who came up with the idea never fixes the damage. Someone came up with a half-assed idea last July. It went horribly wrong. Little half-assed has naturally gone missing. They always do. She puts it in the drafts folder because it does no good.