One of the things you learn working in news — especially online news — is the art of the update. It goes something like this:

A house catches fire.  A short story goes on the news website.

The firemen arrive. The same story goes up, but with new information at the top about the firemen and how long it took for them to show up and other newly gathered info. 

The fire is put out. Another update, with a new opening paragraph that replaces “Firemen responded to a blaze blablabla,” with  “It took 40 minutes for firemen to put out a blaze blablabla.”

  Then, at some point much later in the day compared with these rapid-fire updates, you will get what is called a write-through, which takes that last updated story and fleshes it out with quotes from neighbors, a check with the veterinarian on the cat’s smoke inhalation issues, what the cause might have been, etc. etc.

What you have here today is the write-through with none of the breaking news.  Since I wrote last I have:

— Queried seven editors on my novel.  For those of you with mad math skillz, you can see this means I’m off my goal by three query letters. I will either make that up this weekend or fall impossibly behind.

— Celebrated the fact my kid turned 9, pondered the fact that he could be a straight-A student but is at least still pulling all As and Bs, and lamented the fact that he’s still mouthing off at kids and getting in trouble for it.

— Sat in the process as my kid auditioned at the last minute for a community theater version of Fiddler on the Roof and was accepted for the chorus, considered auditioning myself for about 6 seconds, then realized that we would kill each other if we had to share a stage.

— Did a pretty good revision on the first third of my other novel.

— Oh, yeah, did that JOB thing.

So, here I am, and here you are, all caught up.  I will be back on track next week with more fun and exciting posts about things only I care about.