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14 October 98 Wednesday

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We've had a reprieve from the cold of the season, but the price was the sun. I'm glad to be able to keep the back door open, but people are becoming unsufferably mootsy... Mootsy. I think my friend Joyce invented the word, but I don't know. I only know that she's used the word since I met her, which was a long time ago-- during the Mesozoic Era I think that was-- yeah, when reptiles were "Lords of the Earth." I remember you couldn't go into a bar back then without running into a slither of lounge lizards... used to have to beat them off with sticks. Thank goodness for the arrival of the Cenozoic! Anyway, "mootsy" ("oo" as in "book") seems to express the state brought on by dull weather/boredom/bad company/work admirably, so I've used it ever since. And today, that's how I feel, too. I've got a crick in my shoulder from working at the computer. Between the website maintenance, work, and writing I rack up an awful lot of computer hours-- never mind this Journal. I hate writing. It's such a lot of work. You think going in that you know what you're going to write, but write that first word and the whole thing starts to morph into something else entirely. After that, every word added changes every word all ready written and then you've got to go back and rewrite everything... I'd think the problem is that I'm a rotten writer, except that I know other writers-- really good ones-- have the same problem. (See Annie Dillard's book The Writing Life.) Rats. There aren't enough hours. Or days. Or years.