So my webmistress is going on vacation. My muse is in a stupor. My peer reviews-slash-critique reads are out being read and judged. And I am once again sitting in front of a mostly blank page, shaking my head like a bingo cage, trying to see what if any thoughts and topics will reveal themselves to me.

In other words, it’s Tuesday. School just let out and children are screaming through the neighborhood like the world’s loudest tsunami. A battered and rusted ice cream truck is circling the block, playing “Turkey in the Straw” as a demented calliope.

Pure Midwestern nightmare fuel.

100 words down.

In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron espouses the virtues of what some people call stream of conscious writing. You sit down and write, literally the first thing that comes into your head. She suggests three pages of that each day. Get up in the morning and sit down and unpack your brain onto the page. I’ve forgotten the part about why this is a good thing for creative people to do and assume it’s because she hates me.

I wonder if she’s the one leaving unfurled rolls of toilet paper in the bushes in front of my house. Perhaps an Artist’s Way exercise I haven’t gotten to yet.

Or just plain spite.

220 words.

My book pile has run down to zero, so I had to start reading books in electronic form on my iPad. I broke three trying to figure out how to turn the page. Now I just read the same page over and over and try to work out what happened. It’s an amazing speed-reading strategy—I got through 106 books yesterday. Strangely enough, the ones I read around noon and six were fixated with food.

I need to vary the authors I read.

306 words.

Nature is a cruel mistress. Baby hippos are some of the cutest animals there are. You can almost get diabetes from looking at too many pictures of them, they’re so sweet. And yet, adult hippos are some of the most dangerous animals alive. Is that just poor marketing or is it a conspiracy to thin the population?

I only ask because the hippo walking down my driveway has at least four children in his mouth.

Unless he’s a her.

I think I’ll stay in tonight.

395 words.

Fun fact: I was actually introduced to The Artist’s Way by an engineer. His stream of conscious writing was math equations. Then he made fun of me because I don’t speak algebra.

And what is it about those quick recipes on Facebook? No matter how hard I try, I cannot cook that fast.

450 words.

That’s a good number.

I’ll stop now.