I’ve had a bunch of notes in my Drafts folder for months now, snippets that I keep intending to turn into full posts. But at this point I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. So here are three “mini-posts,” somewhat related, somewhat not.

Writers often hear the advice, “Kill your darlings.” Typically that means delete the bits of writing that you love the most, because odds are, they are self-indulgent. Beauty is not reason enough if the words don’t add to your story.

For me, the biggest darling is the internet, and killing the internet leads to an exponential increase in productivity. I always forget that, until I hit rock bottom and have to find a way to pull myself up out of it again.

It’s “easier” for me to write at night, because there are fewer distractions even when I’m looking for them, and because by that point I’m so mad at myself for wasting the day that I finally buckle down. But I need to learn how to work under more normal and more positive conditions.

“Every girl wants a bad boy that will be good just for her. Every guy wants a good girl who will be bad just for him.”

(Or as Usher and Ludacris so eloquently put it, “We want a lady in the streets but a freak in the bed.”)

I’ve seen variations of that quote all over. Twitter, Facebook, emails, songs. And I see versions of it over and over in romances. Everyone wants to be special, to be the exception. In Twilight, Bella’s mind is the only one Edward can’t read. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogan gets the girl, even though he’s a gross schlub. Even in the classics. Plain Jane (Eyre, that is) manages to captivate Rochester, and in turn she sees past his grouchy demeanor.

I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it sort of reflects reality, in a way. None of us are perfect, but we could seem perfect in a certain someone’s eyes. Through love, ordinary people become extraordinary.

But on the other hand, as Justin Long tells Ginnifer Goodwin in He’s Just Not That Into You, we can’t count on being the exception.

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