We had to tear out the tomato plants the other day. Maine was very rainy this summer, and even though there were lots of green and pink globes on the vine, they were rotting and bug-infested. Being the cautious soul I am, I wanted to look over each one, just to make sure. My beloved husband just ripped them out and threw them into the woods.

This approach to the tomato plants can be viewed on so many levels. Me: I make excuses, I live in hope. Venus. Him: Scorched earth, take no prisoners. Mars.

I wonder how people can see the same things but interpret them so differently. This political season is particularly rife with diametrically opposed viewpoints. I wonder what it is about my face that indicates I’d like to engage in debate. I’m an independent voter, so there’s no bumper sticker on my car. I don’t wear buttons or partisan T-shirts. But I listened politely as the furnace repairman lectured me on socialism in my basement yesterday. I kind of wondered what century he was living in. Just last week the copier repairman gave me the same spiel in the faculty room at school. There must be something in the toner or on talk radio.

But getting rid of the bad tomatoes reminds me of editing. Sometimes you just have to delete the words. Root out the evil. Vote the bums out.

I have a bumper sticker now.

Is this campaign season affecting you? Are you a proponent of the Venus-Mars theory? How did your garden grow?

I had the shock of my life yesterday. Well, perhaps I exaggerate—I write fiction, that’s what I do. I visited my agent’s website to look over the list of her authors. I wanted to check out their websites. Despite an aborted effort trying to build my own (can anyone say decisive, diffinitive disaster at least 10 times?), I’m still curious about more of a web presence than this blog. I clicked under ‘Our Authors.’ There I was, Maggie Robinson, listed alphabetically by first name, with a link to this blog! So you could go there, and get right back here! It made my whole writing journey feel more real somehow. Thank you, Laura Bradford!

So once I get domain name issues straightened out (there are other Maggie Robinsons out there), I’d like to become a www. What makes a good writer’s website? Any advice appreciated.

School starts today. My days of lounging around in my bathrobe typing or sitting in the garden reading are over. I am actually going to have to get dressed and go back to work, smile at a couple of hundred people every day and try to remember how to do things I’ve forgotten how to do over the summer.

But the most challenging thing will be to keep up the pace of my writing. Lately I’ve gone a little bonkers, writing thousands and thousands of words a day. This is NOT like me, LOL. The other day I got notes from my agent (I’m sorry—I’m officially insufferable. I go around saying “my agent” all day long *g*). There were about 35 pages of Paradise that needed one thing or another— some just a word change, some lengthening of scenes (those would be my short sex scenes, because somewhere, my dead grandmother is blocking my creativity). I wound up adding 5,000 words (and no, they weren’t all sex). Now it’s back to Mistress by Mistake.

Are you writing every day? Do you have set word count goals? Is pesky real life (or your dead grandmother) getting in the way of your creativity? Got any tips for sex scenes?