Writing, writing everywhere (and not a drop to get published)

At work I am supposed to be working on the things they pay me to work on and not my own work. I understand this concept.

Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that I follow it even less than previously imagined.

Case in point:

Today, I decide to do some of MY work for just a little while, because I am tired of working on this marketing power point presentation. So I log onto my other email account and pull-up a baby novel I emailed myself (baby because, at this point, it is still only about five thousand words long). I look over what I have in the email- not even everything I've written thus far- and decide screw it, I want to work on something else.

So I open a new word document and start typing about my favorite heroine (probably because she's not even remotely based on me, except for being short and blonde and loving books, because most of my heroines end up being short and blonde), Narnia Jones. And I can't remember what her ex-boyfriend the reporter's name is. Is it Tad? I feel like it's Tad. Why do I keep naming things Tad? It's a very stupid name. Am I really sure it's Tad?

So I click into My Documents (which includes, among other things, a file called 'The Tad Show' which is the first non-work related piece I wrote in this office and consists of an interview between me and a fictional talk-show host named Tad about my job in commerical bidding) and I have five files about Narnia Jones saved. Five. And that is only a very small percentage of the non-work related writing in this file.

Oops.

Also, his name is Tod Lear, not Tad. Thank goodness. Tad is a very silly name.

Of course, then I got to worrying (for some reason) that Tod Lear was the name of Elizabeth Wakefield's boyfriend in Sweet Valley High and I unwittingly copied it and, if my book is ever published, people will mock me mercilessly.

But no, his name was definitely Todd Wilkins. Aw, Sweet Valley High.

In other news, the title of this post is a lie, as I am about to have my poem Your Women published in the Poetry in Baltimore.com anthology. Not sure how much of an accomplishment this is, as I believe less than three hundred people were eligible to submit poetry to this anthology. Still. I love Baltimore. I love my poetry. It's pretty cool.