I found the true source for the fortune cookie saying. It is actually from On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser. I suppose it makes sense although I had this fantasy about a little fortune cookie factory outside Beijing with an elderly man cooped up in an office, pounding away on a beat up Underwood. He’d be drinking tea and chain-smoking unfiltered Marlboros while coming up with brilliant nuggets of wisdom for the cookies.
Okay, as fantasies go, it’s pretty lame. Perhaps I shall go back to the one of Matthew McConaughey mowing my lawn without a shirt while I sit under a shady tree sipping a daiquiri.
Real life is intruding on my writing speed. My three year old has a fever and feels really lousy. Of course the six year old feels it necessary to exacerbate the situation by getting in her sister’s face constantly. Throw in a petulant ten year old bickering with his sister and I’m in paradise. But at least hubby won’t be home until late this evening.
I think the heat is making me crabby. Like I’m alone in that boat. Do these blistering temps influence your writing? Does it slow down or speed up your pages? Does it change the scenery for you characters? Are they either trapped in the Sahara, fleeing from a crazed ex-Delta Force/Napoleonic spy/demon from another realm? Or are they sitting around a fire pit après ski, flirting outrageously over cognac while feathery snowflakes fall outside?
