Less Than 10,000 Words To Go!

I am currently on the train to Montreal, and using my time wisely (?) to get a little writing done before a busy weekend. I really enjoyed writing this excerpt. I hope you enjoy reading it!

While pretending to take furious notes during yet another long and boring Globetrotting Gurlz organizational meeting, Olivia was actually drawing. Nothing in particular, since she wasn’t an especially good artist; just swirls and doodles of what she planned on eating during the upcoming lunch break. Sandwiches and soup are easy enough for even Olivia to draw. She should have been paying more attention, particularly since she had recently been given a book and movie review section in addition to her “How EMBARRASSING!” and quiz duties, and she could have used some advice or expertise from the others. But no, instead of taking her work seriously, she had once again opted to goof off.

“I feel like we got some really great work done in there,” Olivia said sarcastically as they exited the stuffy conference room. “Personally, I found it to be pretty fulfilling.”

“Drawing and not paying attention is fulfilling to you now?” Ellie snapped back. “What a sad statement on your life’s goals.”

“Come on, Ellie,” Olivia chided, “you know that was terrible. Miranda went on for about half an hour talking about the best hair products for humidity. Is the point of travel to look perfect all of the time? You would think so, after reading two pages of our magazine.”

“I know that you feel that way. In fact, everyone knows that you feel that way. Did it ever occur to you that other people can tell how superior you think you are to everyone else? Just because you have read more books than them? Because you understand political jokes?”

“No! I—”

“Olivia, honestly! You’re such a contradiction; you act like you’re too good for your job, yet you put in virtually no effort when you could really be doing something valuable. If you think that our readers care about something more than make-up and Robert Pattinson, why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you write a quiz that isn’t about ‘cuties’ at all?”

“You don’t understand, Ellie. That’s what they pay me to do. I’m nothing in this magazine, let alone the company. You think that I have creative control? The only control I have is how many times I can put in the word ‘cutie’, or whether another an incident involving a tampon and a crush is so embarrassing that they need to leave the resort or not.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, but this is incredibly rich coming from you, when you criticized Darcy for having almost the exact same opinion of the magazine as you. You think that we’re underestimating the intelligence of our readers? Write something smart! Nothing will happen if you just make jokes about it.”

“What’s gotten into you? I have never heard you talk like this before,” Olivia said. “I kind of like it.”

“I just couldn’t take it anymore. Sorry.”

“Please, don’t apologize; I’m glad that you spoke your mind. And as usual, you’re right. Damn it. What would I do without you?”

“You would probably still be back in Canada, fishing through garbage bins looking for jock straps outside of the Air Canada Centre.”

“Man, those were good times.”

“You disgust me.”




“Olivia,” Atoosa began the meeting after their break, “let’s take a few minutes to talk about your upcoming book review. Have you read the new Stephenie Meyer?”

“No, I haven’t… had the opportunity yet,” Olivia grudgingly responded, knowing full well that she would never be willing to read the back of the book, let alone the whole thing.

“Well, I think that our readers will be all over it, even though, as usual, the quality is incredibly poor—if not outright offensive. I think it’s called 'Cimmerian Shade,' and it tells the story of Darcie Nightingale, a beautiful and perfect girl who doesn’t know it and is therefore annoyingly self-deprecating, who falls in love with a zombie named Damien Silver who happens to sparkle when it’s hot outside. He tries to kill her several times, and when he isn’t trying to kill her, he is usually talking about it. But I’m using the phrase ‘talking about it’ pretty loosely, as he mostly just reaches out for her brains and mumbles. He’s really rich though, which is inexplicable, as he is a zombie. He gets her pregnant, which is completely inexplicable, since he’s dead. Meyer does not seem to care about that. Oh, and spoiler alert,” as she said this, several of her co-workers ran out of the room covering their ears, “he kills her in the end to get his baby out of her uterus, and she is really happy about it. She was very worried that her zombie baby—and her therefore dead baby—would be aborted by an angry and hairy witch who doesn’t want women to be able to choose traditional choices.”

Olivia wasn’t sure what her features were supposed to convey: Interest? Excitement? Disgust? She settled on disgust.

“I’m sorry, Atoosa, but I can’t really in good conscience recommend this to my readers. You were right, it does sound pretty offensive.”

“I know—and it will only be worse when they release the movie. I hear that Lea Michele is playing Darcie, and Cody Simpson will be Damien. Does anyone know who that is, anyway?”

“No, not me,” Olivia said, probably a little too quickly.