As you can see in this stillborn entry, I was trying to shape a column, a piece of writing with a unified theme and, in some cases, a moral at the end. This kind of writing, unless it comes about by pure serendipity, has no place on this website. NotWriting.com is supposed to be about distraction, about the random choices a writer makes to avoid writing and what those lead to. So, without further ado, let me tell you about my week.

Monday afternoon, instead of writing, I went to see a friend who had just been laid off.  Lou and I worked together at Merrill Lynch for almost two years and actually had a great time playing pool and taking long lunches and short days at one of the firm's remote sites in White Plains. That went on for about three months. Anyone who has poured their heart and sweat into a company that has ceased to care can appreciate the satisfaction you get from ever-so-slightly ripping off said company by working as little as possible. That was us, for a while.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm going to be making more not working than I did working."

(I should interject here that Lou is also getting a tidy severance from ML.)

"That's the idea," I said. "Save that money for a rainy day."

"Or for AC," Lou said, referring to his secret love, Atlantic City.

"Or that."

With my friend successfully added to the dole, I returned home and bought a new domain name, ripeforpipe.com. For several months my friend, Tony, and I had been using a new phrase we came up with ("ripe for pipe") to identify people and situations that, because of their stupidity or annoyance, were ripe for a pipe beating. Sounds sick, I know, but it's meant to be cathartic, to give people an opportunity for release by nominating celebrities, politicians, criminals, and even inanimate objects for virtual pipe beatings. I worked on the site Tuesday evening and all of Wednesday, and although it isn't complete yet, I think it's the start of something fun. You can see it here.

Spent Wednesday evening coming up with names for my wife's boss's unborn son. She wanted unusual names beginning with "J" or "S".  Here's what I came up with:

Thursday morning, before I went into Manhattan to teach, I was putting away some old rejection notes when I got the idea to show my readers what good rejections slips look like and what bad ones look like. These, of course, do not include the many personal letters that some editors take the time to write (if you get these, you're doing something right, even if they reject your work). So here they are: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And that was my week. How was yours? I hope you were more productive than I was. I have jury duty this coming Monday, so at least one of next week's entries should be interesting.

Thanks for sticking it out this long. Isn't it fascinating to see the stuff one writer does when he should be writing?

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