It all started when I fell prey to the same assumption that my mother always does, i.e. I’m a writer ergo I can write anything, a misapprehension I’m always lecturing her about so you’d think I’d be hyper-aware of it myself, especially since I made the same mistake some years ago with a Young Adult book packaging company.

Whenever I’d hit a snag in my writing or finances, my mother would always say, "Why don't you write a romance novel?"

"You don't understand," I’d say. "I can't just turn on a tap and pour out words on demand. I have to care about what I write, I have to follow my heart like a divining rod."

“Are you sure?” God said, before offering me the job of writing a Young Adult vampire trilogy. Suddenly I’m thinking, No more temp work, I can write for a living! But writing for a book packaging company was like putting my hand in a bowl of noodles while blindfolded -- I knew it was noodles but it felt like intestines.

My editor, who before I began was very supportive and encouraging when I told him that I lacked book packaging experience, constantly gave me nitpicky and contradictory criticism, along with comments like, "What's subtle to you is boring to our readers." I tried to pin him down on just who these illusive and demanding readers were, thinking that would help me to avoid boring them but he dodged the question. As I began to anticipate his criticism, it became harder and harder to write. Feeling like the horse that Scarlett flogged all the way to Tara, I cranked out the first draft, along with an outline for the next two books. My editor said there were a few problems but otherwise it was great. Two days later he called to tell me he was canceling my contract thanks to a kill clause I’d ignored against the advice of my pro bono lawyer because I thought it would never happen to me. At first, I was devastated, but then I'm free! I'm free! I'm free! quickly took over with the added benefit that I got to tell my mother I’d been right all along.

So a friend tells me a local paper is looking for writers. My husband says, “Great! You can get paid to write for a change!” I take the job. I’m a little daunted at first but my editor reassures me by reminding me that I wrote a NOVEL so surely I can write this article which involves interviewing bankers who it turns out are a loquacious lot. My article grows to 1500 words, double the assigned amount. I ask my editor for guidance on what to cut. She tells me how REALLY great my article is and asks me to get MORE info which I do, thinking my article has turned into a feature. The day before it’s due, she tells me: “True, it all seems important...” BUT she’s edited it down to 750 words. I ask, just out of curiosity, why didn’t you have me do it? She says, you’re right – you do it. I say if you’ve already done it, why do you want me to do it again? She says, no, you’re right – I shouldn’t have gotten involved. So I swallow my disappointment and Benihana it down to 750 words which passes muster except for one misspelled county. I’m told in future I should Google such things in order to prevent a recurrence. This felt like a barb -- Am I too sensitive? Did my dad’s ruthless criticism make it impossible for me to ever work with an editor of any kind? – but I duly note this detail.

My next assignment involves the fairly routine task of checking with local home heating fuel suppliers to see how they did over the winter for inclusion in what at first seems to be an annual home heating fuel report, with the casual comment that I can include an industry source if that seems necessary to me.

Then I get an email to contact the realtor handling the liquidation of real estate assets of a local fuel company which recently declared bankruptcy and is under an Attorney General investigation. I’m told to: “See where it takes you. Good luck!!” Well, this realtor fellow is quite the talker. I get close to 3000 words from him and his website alone which fact I share with my editor who nervously tells me to “Keep your eye on 500 words, though there's lots to tell.” Okay, I get it – don’t knock no matter how many bell-out-of-order-please-knock signs there are.

At some point, she tells me to remove my personal signature line (which proclaims me the author of the NOVEL that proved I could write articles) from my emails and replace it with something more professional. Again, I inwardly wince; again I duly note this detail.

Since the deadline is March, I’m thinking maybe I should wait until closer to the end of February – one of the two biggest months for home heating fuel consumption – to get the rest of the info for this article which I’m told is to come from another fuel supplier who is an advertiser in the paper. I call her up and she enthusiastically tells me about a product which improves an engine’s fuel economy by as much as 15 percent, and another product which enables one to wax one’s car without water.

This is confusing so I contact my editor who asks me why I’m including a company that is based in Florida in an article that is supposed to focus on LOCAL businesses, and did I read the editorial grid. Yes, I read the editorial grid which included the instructions for me to use this source. This is where I start to get a little testy. There’s nothing like having someone give you confusing and contradictory instructions and then accuse you of not following directions.

Okay, the editor says – just include a quote or two from her and put the rest in a sidebar. A sidebar? I tell her that there is absolutely no correlation between this woman’s products and home heating fuels. Okay, the editor says – just touch upon the future of fuel to keep our theme -- smart growth and the environment -- in mind. Use DOE as an industry source -- talk to their media person. She again reminds me to stay under 500 words: “keep it tight and try to include a few sentences of quote from him.” (The realtor – remember him? Me neither.) She advises me to use the yellow pages to find home heating fuel suppliers in the four gigantic counties that the paper covers. I barely know what’s in my own county, and my yellow pages represent only two of the four counties. I try Googling home heating fuel suppliers in the two other counties but these guys keep a pretty low internet profile. I ask if the editor can give me any names and she tells me to: “Please look up the Chambers of Commerce for all 4 of our counties and use them as a source from now on. Save the website as a favorite place.” To throw a little salt into the wound, she adds: “I don't advise waiting until there are mere days to get to sources on a story.” I refrain from explaining the reason I waited, not to mention the parameters of the article have changed about a million times.

I decide to start with my own home heating fuel supplier who at first says he’s not interested, and then gives monosyllabic replies to my questions. I call five more suppliers and leave messages. I finally get someone who’ll talk to me but then he, too, says he’s not interested, and hangs up. What’s up with these guys? Are all home heating fuel suppliers of the strong, silent, Gary Cooper ilk? Don’t they want what amounts to free advertising? Wondering if the bankrupt fuel company is the cause, I try to make it clear that this is not the China Syndrome I’m investigating.

I start to panic. Not only can I not find sources for this article but I’m beginning to lose my grasp of what it’s supposed to be about. I feel like someone who faints and is given a paper bag to breathe into only it turns out it’s a plastic bag and I’m suffocating. I call DOE’s Press Officer and ask if there's an industry trade group for oil or propane in the state of PA. They say they can’t give me that information – they have to have someone call back (in case I’m a TERRORIST I suppose) -- like I’m the shark in that old Saturday Night Live routine: “Candygram!”

As part of my morning meditation I read a description of Ramana Maharshi’s near-death experience: “Then the bright white curtain completely shut out my vision, my head was swimming, and my blood circulation and breathing stopped. The skin turned a livid blue.” This is what I am experiencing right now -- the near-death of that divine writing spark which is disintegrating before my very eyes like the Wicked Witch of the West under a torrent of defeat. I tell the editor that I really don't think I'm cut out for a career in journalism -- I like the writing part but it's all just much more time-consuming than I'd imagined -- so please accept my resignation. If you wish, I'll do the best I can to finish the fuel article so that I don't leave you stranded but after that I'm done. I'm sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you.

And miracle of miracles she cuts me loose!!! What happens next is described by Ramana Maharshi: “Then I felt a shock passing suddenly through the body: circulation revived with enormous force, and also respiration, and there was profuse sweating all over the body from every pore. The color of life reappeared on the skin. I then opened my eyes, got up casually, and said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Poor Jane Fonda! Two public apologies in one lifetime. I guess the more times you have to apologize, the easier it gets.

My husband is a pretty laissez-faire guy who also happens to be a Vietnam vet, and even he can’t condone her past anti-war activities. I personally don’t see why what she did was so bad since she was fervently trying to end a war that most people agree was pretty useless (apparently it was how she went about it that rankles), but every once in a while you run into a vet who says they just can’t forgive her.

Now she’s on the rocks for saying the word cunt, a much less egregious gaffe I think since whom exactly did she offend? Did the Today Show receive a torrent of complaints or was the apology pre-emptive? All I can say is that it provided a shot in the arm for what has become extremely bland programming.

Having performed the “cunt” monologue myself in an ESU production of the Vagina Monologues, I can only tell you how liberating it is to get the audience to chant the word along with you, and how, after performing that monologue multiple times, the word cunt falls trippingly off the tongue ever after. (Kind of like apologies.)

However, I feel an apology is unwarranted in this case. If, as Eve Ensler said, "The whole point of the play is to reclaim that word, and to make that word beautiful, and to make that word powerful, and not denigrating, and not ugly," then a woman saying cunt is like a black person using the “n” word – okay, but only for them to do so.

I actually use the word cunt in my novel, Boob, A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity (which in an earlier incarnation was called Topic of Cancer), although not as many times as Henry Miller did, so you see, Pandora has been let out of the box. So to speak.