If I die and go to hell (which is a given if you ask my in-laws), I will probably end up spending eternity working on my dreadful second word child. Of course, “working” is a bit of a stretch when it comes to the damn thing. Shredding my fingernails while glaring at my computer screen is a better description. Word Child and I loathe each other right now.

And what’s with that anyway? How did an idea that started out all “Oh wow! I totally, totally want to write that!!” turn into “Book, I will set you ablaze. Don’t think I won’t. BG has already started the fire in the backyard.”

Heh. And people said there were no advantages to being married to an amateur arsonist.

Anyway. People also said I needed to try a different place to write. Mix it up, they said. Some of them were referring to cocktails, but I ignored that.

For a while.

Mostly, they were referring to coffee shops. The idea was every day I would get up, get dressed, and go somewhere in public to work. This might have been because by the time I reached the 150-page mark I was starting to look a bit, um, feral. I won’t go as far as to say I smelled like I’d been sprayed with liquid homeless person, but I will say that when an OCD person is left to her own devices…well…sometimes said OCD person shows up at her husband’s work still in her riding clothes…which were soaked down the back from sweat, which made her look like she’d peed herself.

I’ll give you a moment with that visual.

Done? Great. So where was I?

Oh, everyone has their personal fav coffee shop. I’m slightly jealous of this because I hate coffee almost as much as I hate Word Child 2: The Suck-ening so I don’t have a coffee shop I can lean on in my hour of need. There is no public home away from home. In addition to everyone being in favor of coffee shops, they also insisted I couldn’t just go to Starbucks or Barnes and Noble. Oh, no. It had to be a Special Coffee Shop. Somewhere people would get to know me.

For someone who spends a great amount of her life happily flying under the radar, this sounded as appealing as nailing carpet tacks to my gums. I enjoy being a number and not a face. I like the unpersonal. I do not believe that the Chick-fil-a employee truly wants me to have a “blessed day,” I think she wants me to get the hell out of there and not leave a mess behind. Similarly, I do not believe a retail employee wants to help me find the perfect outfit/makeup/shoes. She doesn’t actually care what I look like and, obviously, neither do I.

I’d be lost without the unpersonal. You need confidence to walk into places where people know you and, more importantly, know what you do.

Or, in Book 2’s case, what I’m trying to do.

To avoid this, I stick to chains that are unpersonal and soulless and promise never to greet me like they know me, and guess what? Eventually, you get recognized and the employees start to get interested. They’re curious about the sweaty, muttering writer dressed in riding clothes—except they don’t know they’re riding clothes so they think I’m just a dirt-encrusted dominatrix.

Which might be preferable to finishing Book 2.

This article was originally posted on the DoomsDaisies blog.