And in the interests of allowing the door to hit the inner critic firmly on its way out, I wrote a short story this afternoon.

It was meant to be a joke, but when Megan came home and told me that she’d bought a harpsichord I realized that she’d missed the punch line.

“Megan,” I said, “we don’t have anywhere to put a harpsichord.”

“I know,” she said, her cheeks flushed from her walk up the hill. “That’s why I also stopped by the realtor’s office and asked her to go through her listings and come up with a half dozen houses for us to view next week.”

It’s 793 words long; I was aiming for 750. Not bad. And I can probably tighten it to lose the forty-three extra words. But not now, because we have to go pick Liam up and give Devon her birthday present. And only now do I remember that I’d set aside this afternoon to read and critique someone else’s work, which I completely forgot about in the throes of “I know I’ll write a story serves you right stupid inner critic”. Gah. Maybe tonight, then.