She Wrote this Paper Once

Don't ask too many questions about this post. My fantasy author, Sandy Lender, just called in here and asked if I'd tell the story of the day she totally screwed up in one of her core classes in college. I have no idea what a core class is, and I'm "in" education.

She says this is a nightmare college students in this society often have.

She went to class one morning to see many other students stapling papers together and stuffing papers in nice colored folders, etc., and she wondered at the buzz of energy in everyone. Then the professor walked in and asked for everyone to hand their papers forward. Oops. She thought the paper was due a week later and had not even begun work on it. So she watched helplessly as every other student turned in the assignment, worth whatever percent of the final class grade it was worth, while she had nothing to hand forward.

At the end of the class hour, she sprinted back to her dorm room, whisked out some reference books, and wrote a paper on whatever the topic was. She cited her sources at the end, printed it out, put it in a nice colored folder, and sprinted over to her professor's office. He wasn't in. So she wrote an honest note that she had forgotten to prepare the paper for class that morning and asked him to please accept it late and left it under his door.

He was very kind to accept the paper and even gave her an A.

Sandy says THAT is stressful writing. It reminds me of the proposal she had to write for her publisher when she pitched the Choices trilogy. She had to do that whole marketing piece one night because she thought her pitch was going to be a weekend later than it actually was. Another nightmare for some people that she's actually lived. Interesting...

All my best,
Nigel