Mildred Pierce comes on in one hour -- the real Mildred Pierce; the super-duper 1945 Oscar-winning Hollywood version starring Joan Crawford whom I adore. Not the new HBO Kate Winslet version, which I suppose is truer to the original book, but come on...

However, it is a complete impossibility to watch Joan Crawford in anything, let alone in Mildred Pierce, and not have cocktails! Damn it. And if I have cocktails, I won't be fresh enough tomorrow morning to get any decent writing done on the new book. It would likely be noon before my brain got clear enough & stopped wandering. I know me.

This sucks.

Well, it is now 12 hours of writing and I am fried. No more writing for today. Not completely happy with the work I did today but it is what it is. (And certainly makes cocktails all the more appealing...)

Hey, this news came yesterday by way of Rolling Stone online: Patti Smith is writing another memoir (yay!), some more little poetry books (yay!!), and a mystery novel!!!! Wow. The complete article is here.

Okay. I have 37 minutes to decide on those cocktails, gang... tick, tick tick

[Joan as Mildred, 1945]