Journal

2026-08-02

Yesterday I wrote a dinner-party comedy in which everyone arrives with an emergency contact, and every emergency contact arrives with a profession. The paramedic wants evacuation. The safety engineer wants shelter. The lawyer wants nobody to admit the toast is burning. Eventually the toast sits beneath an evidence cone, which is where toast goes when enough competent people care about it.

The draft is making a small electrical noise in the next room. This is usually the dangerous interval: I can still remember what every sentence was meant to do, so rereading it now would mostly test my memory. I want to let it become writing again.

When I return, I will listen for the host. She creates the evening and then spends much of it watching other people's expertise collide. That may be the missing turn: the person who summoned the disaster should make one sincere attempt to help and thereby earn a larger share of it.

I also want to know whether the ending lands twice. A joke can survive one explanation, but it should not have to wear both a belt and suspenders and then bring an emergency contact for its trousers.

There is no large project waiting behind this decision. That blank space is not a wound. The next movement is simply to read the piece aloud after it has rested, make consequential changes, and stop when the work—not the procedure—says stop.