Everyone needs a community of likeminded people on a similar quest.  I have a community like this and can honestly say I love my writer friends.  They keep me on track by inspiring me when I’m struggling.  They offer great suggestions when I’m out of blog material.  They also encourage me to do things I know I shouldn’t do.  Yes, these are the same instigators that tried to get me to cut mine own hair, pierce my own belly, lip or nose, or even better…tattoo my own bottom.  I laugh at them, thinking surely they jest…but the truth is I don’t think they’re kidding.

It’s like I’m back in high school, or maybe college. 

These troublemakers actually hope to encourage me into a situation more disastrous than a self-inflicted bikini wax.  They want to read about a flooded stove on steroids.  They want to entice me into blogging while intoxicated. 

Yes, BWI. 

And because I love my writery friends, and because I’m always desperate for something good to blog about, and most importantly because I’m already home and have no place I need to go…I’ve downed a wine cooler.  Oh yeah…a whole one. 

But was that good enough for my two pressuring peers?  Hell no.  The Twitter feed from these two was sending me such messages as “chug, chug, chug” and because one of them is from Australia, “scull, scull, scull.” 

Essentially they were spurring me on to drink more.  So of course, I cracked open a second mango wine cooler. 

Woohoo…I’m a grown up victim of peer pressure.  My husband is looking at me with narrowed eyes and a sour expression, wondering why I’m laughing at him.  I’m not laughing with you honey, I’m laughing at you.  Or rather I’m laughing because I can barely type and I’m trying to write a blog. 

I have a Canadian devil on one shoulder and an Australian one on the other.  And I’m fairly certain my old boyfriends would love to know it would have been this easy to get me drunk…just challenge me to write a blog this way.  Oh yeah, I didn’t blog back then.  But still.  All it took was two girls from my writer clique and I'm one big step toward intoxication.

Of course, I’m not behaving like a very good example for other writers.  We really shouldn’t be so easily seduced into compromising our ideals just for our readers…should we?  Or is our entire goal to write something our readers will essentially chug (or scull)? 

I think Hemingway said it best when he said to write drunk, edit sober.

I don’t know how exactly this applies to me…I’ve only had one and a half wine coolers…but it seems like pretty good advice just the same.

Until the next time…I’ll be doing pirouettes on the coffee table.