By Sarah

My third-grade teacher Mrs. Cafferty once told my mother I was destined to go through life learning things the hard way. (Have I mentioned this before? Seems like I'm always repeating myself on this blog.) Anyway, Mrs. Cafferty had blue hair styled like Marge Simpson and she was a cruddy teacher, though for all my badmouthing I seem to have taken her bleak words to heart. One of her more accurate prognostications was that  I needed at least three tries at a task to get it right. So it is with writing books.

So it was with blogging.

There have been several times over my six + year stint here where my idiot blogs have landed me in major trouble. I mean BIG trouble.

For example, Sessalee Hensley. Sessalee Hensley chooses the fiction for Barnes & Noble and she's been doing it forever. A push from Sessalee can make or break a book. Sessalee can launch careers, transform lives, make tuition affordable for the children of struggling writers, clear your skin, improve your handicap and add oomph to your souffle. And what did I do right here on TLC? I dissed her.

Well, not HER exactly. Before THE CINDERELLA PACT came out, I learned she hadn't been a fan and, of course, being a large-mouth frog I broadcast that on the blog. My blog sisters, being a supportive lot, chimed in with a Who Needs Her and so did some of you. The result? Poor Sessalee was picked on by people who, until that day, had never heard of her existence.

Yeah, not good. 

I never meant for Sessalee to get picked on. I was just kind of pissing and moaning about the process which places your career in the hands of one person. Anyway, Sessalee was actually pretty stand up about it. Gracious, is the word. And, as it turned out, B&N did a really nice job of promoting THE CINDERELLA PACT which became one of my more popular books, especially after it was turned into a Lifetime movie, LYING TO BE PERFECT.

Still. It's a mistake I'll forever regret. Sessalee, I'm sorry. That's all I can say. Mea culpa.

A big mea culpa, too, to Jennifer Weiner. Though this story is kinda bizarre.

It was a blog about fat girls and chicklit. (What was up with me and THE CINDERELLA PACT?) I blogged that I was not crazy about the ending of GOOD IN BED - which just so happens to be one of my favorite books of all time - because Carrie lost a lot of weight by walking and then got the doctor. At midnight that night, Jennifer Weiner - not one to hold back her opinion - sent me a blistering email explaining that the point of Carrie losing the weight was to show that, even thin, her life was not perfect, ya moron. Her hangup with weight was all in her head.

And, you know, I never thought of it that way before. Weiner was right. Funny how authors can known their characters, huh?

Still, let's just say that if she had a Christmas card list, Jennifer Weiner wouldn't be sending me any photos of her family with the dog, though I remain her loyal fan on Twitter. What can I say? I love a good Tweet. And you gotta admire a writer who takes on sexism at the New York Times and incest among reviewers and authors. If Betty White were here, she'd say Jen Weiner has one hell of a vagina.

Speaking of vaginas, another one of my questionable decisions here was documenting my daily sex life in an ongoing blog about whether Charlie and I could keep up with some fundamentalist Christians who'd vowed to have sex every night. That's the kind of thing that SEEMS like fun...but when you do it, and when you BLOG about it, turns out not so much. 

My big error was forgetting that people I know and see everyday in the grocery store, the post office, at school, read this blog. So it took me awhile to figure out why they were smirking or shaking their heads or gripping my arm and in plaintive tones saying, "But what do your children think?"

That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was, er, keeping it up, so to speak. Strangers - STRANGERS mind you - would come up and ask me with a wink "how's it going? How many days has it been now?"

I suppose I should have been more wary of a medium that allowed my impulsive brain to transmit its wacky thoughts instantaneously ad infinitum. As Ricky said to Lucy, "You gotta biiiiig mouth." Then again, that's where the fun is, no? If I'd installed the filter on my words long ago - as Mrs. Cafferty would have wanted along with better penmanship - chances are I would have ended up as a corporate spokeswoman instead of a writer of any sort of genre you can name.

Which would have been a shame. As would have been missing out on not bonding with my sisters here at TLC and with you, the most awesome and intelligent readers in the blogosphere. Many has been the time when I've been humbled by your observations or your personal stories. It has been a privilege to hear how you've overcome poverty and teenage motherhood, scared away would-be murderers (Toni?), survived rape, ditched a crummy ex or supported a dying child. 

You guys have been with me - and all of us - through some real lows, too. You helped me deal with teenagers and the passing of my father. You've taught me to be a better writer and a more careful thinker.

But most importantly you've taught me that we're not so different, you and I. We want. We love. We laugh. And, yes, we make mistakes. 

So thank you for reading me every other Tuesday. I'm sure we'll meet again at booksignings or FB or wherever people of like minds and passions come together.

The pleasure has been all mine.