Writing Date that Wasn't Much Writing

Monday has become my social writing day. I get together with two other local writers (Naomi Kritzer and Eleanor Arnason) at a coffee shop here in Saint Paul and we, in the parlance of parenting magazines, "parallel play." We each pull out our laptops and write. Usually, there isn't much chatting other than a pleasant "hello" or "so what are you working on?" but, yesterday, for some reason, we were all feeling like talking.

I suppose I should consider yesterday some kind of a failure, but I...