The author sat hunched, over her laptop, looking menacingly at the blinking cursor and the blank page. The only sound in the otherwise quiet room was the incessant tick tock of her desk clock mocking her inability to come up with that one perfect sentence that would get everything rolling in the right direction again. She could do this she new she could. However, with the deadline just days away she was in a full panic. The hard cover of her first novel a raving success sat on a shelf just above her head mocking her. When she glanced at her trash can the real reason for her fowl mood came to light. There lay a single sheet of crumpled, singed paper her most resent and cruelly worded rejection letter. Burning it hadn't helped the words were already indelibly etched in her brain. You should quit while you are ahead you are a one hit wonder. These were the words she feared might be the truth and it was that fear that kept her deleting anything she attempted to key into her laptop. The clock struck noon. She smiled for the first time in hours. Everybody needs to eat. It will just be thirty minutes she promised herself. At that exact moment the phone rang. Startled she jumped before answering it. Her best friend was insisting on lunch and so it was that a thirty minute break became a three hour lunch. This was the reason her submission was not accepted. She had missed the deadline, She now was going to need a new publisher as her embarrassed was too great to ask for an extension.