"W-H-A-T S-H-O-U-L-D I D-O N-O-W?" Wendy text messaged to Officer Shelton.

"S-T-A-Y T-H-E-R-E A-N-D T-R-Y TO K-E-E-P R-E-L-I-S-H A-N-D T-O-M-A-T-O A-N-D K-E-T-C-H-U-P O-C-C-U-P-I-E-D," Officer Shelton text replied.

"O-K-A-Y," Wendy text mesaged back.

"N-E-X-T T-I-M-E J-U-S-T T-Y-P-E 'O-K' I-T W-I-L-L S-A-V-E T-I-M-E."

"O-K-A-Y, W-I-L-L D-O."

"Y-O-U D-I-D I-T A-G-A-I-N."

"D-I-D W-H-A-T A-G-A-I-N?"

"Y-O-U T-Y-P-E-D 'O-K-A-Y' I-N-S-T-E-A-D O-F 'O-K""

"I D-I-D?"

"Y-E-S, Y-O-U D-I-D."

"S-O-R-R-Y, I-T W-O-N'-T H-A-P-P-E-N A-G-A-I-N," Wendy texted.

"O-K-A-Y," Officer Shelton text answered.

All this typing of their text messages is doing a number on my metacarpals. From now on I will just type text messages as if they were lines of dialogue. I realize this sacrifices realism, but there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to keep doing the actual text messages, especially since I don't want my hands to be achy and sore when my new college video game arrives in the mail. The release has been delayed a week. It sucks. All I want to do is play college basketball on my XBOX, but no, the Man has got to keep it from me for another week. It's hard enough writing my masterwork; it's even tougher when I can't reward myself for my hard work by playing college basketball on my XBOX for nine hours a day.

I wonder if other awesome novelists are having the same problem as me. You think Philip Roth is bummed out that the college basketball game's release date keeps getting pushed back? I wouldn't be surprised if he was. Roth bleeds for video game college basketball. We were in the same online league last year. He coached Texas Tech. I thought it was a funny choice, but then I learned that he's drinking buddies with Bobby Knight. Not the real Bobby Knight, but the video game Bobby Knight. Yeah, along with video game college basketball, Roth loves to play video game drinking buddies. I'm not so much of a fan video game drinking buddies. It's fun for a while, but you start feeling disconsolate as the game goes along. I mean, you're playing a video game where the object is to not get into a drunken bar fight. Talk about depressing. Still, I have to give credit to Roth for choosing Bobby Knight to be his drinking buddy. Knight's susceptibility to a bar fight rating is 92. If it were me, I'd choose a character in the game that was a little less confrontational, like Jack Klugman.

Anyway, my hands are starting to ache again, so I better quit now while I still can push a D-pad. I'll continue my masterwork tomorrow. Promise!

This post is dedicated to diligence.