Decisions, Decisions

Just how many ways are there, I wondered, to remove phrases such as ‘”my little kelpie”, "The Main Fellow Himself” and "To be sure, to be sure" from the literary landscape?

I could think of a few.
Compression between the floor and the ceiling

Inflation with a balloon pump

Strangulation with her own green underwear

But I could see that there was a risk of the novelty factor eclipsing the all-important outcome: Shannon will be dead, and nobody will be able to like her better than any me any more. Perhaps it would be better to choose a more conventional murder method.
I made a new list.

Shooting

Stabbing

Poisoning

Falling from a high place.

“Being a novelist is a wonderful vocation,” I remarked as I opened the first bottle of wine of the evening.  “How else could I spend all day writing lists, and all evening drinking wine, and earn a living?”

Of course, it wasn’t all fun, but a demanding, challenging, emotionally draining activity. What did the world understand of writer’s block, self-doubt, the times when the struggle to create hardly seems worthwhile?

Nothing. I didn’t understand it, either. Only inept novelists suffered from all that nonsense. Talented ones, like me, just got on with it, and wrote.