Am currently rereading my novel, and feeling the sort of attitude swing that happens when I read my own stuff. Sometimes while I'm reading I think, "Damn, I'm brilliant! This stuff knocks it out of the park!" And then maybe even ten minutes later I'm thinking, "This sucks! My writing sucks! The whole thing sucks!" while reading the exact same material. I expect that the truth is somewhere between the two. Anyway, last night I felt my novel sucked, or parts of it anyway. I think I said in an earlier post that I like all my characters, but that's not true, because one of my minor characters has never failed to make me want to gag. I'm either going to have to find some way to like her or I'll have to write her out. I feel a bit tenderhearted about doing the latter. Take that, Grisham.

I always get slightly irritated when I tell people I'm writing a novel and they ask me, "So what's it about?" The only way I've been able to deal with this question is to rehearse the plot. I don't want to rehearse the plot; it's complicated and long-tailed and defies genres ("well, it's kindof a mystery-suspense psychological novel about friendship and forgiveness and redemption" -- urk). So one time I went to this Mensa meeting with my roommate and I went on a mini-rant about how I'd rather be asked about the characters of a character-driven novel, and the guy I was talking to said, "So what are your characters like?" Which I welcomed gratefully, except then he started "mackin' on" me in a Mensa-type style and I had to not go to Mensa anymore. *sigh* Oh well.