I have Guns N' Roses' November Rain on repeat and am trying to find some kind of motivation. I've finished the 4th draft of Replacing Angel, but it doesn't feel finished. My hardest critic and best friend, Sara, is reading my novel in progress from a philosophical point of view. She keeps questioning me why my characters say and do things. It gives me a headache trying to work it out myself; I need them to be idiosyncratic in their actions. Especially the Man who is a bit of a mad professor in a bad way.
I also feel a bit panicky as someone who might be able to put me in touch with an agent has asked me to send him the beginning of the novel and I feel that something is missing. That I need to put in more nerve. I hate abstractions and I hate words like idiosyncratic, but am also proud that I finally know what it means.
My novel feels trite when there are so many deaths in the world. This autumn I've found out about the deaths of four people. Well I only knew one of them and that's my grandma. The others were all young and died in unfortunate circumstances: a friend friend's boyfriend drowned when on holiday, a library colleague accidentally died from an overdose, and a poet I used to see at events was murdered. Even if I wasn't close to any of these people (apart from my gran)it still has affected me badly. Maybe I'm just reminded of my own mortality.
If it stopped raining I'd be a bit happier.
