some times you feel like a nut....

Okay, now that is a really OLD commercial, but today that's what I feel like. Since I'm working on two novels at once (with one, maybe two simmering in the background for later), I am bouncing back and forth between my main novels. Today, I felt like writing for Cody for a while, then I felt like working on Anna's story. On The Fictional Writer, I mostly tweaked some stuff based on comments from the last trip to the critique group. On The Big Kissoff, I finally got Cody's no-good client, Diggerson, into her grimy office so she can "chew him up and spit him out." Cody is so much fun. All those nasty feelings I've ever had toward employers or horrible neighbors, or people who cut me off on the freeway--all that energy goes into Cody. She's just fun/mean and I truly love her, alcoholism and all.

Anna in The Fictional Writer is not yet as complex as Cody in The Big Kissoff. I started The Fictional Writer over a decade ago, tossed half of it out a couple of years back, and I think Anna may be too nice for me to relate to, which probably means she's too nice for readers to relate to. Not that I want her to be as troubled and irritating as Cody, but I really need to bring out the ambivalence she feels about her father, about romance, about being a fiction writer v. a journalist. All her issues are undercurrents and I need to get them boiling to the top. I understand Anna better than Cody, because like her, my issues are mostly undercurrents, not obvious stuff like alcoholism and really poor people skills like Cody's. So, because she's farther from me, I can write her more easily. Still, I hate to think how much like me both of these characters are.