What's In a Name & Whither Motivation

In Promiscuous Mode, I have a good lowlife character named Earl. He lives in a trailer. I came up with Earl long long before the TV Show "My Name is Earl" debuted. But my book hasn't sold and now agents and editors are pointing out the triteness of good old Earl. What's a writer to do? So I changed his name to Darrell. Darrell Gullet sounds almost as good as Earl Gullet, and one thinks of "Darrell and his other brother Darrell," which maybe goes too far back for said agents and editors to remember. I had to change "Earl" Earl's" "Earl," and other assorted permutations. What would we do without Word's Search and Destroy capabilities.

S.O. is reading the book again, after a long absence, and I've started the synopsis. Glory be, the first and 2nd plot points are where they belong, as is the conclusion and the wrapup and the BIG GLOOM.

This novel is kind of a romance, really an anti-romance. The protag goes off with the wrong guy, because this is a series and if I ever get it published I can milk the romance/anti-romance angle from here to kingdom come. Certainly did in the Burning Man book. I think of my books as the "Goettingen book," "the East German book," the "Wisconsin book," and the "Burning Man Book." And yes, the California book.

In the meantime, I listen to my IPOD and download songs and surf the web and wonder "whither motivation?" And pill Annie the cat who indicated that "all is forgiven" today. A good thing.

So, we're moving along slowly but surely and forgetting about the web site for the time being. We had a big corned beef/cabbage feed Thursday night, because I didn't do Chinese New Year this year. Dunno what happened. Then last night friends on their way north stopped because of the weather, and lo, I fed them a corned beef and cabbage meal with even leftover strawberry shortcake dessert, and put them up for the night. It's damp and it's cold and the snow is still out there, and one certainly wouldn't want to stand and wait for a parade today.

In Boston, EVERYONE is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, even all the ethnic minorities.

Celebrate.

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