Worked nearly all day yesterday on dystopian ms. Got a lot done; so much, in fact, that by the end I was utterly confused and lost, and thinking nobody in their right mind would ever be interested in any of it--which is probably a good sign. I hope. Actually, I can't remember if it's a good sign or not. Eh, doesn't matter; I shall proceed onward anyway.

But not today, probably. I've got to get some kind of schedule going, because I contracted to write a w-f-h novel by Sept. 1st, plus I told agent I'd make an attempt to have 6 chapters of this ms in before I leave for V. residency. Plus "lecture," plus getting family and house and animals ready for me to be gone. Egad.

Anyway. I was trying to describe the former GN to a fellow writer, and pulled it up out of curiosity to see how it looks now that I've laid off it for four or so months. Answer: not too good. It's a mess. Needs a total overhaul. It really is boring and, well, fruity. Am mulling over (again) the problem of the MC with no goal. The solution, you'd think, would be to make sure that the reader has a goal for the MC. However, I'm having trouble figuring out how to do that, here.

I suppose the thing to do would be to make the reader feel bad for the MC, make the reader root for her to be happy. But in order to do that, don't I have to make the MC really miserable? That's what makes a story work, is conflict and inflicting misery on your MC. But it's not what I want to do, not at first. I can't do that, really. It would go against the entire raison d'etre for the ms, which is that misery and giving oneself away in relationships is insidious and begins in small, almost unrecognizable increments. So...there must be another way to do it. I'll have to keep mulling it over. I was thinking that since it's in third person, maybe there's a way to sort of stifle and smush the MC by telling her story underneath the activities of other people, in the beginning. Don't know how to do that without giving the false implication that it's their story rather than hers, though.

Anyway, no time to think about it right now. All I know is, I seem to have lost not one ounce of determination to get that ms working, even if I have to stretch my feeble liver-spotted hand out of the coffin they've placed me in and type the last (correct) words of it before I finally expire.