Last week I met with my trusted reader, my former thesis advisor, or the guy who I can hear say, "I liked parts of it" without wanting to kill him, about PARKER CLEAVES.

The nice thing about having a good reader is you have someone to draw out of you what you were trying to say (and failing to say) in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like it's pointless to try to write novels with a full-time job and a family, but really, it's the same task whether there are other things in your life or not.

At this juncture, I only really write once a week for an hourish on this novel. I write for work, I'm writing NOW, for God's sake, but that's different. This doesn't even make sense and I'm typing it on an obsolete app that for some reason is still on my phone.

However, I pointed out to my reader and to myself, I think about my books all the time.

Tonight I tried something new. I wrote out the 5-6 problems we identified. I numbered them. I picked (my energy being low) what I thought would be easiest to attack and started going through the ms dribbling sentences here and there like melted popsicles with the corresponding number. (Aided by visuals -- it was an already marked-up draft, so I had to highlight the dribble sentences literally in pink.)

I wrote until the iPhone duck quacked that the little angel's riding lesson was over and it was time to regroup at home for dinner.

I think I wrote maybe 300 words tonight. I'm sure this lame post is at least as long as what I wrote.

This is how it goes sometimes. You fight for the feedback, then you fight for the writing time, then the goddamn duck quacks and you're only organizationally closer to a finished novel.

But I still try. There's that.

Back in the lab again.