Time To Get Back

It has been raining for about seven hours--pouring really. Good day for writing except that this kind of weather definitely puts a different light on what ends up on the page--more like layers of shadow. Last night when I was unable to sleep I told myself I have to look for the positives. Not just the ones in the rain but in everything that is contributing to my unsettled mood.

So here goes:

**Rain is challenging when you have seven puppies to potty outdoors but it is good for the earth, the gardens and the rivers.

**Take pleasure in a clean floor instead of dreading how dirty it is and hard it will be to clean it.

**Focus on how far I've come in my writing instead of how far I have to go to come up with something decent.

**Remember that your true friends will take you for face value, not for an increase in their investment. If I return the favor to them what more is needed?

**It hurts to consider that my mother likely didn't care for me. I was in good company, she didn't like herself much either.

I'm reading a good book, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. 

Olive is not very likeable. She is not handsome, is large, is 

opinionated and is domineering. A seventh grade math teacher, 

she moves about a small Maine town with authority and aplomb.

I had a nun in high school like that. Sister Veronita. She taught 'Current Events' and warned us all that the Middle East would be the end of us all. Almost every student in the school disliked her (my mother said never to use the word 'hate.' I liked her ...she was not afraid of anyone or what they thought. Sr. Veronita was, in 1967, one of the original feminists. Difficult for a nun, especially.

I like Olive and what she tells Julie towards the end of the book. "Go for what you hunger." (I'm paraphrasing, but it is close.) Julie does and it changes her life--or so we are led to believe.
I have a friend critiquing my current novel as I write it. I am doing the same for hers. One of the thinks she keeps saying is that she doesn't like my main character.

I think that might be a problem, unless I can make her more like Olive.