I read someone the other day thinking about whether they would make a "good" protagonist in a story, and they came to the conclusion that they wouldn't because they hated to initiate change, and, in their words, had to be "dragged kicking and screaming toward anything like a plot".
That made me think about whether I'd be an interesting protagonist--I suspect no, because I am afflicted with extreme practicality. A mysterious and dashing man shows up with a handful of magic beans and asks would I like to go on an adventure? Um, no thanks, Bean Man, I have a dentist appointment later. Good luck to you though! A time traveler stumbles, gasping, into my kitchen and tells me I am the key to saving the future? Sure pal, park it over there, we're calling 911, you probably hit your head. Any superhero except Superman asks me for help of any kind? Buddy, you're the one with superpowers, how about you act like a grownup and just tell your friends the truth about yourself? That would solve so many superhero problems!
I have to disagree. Yes, you'd be harder to railroad. Yes, being anxious you'd avoid the obvious traps. And admittedly never has there been a protagonist like Hamlet, who refuses to just do the stupid thing. One who sees the writing on the wall and stops himself.
YOU GUYS! Go read Phantom's post and also his novel.
This is like reading Ludlum if Ludlum had a sense of humor, or like the big splashy action movies of the 90s. It feels like summer, pure entertainment. And the pair of detectives that are hunting the bad guy are just delightful. It's super easy to read it on your phone while you're cooking dinner, too. (Ahem.)
Source: I've read this whole book--couldn't put it down--even though life rudely intervened with my reviewing. (I haven't forgotten, Phantom Reviewer , and I'm going to be back as soon as my life is not spread between two states.)
Allan Charles 🐾 - I *almost* put it as a comment on your post, and then I was like, no, no, I'm going to leave this all nice for the people who are actually writing good dark haiku. I will take my middle-school-boy sense of humor to my own post...
NOT WANT CUP LEAVE RING
HULK GET OUT NEW CROCHET KIT
MAKE PRETTY DOILY
(THIS ALTERNATE UNIVERSE HULK. WHEN HULK GET MAD, HULK MEDITATE, COUNT TO 10,5,3 MANY, GET IN TOUCH FEMININE SIDE, MAKE WORLD BETTER PLACE. OMMMMMM...)
In other other news, I don't believe in astrology, but just heard someone say they wanted to have a Taurus friend to keep track of their grudges for them in case their memory gets bad, and I DO happen to be a Taurus and I DO have a running list (for me and also others) that my husband calls my Great Book of Grudges.
Listen, somebody has to keep up the long war of attrition against LL Bean's return policy!
I'm sitting in the mechanic's waiting area, waiting for them to finish making my car seaworthy spiffed-up for our long drive to our new town (1,800 miles--this is longer than Frodo's trip to Mordor). And although my mechanic is great and tries to make his waiting area pleasant, it is still a mechanic waiting room.
In other news, I just sent the novel I finished writing in December to my agent, so cross your fingers for me that she likes it?
Finally, here's Ty's story-- this one is the oldest of the bunch, written a very long time ago and fiddled with in the meantime. I think this version is about as old as my oldest kid, which means...ugh, old enough to vote next year.
Another old story (at least a decade, I think more) this one is about Simon, a character I always wished I could figure out how to write more about. (I almost didn't post this one, because it could be read as bearing on current events, but I promise that this is the unchanged text of a very, very old piece. You ought to be able to tell by the clunky prose.)
STATIC
Patron Saint (13+) Simon asks the Weeping Saint for a miracle. Does he get one? #2338200 by Raven
I think this is a story about grief, and conscience.
Tonight I've been unearthing more old stories. This one is the story where I first met Corcoran Gray. He eventually became a much more rounded character and starred in my two published novels--but here he is in his very earliest form:
Even in this story, about 13 years old now, you can get the essence of Gray's character; he gets very attached to his friends, he's a good person but doesn't like to admit that he is, and he's always trying to be the kind of man his grandfather would approve of.
So I am very bad at noticing when I'm feeling stressed. (I know, bear with me, it's really stupid.) For various childhood type reasons, my default setting is to pretty much not notice my mortal frame, this meat mecha I am piloting--until it's *shrieking* at me. It's been a process, the last few years of my adulthood, learning to actually pay attention so I can, for example, take a tyelenol *before* I am knocked completely down with a headache. But! I have found a pretty flawless metric for "is Raven stressed?" and that's "can Raven write when she sits down to try??"
This is different than "I sit down but don't want to write" or "I sit down but don't *know* what to write". This is "I sit down and want to write and know what I should write but brain goes splat and says no". (Note: this is also not burnout. I did that too, in 2022-23, this is a different thing.) The way you can tell when stress is inhibiting the muse is that when the stress relieves--say, when the financing is finalized for your new house and it's way better than you thought it would be--all of a sudden the story ROARS back and you're writing as fast as you can type.
I guess I am telling you this in case you're feeling bad because you can't write while, IDK, a family member is sick or you're waiting on results or (God forbid) you've been looking at the stock market. It's ok. It's just that your brain won't spare extra energy for creativity while it's (it thinks) protecting you from all the man-eating tigers that are waiting in the woods. You can sit with me until your stress abates. We'll hold hands and eat Klondike bars, it'll be fine.
Phantom Reviewer - Luckily this time it was only a couple of weeks, while I was so distracted I couldn't even dink around with chapters. Tonight, with some big question marks about our move answered, I'm happily moving sentences around and restructuring the thing. The stories are always *there*, just sometimes my brain is on too much Tiger Patrol to let me get at them. (Silly brain.)
In other news, it is deeply annoying that books have to 1) have titles and 2) have titles that have not already been the titles of other books. I have been--between scrubbing out cupboards and trying to give away old couches-- brainstorming titles for days that are not the working title ("Rain Novel") that I gave this book and they all somehow sound worse in my head than "Rain Novel".
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 - I love your suggestions. What's nice about most titles is that they can hold the place until the right one comes along. I rarely leave anything untitled because I've written too much and I don't want to just number them.
Ben Langhinrichs - I have legit been mulling "Rain/Fall" and then yanking myself back from the ledge with two hands. I have a terrible feeling it's going to my agent titled "RAIN NOVEL" and I will wail "YOU TITLE IT THEN IF YOU'RE SO SMART"
March came in like a lion and is leaving like...a slightly smaller lion, in that it's raining instead of snowing. But we took one load of Stuff to the dump, and I am thiiiiiis close to having the house ready for the movers.
It is indubitably easier when The Company moves you-- they hire professionals and their army of boxes/packers/loaders to walk through your house, look distainfully at all your stuff, and then heft it all into a semi to be transported state to state. But the professionals won't move a lot of things, mostly flammable things. So, for example, I have to get rid of cleaning products, candles, batteries, nail polish, hairspray. They'll move some food (oatmeal) but not other food (canned beans). They won't move houseplants for obvious reasons, but every time they ask me if we're moving the garden shed. (We are never moving the garden shed.) They DID pack up a trash can with trash in it last move, though, so you can see why I get confused.
However, every move I knock myself out trying to remove all this stuff before the movers get here. Why? Because I 1) own a piano and 2) last move there were 42 cartons of books. I know we have acquired MORE books since last move. I am betting we are over 50 cartons of books this time, and the movers made sad dolphin noises every time they opened a cupboard and found... MORE BOOKS. So I try to make it easy on them, and get rid of my nail polishes in advance. And believe it or not, I *have* culled the books! This isn't as many book as it could have been! things could always be worse!
Even with professional movers, you've still got to UNpack. My experience is that they just dump stuff in random boxes. It took us weeks to unpack after our last move. In fact, Gene's still got a bunch of boxes in the garage he never unpacked from our move eight years ago.
I've been hoping that March would depart like a chicken --- leaving a few eggs behind. Those little oval objects have been so expensive I had started trying to learn to lay 'em myself!
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 - We got good at unpacking fast because the movers will come take the old boxes away if you do it within 30 days. We'll see if we're still good at it, I guess--my usual plan is to feverishly discard before we head down the road. Like a whale leaping to knock the barnacles off itself...
Home (to the old house) for a while, anyway, to start getting things into boxes and the place set up for showings. Times/dates for when we head to the new house TBD, we should know soon. Meantime my dog is very offended with me for cleaning him.
Will I write until we are safely ensconced in the new place? I have no idea, but I can tell you one thing, friends: I read some books on my plane/rental car/uber odyssey these last few days, and ya'll are at LEAST as good as *those* writers. (One--published, bestselling--book I read had a character saying "when I looked at him, my gaze was hard". As if the POV character could step outside herself for a minute, or perhaps catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and notice how her gaze appears to others. [No, there is no mirror, she is a peasant in a shack at that point.] MY writing pals would never let ME get away with these kinds of shenanigans and goings-on, is all I'm saying.)
Hopefully I can do some reviews tomorrow, if I get enough floor-waxing done...
Today the Husband is meeting his new work site people and I am scoping out our (possible) new town. First order of business: find the library and the bookstores. Then I will know which house to buy...
My Dad was career Air Force and we moved around a lot when I was younger. I moved five times in my first eight years of school, spending the third grade in Mississippi, Maine and Michigan.
But I always spent the first couple days in a new town riding up and down every street on my bike to learn my way around. We always moved to small towns of fewer than 5000. What fun!
Big doings at my house--we found out last night my husband will be changing jobs and we'll will be relocating. Exciting times--and I hope much better work life balance for him--but a buttload of work for me, so if you don't see me as frequently for a bit, never fear. I will return! Just have a lot of packing to do... :)
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- Exciting protagonists lead uncomfortable lives! I like a boring, steady, comfortable life!
Reply
Nuff said!
, and I'm going to be back as soon as my life is not spread between two states.) 
- I *almost* put it as a comment on your post, and then I was like, no, no, I'm going to leave this all nice for the people who are actually writing good dark haiku. I will take my middle-school-boy sense of humor to my own post...
- I love your suggestions. What's nice about most titles is that they can hold the place until the right one comes along. I rarely leave anything untitled because I've written too much and I don't want to just number them. 
- I have legit been mulling "Rain/Fall" and then yanking myself back from the ledge with two hands. I have a terrible feeling it's going to my agent titled "RAIN NOVEL" and I will wail "YOU TITLE IT THEN IF YOU'RE SO SMART"
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nuff said 
