August 11, 2010

Working daily and nightly, and usually in great joy, on my novel, the third of the summer, but the first to be built from scratch. I try to read it over and ask “is it good?” but how can I trust any answer I give back to myself? It seems good. It seems imperfect. Then it seems far more imperfect than good. Then it seems marvelous. Just write, I suppose, and plod around in the morass of criticism later.

My insurance agent left the business, so now I’m looking for car insurance, and finding that having been rear-ended two Novembers ago is keeping me from getting the lowest rate. The accident was not my fault, and the police report says so, but the Insurance Computers seem to think a shadow lies on me none the less, for having been in the way of bad driving. Vicky at Geico talked with the omnipresent dipthong of some mountain women, where an “e” is inserted into every vowel. "Leyt mee loek this up an’ see whaet I caen deo.” One wants to say, “Love, don’t you know talking like that makes you sound stupid?” but one realizes that’s the point, that whatever news she comes back with she cannot be blamed for, because she talks like that, and what else can be expected? Very, very cunning.