A second phone call with number six of The Eight is scheduled tonight; the first was Tuesday. It’s odd working through the novel now. A lot of time has passed since finishing the draft. I remember the plot points clearly, the good parts, the parts I liked, but have no recollection of writing the clunkers. They were always there. Sentences that either go nowhere or fall like a brick. Even with all the rewriting in place, I missed them, so my conclusion is that the momentum of a project blocks the mind from noticing a certain type of flub in the moment. Otherwise, the ego is too battered.

The more interesting part, is that with distance, comes perspective. For instance, in one scene, a character was defined more by the questions he was asked, than his actual answers. An unintentional move, certainly. The scene works, and will hit the streets largely intact, but now I view both characters in a different way.