more like it, but still not great (1106 words)

What's not great is that I'm putting all these words oin the screen but the story is barely advancing. What on earth is my guy doing, spending all this time discussing plum branches and baby names? I'll cut it out later if necessary. Anyway I got the conflict rolling.

The young woman is asleep on the couch, exhausted by unmanageable pain. I called the doctor yesterday to adjust her medicine or something and got -- more Vicodin. Possibly a higher dose. There must have been a drop in the communication string somewhere, because the point was that the Vicodin is not doing the job.

It pisses me off that I can't make it all better. And you know what's worse? She apologized.

More fooey. At least I didn't have to wait a long time.

Small Beer doesn't want my book.

They have a couple of things to say about it -- stilted, too much infodump. I promise I'm not going to go into a defensive tailspin. I usually like the book, I usually think I got it about right. But. If somebody doesn't like it, then I wonder. I know there's taste. But. Oh, just, fooey.

I wonder if it's the dialog -- which is written in a Spanglish future slang, and the protagonist has trouble expressing himself? Or the narrative? If it's the first, well, I don't think there's anything to do about it. I worked really hard to get those people to sound just like that. Just. Fooey.

I don't know what to do next.

I'm going to Potlatch tomorrow, but now I don't want to. I want to stay home and cry.