Thank the Goddess It's Friday

A very bad week for keeping the old horse trough full so that weary wanderers through the blogosophere can stop and drink and rest a spell.

Such a busy week. Meetings at the U, student conferences at the U, a make-up USF student senate because some students a) missed the assignment last week; b) blew the assignment when yours truly went just a little bit publicly nuts when the student senate closed the meeting and tossed the audience because some senators were afraid they were about to say some things that might hurt somebody's feelings.

So some of my students channeled my indignation and wrote editorials instead of news stories.

Also, I am doing some final tweaking of the novel before sending it off to some lucky agent who is about to get, as Shakespeare said, an "honor" he or she "dreams not of."

One interesting thing about writing fiction. At a certain point the story does take over. I have a point in the novel where three friends of the narrator are upbraiding him for doing something that seems homophobic. I'm reworking that scene and suddenly one of the trio says, "You think you can tell who is gay and who isn't? One of us is gay!"

I did not know that, much less which of them was gay. I don't which one. Perhaps, none of them is, and they are just evolved in their social attitudes. I don't think they all are.

I created these characters, and *I don't know.*

But this statement rippled through the rewrite of the novel from first to last and changed the novel. I could have another character ask these guys what the truth is, I suppose. But I don't know what they would answer.

Interesting, huh? Fun for sure.