fuck love, i'm a writer!

I sat and sat and sat and thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and finally decided that the novel wasn't going to write itself, but I couldn't figure out what angle to take to get to the next part of what I'm writing, so I decided to just sit with what I've already written and approach that feeling again, that sense of inspiration that drives this story. I know, I know, I know, all the best teachers say you should get all the way through the story before you go back up and start over again. Okay, no, I don't know if all the best teachers say that; I just know that a lot of teachers say that, I don't know if they're the best, they're not the best for me because they're not my teachers. I don't have a teacher, not in an official, capital T sort of way, not somebody I pay (though I feel that I have a lot of teachers in a lowercase t sort of way), and so I don't really know if that's the best advice, to not start over from the start, because I don't really know what it means, exactly. I've got this story down, I've got the whole thing in my head (and I've written some of almost every last part of it). I just wanted to see where it's going, and to do that I felt like I had to see where it came from, and to do that, to really do that, to really feel that the way I need to feel it, I decided I needed to go back and rewrite the story, physically, by hand, longhand, with a pen and some college ruled filler paper, with the previous version(s) before me, and start there and see where it gets me. And, whew! my hand is tired. I got all the way through chapter one and that felt good, and it changed somewhat, in some basic ways but not in any overriding ways, just a few fixes that I knew were gonna need to be made when I got back around to rewrites anywya. And I got started on chapter two. I started last night and then I did a little more today, and that feels equally good, too. There's a character named Brenda whose name I changed to Patty, I think because somebody in my writing critiquing group said all the characters names seemed too similar--
Randy
Mona
Rona
Brenda
Mike
Chandra
Those are the names that come up in the first couple of chapters. I don't think there are any others, maybe, but it doesn't really matter right now. Anyway, when I was rewriting, I kept writing Brenda instead of Patty, even though I had the paper that I was working from in front of me and it said Patty there clear as day. I think maybe the character's name is just Brenda. It's not like I have a whole lot of say over it. If a character comes into my head as being named Brenda, it's gonna be hard to call her Patty. That's just what I'm thinking. But I had to stop handwriting for a while because my right hand was killing me (particularly my pinkie finger which gets all tucked up under my fist, all wadded up and dragged across the page again and again and again) and I found some work-work to do. It's slow season at my job, but I'm thankful for a little mindless work now and then. That's all.