I have something of a sinus infection--one of those low-level ones that just kind of makes you tired. I could do fine with the covers, and I'm able to read Proust, so I'm not completely wiped out but neither am I at 100%.

I'm supposed to read over a draft novel by someone from writers' group--what I've read of it so far is really good, so I'm excited and will start that after I watch kidlets tomorrow. I'm also glad to have the whole novel to read in one go--I feel like one necessary limitation of any writers' group is that there's no practical way to have people read an entire book. So you're stuck with a fragment, which may or may not be the first chapter. That can be OK: I started this thing on, I think, chapter 17, and I could tell that it was very good; likewise it only took one chapter for me to see that other books had big problems. But I think in terms of giving more-detailed feedback to the writer, as well as catching things like repetitions or characters who appear without having been introduced, it's really helpful to have the whole thing.

And my sister suggested that if I get stuck editing Trust, then maybe I should start writing Trials. I'm not sure if this is good advice or not--it may be a bit like the French distracting themselves from that horrible war in Algeria by turning their attention to Vietnam. On the other hand, if the problem is that I am simply too familiar with the material at this point (and that certainly happens--I like to let things lie fallow for a while so that I can look at them with fresh eyes), this could be very helpful. And perhaps writing Trials will be such a, um, trial that I will happily return to Trust!