Writing binge

I'm on a writing binge, which is quite rare to me. Once I started working on my mainstream novel about the comic artist I've been at it for hours every day (except for the weekend). It's suddenly bursting with drama and action and larger-than-life feelings and I'm thinking I could get it to end pretty quickly - at least before the end of the summer.

There's just one thing - the main man is turning out more unpleasant than I first imagined. The same with one of the leading women. I can't stop it - they just go that way. I read from Nick Hornsby's interview that there's no way you can say that your characters just are that way - Hornsby said that everything comes from the author's head. But for some reason it just happens. I'm a bit afraid that someone might say that the woman character I'm talking about shows misogyny or male chauvinism, and I think I must do something about it. But maybe I'll just write the stuff and see about it later.

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Listening to Big Star's 1# Record/Radio City which is great harmonic, yet brittle pop from the seventies.

Reading The Dead Stay Dumb by James Hadley Chase. The Finnish translation has one of the most awful covers I've ever seen - I'll post it here later. It's an early Chase, from 1939, and while it's pretty wild, it's also somewhat moronic. There's no real plot, no real characters - all the killings and counterfeits just happen almost out of nowhere. Maybe it's surrealism. (I know that the French are enthusiastic for Chase.)