First Word: Mary Judith Ress: Dishrag

How about wet rag, or wet towel?  A real downer of a presence.  The one who always cay bashes every idea, every plan, who spoils every party with a dose of reality.  The spoilers of the world.  How to deal with them? Can we ever make them content with their life, their Karma? Probably not.
            How to include them in a novel?  They always show up to spoil the plot, mar the goodness and sparkle of the protagonist by bringing out the worst side of everything and everybody.
            I suspect these poor slobs carry humanity´s collective shadow. So they can´t be dismissed.  Actually, they need to be engaged, analyzed, written about with honesty, even with kindness.  Digging deep into their motivations, their infant traumas, their sorrows and trials might even make us love them, might be the stuff of which we too are made of.  Which is why that novel is probably an autobiography and why the author is woven forever into the sinews of the protagonist.