THE SILENT BOOMER KEEPS ON KEEPING ON...LEARNING

Delinquent Lives is an odd cuss. It was my 1980 thesis for a Masters Degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, typewritten in triplicate with carbons. I was fortunate to have Patrick McManus sit in on that master's defense. I think he liked the novel because he asked John Keeble, in my hearing, if Eastern kept an agent on call for writers. McManus, of course, has forgotten me, and why shouldn't he? I've gone on to ignominious silence since that day in 1980, decades ago when he graced my master's defense. 

Patrick McManus from Celebpictu.com.

Ignominious silence? The publishing of creative writing is so much changed, one hardly knows where to begin. How I'm ever going to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine before I become senile is a challenge not faced by anyone since the days when  Shakespeare needed a Queen Elizabeth to fund the production of his plays, but that's not my topic today. I mean to talk about learning about writing...even at my advanced age.

Briefly, Delinquent Lives is told through two limited points of view...one an adult male, the other a young "emotionally disturbed" teen. The married adult male has taken a lover. She is always in his thoughts. He talks to her constantly. 

Over the first 80 pages I've struggled to separate his normal thoughts from those moments when he's talking to "Mona" (that's the lover) in his thoughts. Then I realized I'd prided myself on making the mental gymnastics cleverly obscure...you know...artsy-fartsy? 

This morning, I rolled back to that first time in the novel when my anti-hero is talking in his thoughts with Mona and entered the following passage: "Paul had conjured Mona. He often did. It wasn’t unusual for her to be there in his head, near consciousness, listening to his thoughts. He was always talking to Mona. He told her just about everything." 

From now on, when those quotes show up amidst Paul's thoughts, I'll be able to make a quick reference to his lover that explains for the reader what the hell is going on. What idiot convinced me that obscurity was the key to writing good fiction? Kafka, you bastard!