SILENT BOOMER IS IGNORED BY A HERON

Today has been a creative bust. Couldn't get my wangbanger fired up. Sat at keyboard, wearing my backside flat, trying to connect with my characters. They weren't speaking to me or to one another. I decided to change my venue and drove into downtown Vancouver to Torque coffee shop and looked for my characters there. They'd been there, I was told, but left just a minute before I arrived. Did find a huge crowd lined up to eat free bowls at The Mighty Bowl, a traveling food truck which was celebrating one year of a solidly successful existence. Through the week, the Bowl changes locations, and Thursdays it parks at the Torque. The line ran 40 people long and still going after an hour and a half. I couldn't imagine how a truck that small carried enough food to serve all the patrons who showed up. Actually, I couldn't imagine much of anything. 

Cursing my muse, I left Torque to walk by the mighty Columbia River where I met an aloof Gray Heron upon a rock. "What's the haps," I asked, but he sat upon a gray rock that set off his feathers quite nicely and gave me the bird. He was writing haiku most likely. About grayness or ambiguity or Mark Twain on the Mississippi. As for me, I had to be satisfied with a purloined thought...the one about tomorrow being another day.

SILENT BOOMER AT THE RED AND BLACK CAFE

Scenes from Red and Black Cafe

My cold's a thing of the past. Boring and repetitious as this news may be—I'm far into Chapter Twelve of the rewrite of Angie's Choice. This morning, I returned to a far flung planet in the Portland Galaxy to do the rewriting. Wife and I discovered the cafe on Sunday when we went looking for a vegan restaurant. I can't afford to cross the river very many days to work in The Red and Black Cafe, but I'll sure try to do it on occasion because of its purposes and its ambiance. It's a co-operative place, and it's owner/workers are members of the International Workers of the World (IWW). It's a few blocks south of Three Friends Coffee House which I've mentioned in the past. 

Last week the news was happily mixed as follows:

Thank you for querying BookEnds and giving me a chance to read your work. After giving careful consideration to your query, I'm afraid that it's not quite the right fit for our Agency. As you know, the publishing industry is very subjective. I evaluate queries based on my own interests—and the interests of the agents I work for—and what our agency is currently looking to acquire. Just because I didn't fall in love with your query doesn't mean that another agent or publisher won't. Keep writing, revising, and querying. Good luck! Best, Beth Campbell Literary Assistant  BookEnds, LLC. 

and

Hi George,
We'll publish your piece 6/24.
Keep up the good work!
team WORK

WORK LITERARY MAGAZINE:
You can read my work-related poem on that site.



Does anyone think my strategy of sharing rejections on this blog will be detrimental to my plan to get someone other than myself to publish one of my four novels? I do invite agents to read this blog occasionally.

SILENT BOOMER, SONS EAT BREAKFAST IN LONG BEACH

My youngest son, Patrick (right), visits next week. He teaches physical education in Spokane and occasionally takes a continuing education workshop in Portland. A creative type too, he has put together improv troupes in Spokane and Bremerton for many years. He's currently forming another group in Spokane. They'll perform out of the Blue Door Theater most likely.

Photo's from last summer at excellent 42nd Street Cafe in Long Beach, Wa. Older son, Sean (left), works in a creative field too. Has his own business in graphic design and now lives and works thru his midlife crisis out of a fifth wheeler on the road in partnership with his wife, Sheila. 

Still coughing thru the nite (even with cough suppressant). Baldness, bad cold, cough and cold meds don't create much but fevered flashes within my synaptic self. I'll restart rewrite of Angie's Choice on Monday I believe.

Found new place to eat vegan and think revolution. The Red and the Black Cafe in Portland. Co-op ownership and IWW Union shop. Couldn't ask for a more beat place. The food is great.  Once or twice I'll have to drive over there to write, see if it fires my flickering imagination. Maybe Tuesday when I go to Portland for the Humanist men's monthly lunch.

A BOOMER'S VIDEO CONTAINS A LITTLE WHITE LIE

Truth is, I actually found a tiny room inside day three of The Days of Dayquil and Runny Noses into which I squeezed my consciousness and a computer keyboard and did accomplish a bit of rewrite on Angie's Choice. That literary feat occurred when I slipped out of the clutches of Dayquil long enough to realize that the medication I was taking to kill off the cold symptoms was doing more to alter consciousness than the cold symptoms themselves. Despite cold symptoms, advancing age and the dark force of Dayquil itself, I'm part way into the rewrite of Chapter Eleven of Angie's Choice. Hurrah for the Silent Beat Boomer wherever he's disappeared to! 

To recap the last couple of busy months: beside the steady rewriting of Angie's Choice, I've had a couple of poems accepted into literary magazines, and I've entered two contests (one poetry and one short fiction) about which I'm awaiting results. I'm also anticipating  responses from two query letters to very intelligent and discerning literary agents. How can I lose? It's been a busy period, not counting that I finished my autographed copy of Richard Dawkin's The Greatest Show On Earth and a couple of chapbooks of poetry by Michael G. of Portland, some poetry by Gary Snyder and All Our Brownskinned Angels by Raul Sanchez. I intend to reread The Great Gatsby. Mertie and I watched the non-3D version of that new film last week. F. Scott was for the longest time my favorite writer, back when the world was young, full of champagne and I was too.

BEAT BOOMER SILENCED BY A COLD

Enjoy the thoughts of a frog. Somedays, these days, are not good days but bad days. The video speaks for itself. I shall return to writing this blog and rewriting my novel in a couple of days. Boring steady progress on the rewrite of Angie's Choice up till today and yesterday. Now ready to begin Chapter Eleven rewrite whenever that moment arrives. I am so much like my father in this video that I had to make sure that he, indeed, was dead. Checked out the obituary that his last wife sent to me. I think I do a pretty good imitation of an old guy who's uncertain about this video medium and his appearance on it. Bumbling, hesitant presentation at best.

LIVING! IT'S NOT ALL BREAD AND CIRCUSES

I'm well into Chapter Ten in rewrite of Angie's Choice. Next, I make myself vulnerable by sharing a secret. 

I've never been more content as a writer as I currently am. I've found a home in Vancouver, Washington with side trips to Portland included. This contentment comes after decades of second guessing myself and nasty run ins with the man I met every morning in the mirror. Part of this change in my psyche is that I no longer judge myself, my work or the work of others harshly. I fully enjoy attending readings and listening to what each writer has to say and the mingling afterwards. I feel the joy of being with other writers.

The bookish person I love & who loves me.

A large part of my contentment can be attributed to being in love, and the ability to accept that I'm loved in return. People often misjudge egocentric people like me with my three divorces. I'm sure some have thought I was incapable of love, but my experience is that I was not able to feel loved myself. Can you imagine how it feels when you imagine you aren't "good enough" to be worthy of love? Those doubts are born in the childhood experiences of many struggling people. What we become is not always a pretty picture.

I'll never forget a question my counselor asked near the end of the two years when I was in weekly counseling. He asked me if I thought that [name withheld to protect the innocent] loved me. I said, "Sure." Then he hit me between the eyes with the kicker question, "Yes, but do you feel that love?" I knew exactly what he meant and, at that moment, I experienced the big hole that had lived inside me for the greater part of my life. Getting to that moment is often frightening. It's no wonder many turn back before the moment arrives. The process toward wellness had commenced for me. It's only fully blossoming now, and I'm 75 years old, as you all know.

THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE POET

Making progress on rewrite of Angie's Choice. Deep into chapter nine after hangups in eighth. Entering a poem in a Gallery 360 art and poetry collaboration. Ten bucks entry fee, and if you're selected, you hang your poem upon the wall and offer it for sale among the fine arts.

Raul Sanchez and volunteer musicians

Was so inspired by the integrity and guts displayed at last night's Ghost Town open mic at Cover To Cover Books that I almost want to stop this novel rewrite and return immediately  to poetry. Raul Sanchez was the featured poet and his poems about his father and grandmother stimulated my imagination toward writing about my family relations which, however, would not be poetry of unconditional love as his were, but poems of confusion, ambiguity and ambivalence. As usual, perversity would be my muse, accompanied by self flagellation. 

Last night was one of the best open mic experiences I ever enjoyed. I also recall a Sunday night at Mootsy's in Spokane when my two sons were there, and I donned a ski mask and let rip a lengthy, hate-filled diatribe I call a poem. About that poem: I ripped off the final lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". You know...the finale that begins, "Weave a circle 'round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread?" My thievery so bothered me that I finally rewrote the ending not too long ago. 

Don't know how many times I've dashed back and forth between poetry and fiction. I have two writing degrees—poetry and fiction. I say these things, knowing full well that degrees mean absolutely nothing except that I was willing (or foolish enough) to throw away my money in hopes of landing a writer's in residence position at a university while trying to avoid a meetup with Mr. Manual Labor as long as I could afford to. Ah, the joys of entertaining the muse in your captain's quarters for a lifetime, eh, William Henley?

MEET ANGIE DAVIS, THE SILENT BOOMER'S HEROINE

I was thinking to myself that readers of this writer's blog, might like to meet my friend, Angie Davis, the heroine of Angie's Choice. Once readers meet her, I thought cleverly to myself, they might want to know more about her. This occurred to me after spending four hours Friday morning endlessly shifting around and rewriting the first eight paragraphs of Chapter Eight and asking myself why I was spending so much time rewriting and polishing.

"When her father died, she'd been in a transitory mood, tired of rootless living and wanting to understand how she could rejoin the human race and remain true to herself. She’d tried to give something of herself to her father, but he was beyond receiving, and when he died, she felt even more distant from the human race. Full of guilt, she had to acknowledge to herself that she was not sorry enough when he passed. Immediately after her father's death, she allowed herself a fling with a jazz-playing saxophonist, an Art somebody, but that ended quickly. Their late nights together in the small clubs and the impromptu jams into the early morning hours quickly wore her down. She knew, then, she'd come too far back to the daylight hours—those hours within which most people lived out their lives—to return to the chaotic life she'd lived in her twenties. After three more painfully drifting years, one more brief relationship and several jobs, she began seriously to consider the idea that a marriage might present a pathway back to normalcy. She had considered marriage only during the longest darkest wintery nights of despair, but that's when she met Curtis Davis." 

Sometime soon, I'll write about all the reasons a writer moves around paragraphs and endlessly rewrites them...maybe. It's actually a pretty subtle process. Some days I'm right on top of the subject, sometimes not.

SILENT BOOMER TAKES A LEFT UPPERCUT TO CHIN!

Thank you so much for your interest in Talcott Notch. While your project has much merit, I'm afraid I don't feel strongly enough to take it on in this tough marketplace. I wish you the best in placing it elsewhere.
Best, 
Paula Munier  Talcott Notch Literary Agency
 

Got photo at:

I always pay attention to a very interesting word in Paula's rejection letter. She writes, "I don't feel strongly enough...." From my own editing experience (and my reading in neuroscience), I assure myself that "feeling" is the only important element in every literary judgment. 

A guy like me (or a gal like Paula) reads something and likes it or not... period! Once the electrochemical computing system that runs the human body and is the human being has made that important feelingization (sic), it can generate an impressive set of  rationalizations for why I felt as it did or it felt as I did.

Of course, my feelings about each piece of writing I looked at when I edited Willow Springs, George & Mertie's Place or Heliotrope were informed by decades of reading the very best and the very worst of literature, and Paula's are based on, she hopes, what might be popular, and, later, the books that last will be the combined feelings of agents, publishers, scholars and readers...Dickens, James Joyce or Tolkien.

That's the situation as I feel it. Feelings are what motivates an agent and an editor, and the feelings of readers make a book a best seller. Feelings made a very poorly written book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" a powerful tool in the anti-slavery movement that led to the American Civil War. Feelings!

It's the same old story,

A fight for love and glory,

A case of do or die,

The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

GROGGY BEAT BOOMER MISTAKES AND MIRROR LAKE

Always something else troubling my publication plan. Today, I woke groggy, tried to rewrite for three hours before I fully awakened, and I have a terrible pain in my right side under the rib cage distracting me. Doctor's appointment Wednesday. Every mysterious pain is always cancer in my imagination. 

Found myself so groggy I mixed up characters again. Called Larry, Curtis and Curtis, Larry. Silly slips, but serious enough to make me wonder about the first six chapters. I fear I'll have to work so meticulously slow, I'll be 105 before I finish the final rewrite of Angie's Choice. 

The video is from yesterday, Sunday, when wife and I hiked up to Mirror Lake. Watch it all the way through. A lovely surprise at the end. The still photo is of several members of the crew that founded Willow Springs at Eastern Washington University. We were gathered for our annual softball game on a wheat ranch near Oakesdale, Washington owned by Carole Mills's parents. She was an early supporter. 
Carole Mills, a wise and perceptive woman, and I once discussed why no sparks ever flew between us. For her part, she said she had "no desire to stick my hand into a meat grinder." Ouch! 

After we graduated, Bill "William" O'Daly took over as managing editor and brought the magazine along, out of the farm country feel of hippies into the glossy world of the university literary magazine.