SILENT BEATNICK BOOMER ON THE ROAD

I've let this blog get behind times. Currently wife and I are in Spokane for a housewarming for my youngest son's new home he just bought along the Spokane River. This evening, we ate falafel sandwiches at Azar's on Monroe with Jeff, Mertie's brother, and caught up on his work adventures. On the drive over, several new plot twists came to mind for the current novel. If I can pull this off and complete it, I believe it will be the most interesting of novels. Will not be writing on the novel for a few days. Very hard to keep creative focus and energy when I'm on the road, driving around and visiting. Calling the novel, Manning, as working title, but feel that must change eventually and turn into a more intriguing title. This is current opening for Manning:

COSTAL FISHING VILLAGE, SOUTHEAST ASIA

Fisherman Qwan Bak Ti catches his breath in his sleep then abruptly sits up. His eyes open. In the darkness, Ti Qwan places a small, work-calloused hand, missing two fingers, to his chest and finds no heartbeat under the deteriorating skin. The sleep of three days is over. He has awakened from the last sleep he will ever awaken from. Sorrow overwhelms the fisherman. Tears roll down his cheeks, but he smothers his sobs in his hands. He does not wish to awaken his wife who snores quietly beside him on the sleeping mat they have shared for three decades. Ti Qwan arises from the mat and ghosts through the mosquito netting that covers it.

SILENT BOOMER BOOMING ALONG QUITE NICELY

I've been writing non-stop on the new novel. I pull my smoking keyboard to the side of the road in late afternoon to take my hour walk...in time, also, to do my cooking chores unless it's a morning crock pot preparation. I'm continually asking my working wife to have pity on the poor writer and his creative burden. When I awake, I don't even want to take time to eat or shave. I've completed 27 pages, but I see far ahead into the many possible ways this book can go. I continually adjust the characters and plot roots. One flesh and blood character has turned into a robot. I continually go over the same pages to adjust for my changing visions. The place and circumstances of the novel are so real to me I find myself putting too much detail in, and I want to keep the reader hoping along. It's best to salt the action with details rather than pour them over it. I've also written two possible openings or one may follow the other. 

It's all pretty exciting. Angie's Choice felt exciting years ago when I wrote it. Speaking of Angie's Choice, another agent rejection came in: 

Hi, George,
Thank you for your query. While your project certainly has merit, I'm going to pass. As I'm sure you know, it's important that your agent be totally excited by/committed to/passionate about your project, and I'm afraid that just didn't happen here. But opinions vary considerably in this business, and mine is just one. I'm sure you'll find others who feel differently. I hope so! I wish you the very best in your search for representation. 

Warm regards, Laney Katz Becker, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin

Agents are always kind. It could be worse, you know? They could send a photo of an agent gagging on the novel. On the more positive side, I've been asked to read a poem at the Peace and Justice Action Fair in Vancouver on the 7th of September, and another poem of mine will be hung with a piece of someone else's art at the Gallery360 Art Meets Literature Show. Theme was inspiration. Another poem or two may soon find a home, and it sounds as if someone will write a feature article about this poet for the Vancouver Vector. If that happens as expected, I'll include more details later...names and etcetera. You can always find my work at Amazon or Author House if you've a mind to. Thanks for reading.

SILENT BEATNICK BOOMER DOING THE SPLITS

character role

Well pucker my mouth with a pickle and blow me over with a hair dryer, Gertrude, I've solved the problem of what to do next. I'm working on two novels simultaneously. I'm well into a new novel about Neanderthals, aliens and necrotizing viscusitis...yep, that's what he said...necrotizing viscusitis! Second, heeding my wife's recommendation, I'm slowly typing the first novel I ever wrote into editable files, saving about 900 dollars by doing so and cleaning up a pile of sophomoric errors...such as... "I took my bosses wife out to dinner." I said sophomoric errors. I meant it! By keeping both projects in the fire, I don't have that nagging feeling I'm leave something good to languish while I concentrate on something just as good. 

Also taking what Vonnegut and Asimov have remarked about novel writing. I'm dealing with a whole new set of questions like...is this scene and character interesting, will the reader like this character and stay with him or her through the novel? Is this interesting reading? Does this scene hold the attention? That's what I'm doing, trying to write an interesting  rather than a story for the ages. I mean it when I say I want to get someone other than myself to publish a book I've written. I think I'm walking on a path to that result, and, hot doggie, my feet aren't even tired yet.

SILENT BOOMER'S BEAT BATTLES WITH GREATNESS

Who's work? Googled "Asimov photo" to get it?

 "My novels are going to be interesting and are going to sell and be famous. What's the use of writing books unless you sell them and become well-known? I don't want just some old professors to know me. It's got to be everybody." —Arcadia Durell in Second Foundation (1953) by Asimov

"I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics? Well, they can do whatever they wish."  Isaac Asimov as himself

When I read Asimov's sentiments, I smile. He had confidence. I have had none and questioned myself mercilessly, plus I wanted to be a GREAT artist. In that statement, my doom is revealed. Being merely financially successful was beneath me. A young writer can read all these statements by successful authors he wants to, but reading about confidence doesn't supply it. In a cowardly writer, they actually increase internal conflict. He hides behind his thoughts of GREATNESS and, thus, doesn't challenge himself to test of the marketplace. 

As I pursue my goal, a critical alteration is developing in my own psyche. For the first time in my life, at age 75, I accept I'm a writer, a personal realization of interest only to me. I find as I pursue this new novel (tentatively called, Charley Manning) that I can still learn about writing, and I see that I'm capable of writing an interesting, popular book, but Chronos has me against the ropes and is battering me mercilessly. I think I can do it, but do I have the time?

DETECTIVE CHARLEY MANNING COMES ALIVE

Yesterday at Torque, drinking skinny hazelnut latte, I was anticipating next issue of Vancouver Vector, thinking 'bout what happens next in my campaign to get someone other than myself to publish one of my already completed novels.

Day before that sent query letters to agents for Angie's Choice. Plan two queries to publishers. Other than that, what next?

My wife again put her two cents in, praising The Man In The Mirror—my first novel—as interesting and suspenseful, and her being a mystery reader, I'm tending to heed her words. However, getting that novel into file form's daunting. Typewritten ms is yellowed and ink has seeped into the paper, blurring the letters. Optical character recognition (OCR) software doesn't work. I've tried my own OCR and had Office Max try theirs. Checked into a typing service. Nine-hundred bucks to type the ms into editable files. I hear "edible" when my interior monologue says "editable". Does that mean I think that if I put that much money into editable files we won't be able to afford edible goods? 

I tell you...the new novel, the Detective Charley Manning tale, is rolling along quite nicely and, methinks, it's stolen my heart away. I was going to reveal the current opening paragraphs, but I'm suddenly experiencing proprietary twinges toward the ideas that drive the book. I smell publishing success in ways I've never in my long and harried writing life experienced it.

ANGIE'S CHOICE COMPLETED. ARKANSAS CHARLEY BEGINS???

Angie's Choice final rewrite done. Oh happy day! Gonna have my ever-reading wife peruse Chapter One to approve my additions to the dinner conversation. If I can catch her lively interest I know I'm good to go. Next decision? Got three novels to rewrite, specifically, Delinquent Lives, perhaps the more serious novel, or the one about the failed author turned porno writer who discovers that his fantasies direct his choices of women in real life, or I could continue the new novel I began yesterday which really excites me. Humn? Follow the excitement or do the serious novel? The new novel begins as per below:

Oh happy day!

"Arkansas Charley dragged smoke from a Pall Mall deeply into his lungs and peered down at the telltale wisp of smoke that leaked between the second and third buttons of his wrinkled Paisley shirt. Shaking his head morosely, he plucked two wrinkled tidbits of flesh from his left wrist where the metal watch band had gouged under the skin. Carefully, he balanced the tiny fragments of himself on the shaky tip of his middle finger and held them to the sunlight that streamed remorselessly through McDonald’s front window. To someone watching, Charley appeared to be giving a finger to the sun.

"The fleshy remains of himself on his finger tip were another sign of the inevitable decline all flesh was heir to. Down into the bone of himself, Charley knew and accepted that in a decade or so, give or take a couple of years, he would be nothing but a hank of hair and a piece of bone. Like all of animalkind, except for those beasts slaughtered young and rendered up for the tables of the globe, he would grow steadily worse until his decaying body could no longer support the thoughts and feelings, the actions that all humans called life. For now, he sighed to himself, he would have to give up wearing watches."

POST PARTUM HURRAH...almost

I do affirm and attest that yesterday, at or around the time of 14:30 Pacific Time (daylight savings) said author, George T. Thomas, heretofore known as The Silent Boomer, in a Starbucks beside Mill Plain Blvd. in the City of Vancouver in the State of Washington did complete, wrap up and, for all intents and purposes, put the quietus to a final rewrite of his novel, Angie's Choice, when said author completed work on said book's final chapter, Chapter Twenty-Two. Said author also reported extreme relief and attacks of "what do I do now?" Further, said author reported he is "put out" that due to certain past incidences of EEM (i.e. extreme exuberation malfunction) he may no longer pop a champagne cork and celebrate as he once did in the distant days of his inglorious past.

It should be noted that said author also reports a contradiction, in that said novel, though finished, is not finished? Said author said he may invent an entirely new discussion in Chapter One of Angie's Choice in which the two couples talk about "Boomer stuff" rather than have a conversation about old time radio advertizing jingles as is now the case in said novel, he said. The said author further stipulates he believes the reader must be drawn closer to his four characters (Angie and Curtis Davis and Larry and Marcia Chadwick) as they sit chatting around a table cloth covered table at a restaurant dinner, so that said reader will be drawn to follow said couples deeper into the novel and care more about the horrific things that happen to said couples when they become the said hostages of said two paramilitary killers are even more affecting, he said. The author further said, with a shrug of his shoulders and a sad look on his features that he's having fourth thoughts about the book's title and the said use of the word "said", he said in my article about his said project.

report submitted by Sad Sadie Said, Turkish folk singer