I CAN SEE IT JUST AHEAD, ON THE ROAD

This is even a shorter blog entry than the last one. Today, a month after beginning the final polishing rewrite of Ghoul World, I crossed the halfway line. So, I'll need at least two month rather than the one I had hoped. Still? Almost there. Then begins the search for an agent. Do any of their species still live on Planet Earth?

SHORT ONE WHILE I CATCH MY BEATNIKING BREATH

Got photo here!

I'm falling behind in these entries, but the final rewrite is taking a longer time than I expected. Has it been 3 or 4 weeks, and I'm only on page 152? If 3 weeks have passed that's less than 50 pages a week. Or less. However, I'm still very pleased with how well the novel reads. It appears to be a very publishable novel. So, I'm halfway to my goal of getting someone other than myself to publish a book of mine. It's an interesting novel and it makes room for lots of sequels... probably one of the prerequisites for publishing these days. Now, a lady has sat herself down next to me at Barnes & Noble to talk on her phone at the counter where I'm working on this blog entry. So I'm done and out of here. Off to my walk at the Vancouver Mall. It's raining, you see. On and off.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RUTH. REWRITE CONTINUES APACE.

This will be short. I must tell you that another great issue of FOURBYTWO has come to me. [The picture is of an older issue.] This time, the magazine opens up like an accordion. The poetry is entertaining, as always. Anymore, all I ask of poetry is that it be entertaining and not too hard to understand. You see, when I read a poem by someone several decades younger than myself, and the poem references a word or a situation that is very modern, I don't always get it, and I'm too old and busy, anymore, to do the literary research necessary to understand a difficult allusion. If I were a teacher of poetry, I'd responsibly do the hard work to understand and teach the poem, but I'm not. I'm only a retired machinist who, for some reason, got an MFA along the way. Many times, I'm pretty thick when it comes to references to modern political, literary and civic situations beyond my time, outside of the material I learned in two graduate programs.  

Last thing in this belated blog is to say I'm only on page 81, ready to enter Chapter 13, in the final rewrite of Ghoul World. Took four days off—two travel and two visiting—to attend a birthday party in Spokane for a dear friend of my wife and myself. Travel discombobulates my psyche. I feel lost when I return home. Restarting this morning was extremely difficult. Cost me two hours to get a couple of paragraphs done, then the writing continued smoothly for awhile. A total of, maybe, five pages completed, although I added several paragraphs of new material. At this pace, the rewrite will take much longer than I planned.

BEATNICKING MY WAY THROUGH THE FINAL REWRITE

Scandinavians are happy. Me too!

Today, I reworked the first 27 pages of Ghoul World, aka the Manning novel, smoothing out the rough patches and making consistent the cultural effects and the feel of this futuristic work. The book reads pretty damn good. My wife finished reading it last week and was pleased with it. When I suggested she's biased and might lie to me about the novel, she tells me, "I don't like your novel, The Porno Writer." Well, that's true enough, even though I plan to rework it next................ I think. She found no major plotting errors. That was a great relief to me. 

I spent only two days going through the entire novel and correcting all the grammatical and logical errors that Mertie red penciled for me as she read it. Thanks to her for that read through very much. If all continues as today did, the rewrite ought to be done in no more than a month. Maybe two. Once I get 1/2 way through, I'll start sending it out to agents. That first submission is going to be nerve wracking. I'm expecting this to be published, a movie even, but what writer doesn't feel that way?

I'm specially happy with how the novel ended. I wasn't certain until the very end how it was going to feel, and as the final two chapters flowed out on the computer screen, I was as excited by how it looked and felt as if I was a new reader, rather than the author who slogged away at it for two plus years.

I'VE GOT AN ACCORDIAN IN MY HANDS ... IT PLAYS ITSELF

I've got the latest FOURBYTWO in my grubby little hands, and it's designed anew again, by gosh and by gum and by Jeremy Gaulke. I've had it for a week about. This time it opens out like an accordion with the front and back covers as separate ends. Is it musical? Yes, and cryptic too, the songs. I can't say too much as I'm drained from fighting county hall commissioners who show up in priestly robes occasionally to drop their version of their God upon our skeptical and doubting heads and molest our blithe spirit with their Teapublican rue. 

Don't ask me why!

Maybe I'm just vulnerable, but Sandra Beasley's poem, "The Hotel Devotion", snuck right in between a couple of my ribs and found my heart [the seat of all poetical emotions]. It's too long to show here, so, this time, you gotta buy and read it. Klipschutz is inside too, nailing all the sidewalls up tight so the ocean won't drown you. I've got to go to the dentist now. I'm including a poetry review of FourByTwo from another source. See here!