Approaching third rewrite of Chapter -6- of Ghoul World tomorrow. Finished rewrite of Chapter -5- today. I hope I can do this a chapter per work day and finish in a month and a half. Probably,if experience is any indicator, I'm looking at six months. I realize all this is very boring to report. Don't go to sleep.
I'm struggling, this morning, with the mild dizziness that often plagues me all morning long. It clears up in the afternoon... most of the time. By the time it clears, I'm ready for my afternoon nap. Writing into and through the dizziness is difficult. The sense of the affect of my writing escapes me.
Will
take off on Wednesday when Mertie and I will celebrate our glass
[crystal, paper] wedding anniversary. Every anniversary with my lovely
wife sets a new record for marital longevity for me. September 2nd is also my granddaughter Shelby's birthday.
Didn't sleep well last night but hammered out the 3rd rewrite of Chapter -2- of Ghoul World today, this morning. That's all this dude has to report. About time for my walk in hazy Vancouver, surrounded by discouraging PNW fires. Tomorrow, at seven pm, as I've pointed out numerous times, I'll be the featured poet at Barnes and Noble in Vancouver. Looking forward to it. Nice of Rainy Knight and David Hill to invite me.
Got a nice rejection letter for a short story I submitted to a contest. Invited to submit again. Was it just a polite form letter or a special sort of rejection letter that was a real invite? Monetary concerns twist and distort all communications. I know the story is well done. I've worked it over a couple of dozen of times over the past decade. All I see nowadays in it are small quibbles with my language that aren't strong enough to change. They're the sort of quibbles that can go back and forth, endlessly.
Just finished my walk. 85 degrees outside. Tomorrow, back into the 90s. Spent between 4 and 4 1/2 hours, as promised to myself, sending off 4 queries to agents this morning. Three went out for Programming Frank Singletary and one went out for Ghoul World. Even as I rewrite Ghoul World for the third time, I intend to send out the second version. It's good enough to go as is, I think, but another rewrite won't hurt. If someone likes the current version, that's all to the good. As a younger writer, I don't think I'd do it this way, but my age rushes me a bit.
Part of my walk, as usual, was through an expensive neighborhood to the north. I look at those homes and would like to see us in one of the smaller, one story homes there [$500,000]. Of course, she might reject such a move, being the woman she is. When I was young, and city neighborhoods were Pete Seeger ticky-tack in my head, I could not entertain such an ambition. I was full of hate for the middle class, but my hate turned out to be my hate for my bourgeois self that I feared made me very ordinary and unable to achieve success in the creative world. Now, here I am, 77, and still striving. Speaking of success, my wife and I took along audio books to listen to during our drive to Yellowstone. We listened to a mystery by a woman author who shall go nameless. Not a name I recognized, but my wife has read other of her books. The writer was making stylistic "errors" that I've been upset at myself for making, yet, there her work was, on an audio tape. The story line was intriguing. I feel that Ghoul World has a solid story line. We'll see.
Four am on a sleepless morning, Still kicked back and not writing on a self-imposed vacation. Went to Yellowstone with my wife where I found the altitude exhausted me from time to time. I appreciate all of you who continue to check in to see if my goal—to get someone other than myself to publish one of my novels—has been accomplished. I'm still looking for an ambitious agent and struggling occasionally with the idea that my goal is a futile one for someone of my age. Anyhow, my goal for this coming Monday is to query more agents and, on Tuesday, to begin rewrite of my sci-fi novel, Ghoul World. Am contemplating taking a course at the Northwest Film Center in script writing. Maybe I could find a young gun to co-write the script with me. Or not. Other than that, I will be the featured poet this August 25th at Barnes & Noble in Vancouver. Stop by, buy a book, any book, at B&N.
Approaching third rewrite of Chapter -6- of Ghoul World tomorrow. Finished rewrite of Chapter -5- today. I hope I can do this a chapter per work day and finish in a month and a half. Probably,if experience is any indicator, I'm looking at six months. I realize all this is very boring to report. Don't go to sleep. 
