MYNA BIRD BEATNIK

Eighty-six people checked in so time for another entry. I sent off a short story ms to a prestigious competition. I believe I have no chance. A name writer will have the best chance. The press will want to make money on their publication. A name draw will do that. Still, I had fun putting the ms together—stories written in many styles over the years. In truth, I think I've been a myna bird kind of writer. A copycat of styles. I read something and a story pops into mind in that writer's voice. The stories in the ms represent Hammett, Allen [Woody], Carver, Hemingway, Salinger... at least that many voices. Maybe Dickens in spots. I don't seem to have developed a voice of my own. Maybe I'm just an inauthentic character in someone's novel without a voice of my own.

At SIU during my first stab at a Masters In English, a fellow TA [Terry Brown] asked me to type up a ms for him, a paper he wrote on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I couldn't help myself and began to imitate Swift's style, altering the style of my friend's paper quite a bit. He couldn't believe I'd done such a thing. Looking back, I can't believe I did it either.

I've written 17 stories in the past two months. Reading Carver set them off. Him being a recovered alcoholic might have something to do with my sounding like him and their themes being similar. I seem to be happiest when I'm writing or when I'm in my wife's company. 

LOTS OF WORK, LOTS AND LOTS

Jeez, Louise, 82 people looked in this morning. Thank you folks. Been awhile, I know, but I've been hard at work. Spent three days straightening out the file cards I keep on all my poetry. Things were in a mess, and I found I was sending out poems I'd self-published in my two poetry books, Gray House By Cold Mountain and Tenderfoot [available Amazon or AuthorHouse]. That's a no-no in the publishing world, even though the readership of those books is extremely small.

Just finished a few minutes ago writing another short story I love to pieces called "Lennie". I'm also rewriting the poetry ms about my prostate cancer, You Wake One Morning, Remembering. I'm altering it from second person singular to first person and it will have a new undecided title. The reason I began it second person was some sort of shame or shyness about using first person. Don't ask me why. I don't understand it myself. After all, it's my cancer, my dealing with it, the humor I find in my dealing with it. In fact, I wonder if it's not too humorous in places while in other places showing too much self-pity. It's a complicated book, unlike any other cancer poetry I've read. Lot's of references to movies and personalities in the news of my days.