GABBY HAYES: A CREDIT TO HIS LANGUAGE

Still working on Chapter 26 of Manning novel, but when that's finished, Chapter 27 is already completed. Before I move on to Chapter (or segment) 28, I'll capsulize those two chapters, and when I capsulize segments of my work for outline, I always feel completed, the sense of something accomplished. 

Found photo here:

Wow! You heard me. Wow! Sixty-six degrees today for my afternoon walk. The first day of sunny Spring, I calculate, because the breeze carried no chill with it. First time for that since last Fall. What a wonderful walk. Trees budding their angry red penes, and pink and white flowers on other trees.

Gabby Hayes

Now, dadblast* it, I still have to leave the house and go to Costco. Old age attack. I meant to go to Costco after my daily walk, before I came home from Black Rock where I spent several hours writing this morning, but I was daydreaming all the way home about this marvelous Spring day. 

*Thanks to Gabby Hayes for the friendly curse word. Also dad-gum, gol-durn and shucks. Or must we credit the cowardly, tail-wringing Lion in The Wizard of Oz for shucks? Or will just any old super-religious person in the past do?

SILENT BOOMER AS BAIT FOR ZOMBIE ATTACKS

the open bay (trap) door

I sit in the spacious concrete cavern of Torque Coffee in downtown Vancouver, Washington (not B.C., Canada). We await the next  attack of the undead. The bay door is thrown open to a sunny day, inviting wandering zombies to enter. I sit in plain sight of the bay door as bait. It's an ambush. Across the street, the shell of the local Hilton stands empty, all its personnel zombieized by earlier forays. Bellhops in their bellhop caps make comical zombies, if you can imagine. Remember that bellhop who used to call for "Phillip Morris"? Imagine him as a zombie.

Before I slipped from my home office this morning, I put one last spit and polish to yesterday's rewrite of Chapter Nineteen of Angie's Choice. I planned to begin rewrite of Chapter Twenty at Torque, but (stupid me) I forgot to download that ms with its alterations onto my thumb drive. I can't get more work done today. Oh, I suppose I could work on Chapter Twenty here and save the ms under a different file name, then interweave the two versions by cutting and pasting to the latest ms that sits on the desktop of my desktop computer at home. Trouble is I'd risk erasing valuable changes I made this morning. 

This old Silent Boomer is not immune from making mistakes while transferring data from thumb drive to computers, ms to ms, and vice versa. It's too risky for a hard of hearing old man with poop-stained underwear (an easy target even for stumbling zombies with poop-stained underwear themselves) to accomplish without an occasional error or four. So I'll wait. I've made sufficient progress the past two weeks. Time to relax and enjoy a zombie attack or two.

THE SILENT BOOMER'S BEAT RACE AT UPSNDOWNS

How do I write this without my egocentric backside showing? Today I ran a race at Upsndowns. 

Our local newspaper supports a feature called "Everybody Has a Story". It invites readers to send in tales from their lives. I've sent in two and both, though recognized as talented writing, have been rejected. The first was the
reflections of a movie buff, my slow evolution as I gave up American films in the early 1960s and moved on to foreign films. The piece ended with a plug for our local art house, the Kiggins. The newsman in charge of the "Story" feature at the Columbian didn't recognize it as lowbrow enough for the readers of the Columbian. Movies... what average Joe cares about movies? He didn't put it in those terms, but it's what he communicated. The subject matter was too sophisticated for Vancouver.

Minutes ago the editor in charge of "Story" rejected, via email, the second tale about my life through my divorces, practice dating and counseling to find the current happiness I enjoy with my dearest wife. A true story, the editor, bless his heart, recognized its "worthwhile message", BUT he thought it was too shocking for the Victorian morals of the Columbian readership, though he didn't use those terms. He could be right. A passel of people live in Vancouver, Washington (not to be confused with the urbane Vancouver B.C.) who think in 19th Century terms. Okay, I get it, everybody has a story but mine are too polished. Perhaps I must lower my jib and tackle my spinnaker. Okay...whatever...I'm not a sailor.

I think old age has set in. Rejections are a part of submitting works to strangers and for decades I've lived with them, but the fact that I'm 75 going on death must be putting a hitch in my normally smooth get-a-long. BUT...here's the Ups in Upsndowns. Withing minutes—MINUTES—of firing off two ill-considered emails to the Columbian, I got an email response from a senior publication expressing interest in my query about doing some writing for them. They wanted my blog address (this one) and a writing sample. I attached my humorous essay aimed at seniors, called "Exercise and Cabbage Heads". For all I know he's reading this entry right now.

Ups and Downs, everyone!

NO J.K. ROWLING, THIS SILENT BOOMER, BUT...OKAY!

It's Friday. Making progress this week toward my goal. Continued with the rewrite of Delinquent Lives, sent off inquiry to agent for Angie's Choice, participated happily in the Write To Publish meet up on Wednesday afternoon and attended the Ghost Town Poetry open mic on Thursday night, hosted by Cover To Cover Books and Chris Luna where I read two poems, one recently written and the 2nd scrubbed up from a series I wrote while living on the scabland outside of Cheney at The Hermitage. Some very interesting and entertaining poets there of all ages.

My Hermitage

At age 75, I'm feeling more comfortable about writing prose and reading aloud at open mics than at any time in my past. Finally, I accept I'm a good enough writer to be published, but the question of this blog is will that happen? If some of my efforts do end up, as is my goal, at a publishing house other than a self-publishing venture, the end result might be very interesting, but I'm remembering to enjoy the process rather than anticipate the end. 

No doubt what I'm writing will never be another Harry Potter series, but I'll settle for a smaller audience, and I don't have to become a millionaire, though it would be nice if I could send some additional money off to charity as J. K. Rowling has done. Should I promise, right here, that 10% of any profits I might make will go to a charity? 
                                    
The people at the Write To Publish were very accepting and positive about my novel, and I took all comments to heart and gave them considerable attention when I got home. As I said earlier, I've made several very acceptable major alterations in Delinquent Lives for the sake of clarity. Smart thinking about structure and style is everything I can hope for from participating with fellow writers in a workshop. Thank you, Linda Triling.

                                                                                     

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE, OLD DOG

I've had 11 years of editing and/or publishing literary magazines and microzines. I've had the yeah or nay over the works of some very fine writers in my time, yet I've s

Our microzine. This issue on orange paper.

till managed to learn a thing or two from my recent attendance at two writer groups. As you know, I recently translated a novel from mss to editable files. My goal, of course, is to entirely rewrite the novel, Delinquent Lives, and put it on Amazon as an ebook...if I don't land an agent.

When the Coffee House Writers Group [chwg] looked at the novel, several readers were bothered by a lack of clarity in the way I switched between the points of view of two characters which, actually, continues throughout the entire work. At first, I was too enamored at the clever way I was integrating the personalities of the two characters whose points of view dominate the novel, but I took my reader's advisement under consideration, and this morning I rewrote several sections to clarify the characters in relation to one another, and I'm damned happy with the result.

In the other group, SW WA/OR Write To Publish, they live by a silly rule about using the word "it". Can cost a man a quarter if he uses "it". I always think of bringing the opening of The Sound and The Fury to such a class and presenting it as my own work just to see how the rule makers would deal with Faulkner's writing. However, this morning as I sat down to my writing and began to look at the "it"s liberally sprinkled throughout my text, I began to eliminate some of them and to find other ways of expressing the pronouns. Imagine my pleasure to find I liked the changes. The changes added clarity and precision to the novel.I'll continue in that way from now on.

So...as you see, even a 75 year old writer with much experience can learn if he listens.

3 AM IN THE DARKEST PART OF THE SOUL

Fitzgerald photo from NYTimes

It's midnight as I shut down the process of translating the second novel I ever wrote from typed pages to editable computer files. Only 70 more pages to go of 606 pages. "It's always three am in the darkest part of the soul." That's what F. Scott wrote in his autobiographical collection, The Crack Up. 

I used to feel like that all the time. It's an alcoholic's thing, but I'm free of that for a long time, but I'm amused by my continued striving to "make it" with my writing. At age 75, it's kind of silly, but...what?...I'm not alone in this striving? What writer stops before he drops dead or his mind gives out...if...he hasn't won any recognition? I mean, if he's seriously got the writing bug, if it's something he does almost in his sleep? The few times I stopped writing creatively, I went on letter writing binges and email bombastic adventures or filled journals. If I took all the hours I've sat with pencil and paper, or before a typewriter and, finally, a computer keyboard, I'd pretty near have an additional life...well...a short life, but at least a life of some kind, different from sitting down expressing thoughts and feelings that no one might ever read.

Jung wrote that a "man" was supposed to spend the first half or his life achieving his professional successes and the second half attending to his philosophical life. Well, I did finally do something to shore up my financial picture, but it wasn't doing what I thought I'd love to do every day of my life...writing. No, I did it as a machinist in a machine shop. Somehow, I think I'm trying to combine philosophizing and writing in this last phase of my life. I'm getting pretty philosophical about failure. If it wasn't for my successful and happy life with my wife, Mertie, I'd really be desperate. This is real joy, isn't it?