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?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN REWRITE? PIECE OF CAKE. FIVE TO GO.

Don't understand what goes on in an aging writer's body. Friday, I rewrote entire seventeenth chapter of Angie's Choice in a couple of hours at Black Rock Coffee. Suddenly, I've rewritten three chapters in two weeks. I'm ahead of schedule again. Five chapters to go. Later took a brisk springy-stepped hour and fifteen minute walk on the tree-lined back streets of East Vancouver. I'd been so rundown, I felt reborn from a month long battle with psychic death. Hard to believe a summer cold can precipitate such a steep decline in energy and imagination. 

In Chapter Seventeen, I rediscovered the significant value of Angie's Choice. I'd forgotten the story's dynamic center, and the chapter brought it back to me. Makes me happy to have written the book. Not only that, I saw how I might improve the first chapter to make writing samples more appealing to agents and editors. Hope the novel can be made available to everyone...if (you know the big if, if you've been following this blog) IF someone other than myself will publish it. I know. There's always Amazon, but that's a last resort for the time being.

writer on the protest line

Still reading the Vonnegut bio and toying with Asimov's Second Foundation. Vonnegut was one of the first writer's to understand the loss of the story reading public to TV. He foresaw the end of consumer magazines that would publish fiction...like Collier's that published as many as five stories an issue. Just before his novels burst on the scene, he tried to write television dramas. Daunting to think how much writing is being supported solely by the college world. Judging by the pressure to downsize university departments that aren't immediately job related, even that resource will soon dwindle. Nowadays, everyone knows, instead of being paid for their work, writers pay contest fees to get their work looked at. What a freaking fictional world!