SILENT BEAT BOOMER SUBMITS AT LAST

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Outside this River Maiden espresso joint in Vancouver Washington, a leaf blower is swooshing wet leaves into mountains of golden red. A blue sky peeks between brilliant white clouds above. The sun at the moment is hidden. Last night, I sent off Ghoul World to DAW Publishing. Happily, I was able to use Submittable. Last time I checked, DAW wanted hard copy. I'm glad I checked one last time before I got the ms printed and shipped off. It would have cost me less than 100 dollars to get it printed and shipped. I could have printed it myself too, but the task felt daunting, so I planned to act wealthy and get it done for me. Instead, DAW accepted the ms for free, not even a nominal Submittable fee. They'll report in less than 3 months.

Truthfully? I feel little hope Ghoul World will be accepted. It's well written, but I don't think it's modern enough for young tastes. It's a science fiction film noir with a private investigator. I had in mind Blade Runner, the movie when I began. Perhaps not enough action. The last three chapters are purely expository, as a character called Urthana explains the utopian world of Alteregoia where Charley Manning finds himself at novel's end.

AMAZING MENTAL GYMNASTICS, KEN KESEY

Facebook informed me last night that everyone was waiting with bated breath for my next entry. Also, nowadays, Facebook keeps inviting me to boost my blog entries with dollars. I have refrained from that thus far. Is boosting worth anything? I'm not going to pretend I don't want people waiting for my sci fi novel to come out.

My last entry, if you recall, was about all the balls one must keep in the air—the memory required—to write a novel, specially a detective novel with many mental mazes included within its pages. Sometimes the thing to be recalled is quite simple. Just this morning, my character, Charley Manning, was recalling his last meeting on the sidewalk before his apartment building with Misty Frampton. Then I had to recall whether or not I'd removed that meeting for some other important reason. At last, not able to find the meeting, I kept in his thought about last seeing Misty [for romantic reasons], but I removed the reference to any specific place. That's a simple example how things must be juggled. An example of why Ken Kesey quit writing.

PS: I keep extensive plot notes, but, then I make changes and don't update the notes. The notes become as much of a distraction as the novel itself.

OLD BEATNIK, CZESLAW MILOSZ & F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Nearly midnight, 7th of August. Thanks to all who have

Black Virgin at Rocamadour

been checking in, but what little is there to relate? Knocking off a chapter a weekday of 10th rewrite of Ghoul World. Sometimes two or one and a half chapters. I'd like to get the word count down near 100,000 words, but that is still a long way to go. I'm cutting out many of my favorite tales and thoughts, but who says main character Charley Manning must spill everything I know? I'm leaving in his romance with Misty Frampton and his sexual dalliance with Beaunita (if that's her real name) though they could go and boy would that shorten the novel.

Roc Amadour

Finished at last 20th Century American Poetry, Vol. I. I think I renewed it about 5 times during two different check out periods. Quickly finished Great Gatsby and have returned to reading poetry of Czeslaw Milosz in Selected And Last Poems 1931-2004. Powerful poem The Rising Of The Sun that imaginatively constructs his leaving naturalism to become a poet, inspired by a visit to Roc Amadour, a legendary religious center. Will I ever be able to remember how to spell his name w/o cheating? Watching DVDs of "Hinterland" and "Garrow's Law" with my dear wife after she comes home from work. So lovely to share so much.

ON THE ROAD WAS LONG. FIRST ROUGH DRAFT IS DONE. FIREWORKS!

My friends, it's time to leave the library where I'm writing and get my car out of the parking lot before my two hours expire and I get a ticket. Going to walk down by the Columbia River and drink in the 63 degree weather and the feeling of being done with the first rough draft of Ghoul World. I cheated the finish just a little bit and before I start a rewrite on page one, I do have to go back over closing paragraphs to tweak out the exact feeling I want to end the novel with. My feelings about this being the final day of rough draft are a little ambiguous. Still I'm calling this the last day of rough draft.

BEAT UP BEATNIK BREAKS OFF THE NARRATIVE TEMPORARILY

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This writing machine will shut down, most likely, for several days. In two hours, I'm off to get a tooth pulled. #21. Then comes Thanksgiving. P'rhaps some family will show up? Who knows?

I'm not going to say much this morning ... I don't think. I had a short burst of creative juice yesterday, saw my way through to a new ending that will cause the novel to run one or two more chapters longer. Several potential endings are in mind. One is a pretty nifty surprise. Some are upbeat and some not so upbeat. Not sure which will win out. 


Just because I see the ending, doesn't mean it's a done deal. Truth is, though I know what "actions" need to happen, there's still the problem of making sure I get all the information in too and in proper order, i.e. the background stuff that's been hidden from the reader so that everything makes sense and comes to a neat conclusion. I do have one line I want Charley Manning to assert near the end: "This investigation ain't no neatly plotted book, pal. There ain't no smoking gun. Just a lot of smoke, mostly, and a dozen suspicions."

More than once, lately, I've felt no impulse to finish the book, almost a fear of completing it. Could it be that I don't want to have to send it around and find out no agent wants it? I'm reading a Sam Beckett bio too. Don't know why I do it to myself. That's not my ambition at this time ... to win a Nobel Prize.

Wrote more than I planned to, didn't I?

BEATNIKING A PATH TO SUCKCESS

My oft stated goal in writing the futuristic novel Manning (working title) is to see if before I die I can get someone other than myself to publish a book I've written. I'm talking success, here, with a capital, SUCK! For publisher, film maker and for me.

In The Moral Animal, author Robert Wright uses Charles Darwin's life to demonstrate that human animals share values with other species. He points out that good monkey Darwin, for all that his ideas shocked the world, was very careful about his approach to relationships and to expressing his ideas. Darwin held back for 20 years announcing the facts he'd gathered because he didn't want to destroy his wife's faith, and he was choosy about his friends. As Darwin's influence and friendships grew among the intellects of his time, he slowly dropped friendships with people who were not as well known as he. Darwin did not consciously reject them. It just happened. The more he was caught up in success, the less time he had for many old friends. (Recall Woody Allen's Stardust Memories when an old neighborhood pal comes up to Sandy Bates and asks Bates if Bates remembers him? Pow!) 

On occasion, I've been in the presence of writers of distinction and have felt out of place with them. It's as if their experiences with financial success put them automatically into an experiential realm I'm not acclimated to. My reticence created my half of those situations. Let me tell you, if I hadn't had to deal with my personal issues before I could tackle the world of success, my life would have gone swimmingly different. I can see the experience for writing a successful book getting strong in me just as age is slowing my mental reflexes and memory. Will I reach the other side or fall through a crack in time?

BIG MOUNTAIN TURNED INTO LITTLE BEATNICK MOLEHILL

The Gordian knot begins to unravel

For several days the writing has gone well. In the current chapter of Manning at page 170, I'm introducing one of several surprises planned for the novel. The reader will meet one of the several kinds of beings that inhabit Planet Earth 250 years from now, but I realized I don't have to show the reader the entire mystery of this character just yet. I think his name might be Neo D'Thal. I can still tease the reader, introduce this interesting character, but not reveal everything about him. What's been so smooth lately is that I can see ahead for several chapters again, and the pressure is off for awhile. This makes writing enjoyable, and I believe that this book could easily be published by someone other than myself and could easily be a movie. 

Tonight, Mertie and I watched Blood Simple, a Coen brothers film. They certainly know how to complicate a plot. Several times in the movie, I could hear them talking about the several possibilities for each scene so that the viewer is under constant tension. It was the Coen's first film, and I understand how professional they had to make it in order to build their future in the movie business.

BEATNIK BOOMER CONTEMPLATES LIFE AS A DALAI LAMA

Wonderful day. Just completed 4 mile walk along the Columbia, the frisky breeze rumpling my hair. Notice the disarranged hairs on the hair line atop the bald football field of my head. I was going to say "bald spot", but, today, I eschew the ridiculous.

Who understands the mysteries of an unstable brain? Yesterday, and for a few days previously, despairing yet again, I gave up writing. I imagined myself throwing my consciousness into meditation 4 hours a day, becoming an ever-giving spirit. I imagined myself turning into a smiling Dalai Lama. I dreamed of becoming such a love-filled personage that I shit sweet-smelling begonias ten times a day. That's right! It wouldn't stink. Oh, it was a marvelous dream, filled with pain and wonderful highs after days of suffering. Then, today, I woke up, perfectly contented, and returned to work on the Manning novel as if there had been no yesterday and will be no tomorrow. 

I have no idea where my moods come from. Brooding thoughts of my mortality accompanied the writer's block. Negative thoughts about what a horrible husband, son, stepson, father, worker, intellect and friend I am. I don't know whether the negative thoughts produced the writer's block or whether the writer's block produced the negative thoughts. They come and go like ghosts in the outhouse on a cold winter's night in Southern Ohio or coastal Alabama. Much like the capricious moments that drive the newly sober Florida alcoholic to go back to searching for the elixir of life in the Fontainebleau of Life. 

BEATNICK SILENT WRESTLES WITH GRANDMA GYMNAST'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Grandma Gymnast Johanna Quass

I can't say it often enough. The question Who Knows What? is one of the most important questions when writing a whodunit. Repeatedly, I find myself having to make readjustments and plot alterations in order to keep myself and the story honest. What reader wants to find out at the end of a whodunit that they've been lied to by the writer and misled by certain dishonest details in the plot. It's getting tricky for an old brain like mine to keep things straight, in that Charley Manning, the PI in my tale, at this point seems not to know who he's working for. Neither does the reader. This plot complication is interesting to me, but keeping the question of Who Know What? straight in my head gets pretty twisty as I strive to achieve it. Read it when it comes out. You'll see what I mean. If that 87 year old grandma gymnast, Johanna Quass, can keep working the parallel bars at her age, I've got no excuse for not making my novel consistent and honest for those readers who read the novel that someone other than myself will publish. Then comes the movie. 

Nasty old guy that I am, I wonder if Johanna still has an active sex life? 

BEATNICK SILENTLY WELCOMES 20 YEARS OF TOGETHERNESS

Sitting at Torque Coffee in Vancouver, knowing I must put an entry in here before everyone forgets to come looking to see what's going on with the writer and his attempt to get someone other than himself to publish a book of his. Just finished Chapter 29. Also, not too far back, Mr. Charley Manning lost a little finger on his left hand to the henchmen of a ne·far·i·ous mystery man. Keep such events in mind when you wonder whether or not you'll buy the novel when someone [other than myself] publishes it. 

I'm reaching a point where I can't keep the reader in suspense about some of the mysterious goings on of the characters in the novel. We're reaching the first of the revealing incidents.

Nice thought is that last night I made vegetable soup for dinner tonight. I can stay away from home until dinner when my wife comes home from work. This ability to stay out as long as I want to is one of the reasons I've not been in favor of keeping a dog in a domicile without a lawn. Someone has to come home midday to let the little creatures out to do their duty to god and their country as they understand and are moved by that duty. 

Nothing to do with writing was my feeling, yesterday, during my daily walk that, being now 20 years with Mertie, I felt this powerful feeling of being an old married man and, instead of hating the thought, I was overcome with a positive and tear-making gush of glad feeling. So this is what 20 years together [Feburary, 2014] feels like? 

BEATNICK SILENTLY FEELS BEAT AGAIN

I'm writing this moment at the Cascade Park Public Library after putting in two hours of writing at the Torque coffee shop and getting my third parking ticket in downtown Vancouver. See photo of Van. library over my shoulder.

Three nights in a row, I slept 8 to 10 hours yet still woke tired and discouraged. I wasn't able to write those three days, and all that ton of self-despising I carry around, waiting for me to tire and drop my guard, came crashing down, and I nearly gave up on writing for the tenth or hundredth time? I can't tell you how hard it's been during much of my life to get out from under the self-hatred and take a breath of air. It's there even when it's not there. If you understand me, you understand a lot. 

Exhaustion always carries with it negative thinking, and negative thoughts are like magnets. One negative thought attracts another. They collect together inside my all too human head and, collectively, they weigh tons. I'll feel that unrewarded writing is useless and worthless. I'll feel foolish and tell myself I'm too old to still be pecking away on a computer keyboard, trying to produce something that'll make me a little money. "After all these years, stupid," I tell myself, "if money for your writing was going to happen, it would have happened by now." To try to explain this to someone, other than my wife, also feels foolish. No one can imagine how much needless suffering I've felt over this obsession with writing and lack of monetary reward for it. I've carried it around most of my life. It sounds stupid to some more happily adjusted people I have not a doubt. I must add, that the angst is much reduced and doesn't appear half so often as it did in the past. Sobriety and much psychological work helps, but it waits, there, in the darkness, for its chances to return.

Then, last night I put in another 9 hours of sleep and, this morning, woke magically refreshed. The cloud of doubt and self-despising lifted for no good reason I can think of, and the sunshine of good spirits filled me. So today, I'm back at it, looking at Manning and trying to figure out "what happens next"—the constant voice that leads the novelist within me on the haphazard process of plotting a novel. 

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?

FARTS BLOW AWAY, BEATNICK BOOMER REFRESHED

Me happily at work in the moment

In the Van Mall where I'll walk soon. Took half a morning here to download my "Silent Boomer" blog site on Blogger. A great morning. Broke through a month of writer's block. You readers may have caught a whiff of blockage in all my posts before this one. Lots of gaseous farting around with quavering "chin up and muster on" from the British films of my past. 

The way now opens into the next third—or more—of Manning—the secrets I'm keeping from the reader, the revelations and twisty turns of plot laid out before me in a rough order. It's congealing, the plot is. See many chapters ahead. My interest freshens. 

I may have mentioned this, but it bares repeating. By jotting down brief statements about Charley Manning's actions and thoughts and discoveries, the plot, as it comes to me, can be laid out in short statements through my main character:

1. Manning discovers that [   ] is not really on his side.
2. Manning learns that [   ] was killed by [   ]. [   ] does not know this, but [   ] does. 

That plotting device helps me remember and structure the book. I'm not revealing more. You won't buy the book when it comes out if you know all the surprises and twists. 

Today, I worked on Manning at the downtown Vancouver library, one of the three places I like most to write in when home feels too confining. The other two are Black Rock Coffee on 164th where I worked on Tuesday and Torque in downtown Vancouver where I worked yesterday morning. 

BEAT BOOMER BEATS WAY THROUGH WRITER'S BLOCKHEAD

Four days pass and another entry on this blog overdue. Lately I've been battling the urge to give up on the Manning novel. Over the last 15 years, I've started at least 6 lengthy projects only to have them die off at 50 to 150 pages. I'm at the 150 page mark with Manning, and I've had to fight through the urge to stop each day for a week now. My brain tells me it wants to go back to doing algebra problems as it did for 6 years every morning after I retired from Mackay Manufacturing. I was happy enough, slogging through math problems just a few years ago, then I get something published in Work Literary Magazine, and the whole yearning awakes again. 

Homes like this one...

This morning, however, I fought through my drab feelings and wrote anyway. Once I got started, I felt much better. Then the sun came out from behind the clouds, the temps reached into the 50s, and after three solid hours of writing, I put on a light jacket to enjoy an hour and a half walk through a neighborhood of people whose successes have allowed them to own very nice homes. For all my blue collar anger at wealthy Americans, those I meet on my walks in this neighborhood are very friendly and welcoming, even if it's no more than a "howdy" greeting. In fact, both greetings this morning were exactly that: "Howdy!"  

Where do they come from, I ask myself with that greeting.

BEAT BOOMER'S BEATIFIC FEAST DAY: ART AND FOOD TOO

Full hungry artist day. Wife and I departed home 9:00 am for drive to Oswego where she attended Kosen Rufu, a monthly community meet of Soka Gakkai. Dropped me off at a Starbucks to write while she attended. I'm adding a section into segment 19. It's purpose is to present information directly through the lips of hit man, Johnny Dundee, rather than to have it summarized by Charley Manning in a later segment. This forced me to take material out of segment 23 which I'll have to go back to next and pull together, like healing a wound with professional job of stitching by an emergency room doctor. This week I believe I managed to write a minimum of an hour each day and for many hours longer. 

Bacon self portrait found here...

Mertie and I went next to eat a delicious lunch at vegan restaurant, Blossoming Lotus. I had a tofu, mushroom and spinach scramble with sides of home fries and kale. DELICIOUS! Then on to the Portland Art Museum where a touring exhibit of Venetian art, 16th through 18th centuries, is on display. YUMMY! Then downstairs to look at Bacon's triptych of friend Lucien Freud on display through March 31. SCRUMPTIOUS! Today was bursting with the taste of artfully prepared food and art itself. What a day. Tonight we plan to watch Nebraska, ending our day with a mouth watering Independent Film.

Recently I learned that "holding a glass of ice water" will temporarily influence the holder to "feel" the world and fellow humans as psychologically colder. I wonder if Bacon's name had something to do with his portraits of humans as slabs of beef? Who knows? More sensible things have proven to be real.

FOOLISH CONSISTENCY: HOBGOBLIN OF GOOD NOVELS?

My memory struggles as I write my best selling, futuristic PI novel that Hollywood and I make a big pile of money from when it becomes a movie. Cross fingers, spin twice in a circle and lay on the charm to potential agents.

Yesterday, I caught a memory slip while I was rewriting a passage, but it led to a happy outcome. Chapters apart, two people come to Manning's apartment on Everett Street in Portland. The first has to stand downstairs and ring up to Manning's apartment on the 5th floor so that Manning can release the downstairs door. The next visitor magically appears at Charley's door on the 5th floor and rings his doorbell there. INCONSISTENT! Then, I decided the live in landlady sees the second visitor and lets him in because she knows that the visitor and Manning are friends. It would be a nice touch of apartment dwelling interplay.

While concocting that little piece of business, I suddenly recalled that Manning is set 250 years in the future. Already autos are being started with equipment that reads thumb prints so, certainly, most locks 250 years hence will be opened by thumbprint or whole body scanners. Something! I put a note in my rewrite file to make this consistent when the final rewrite begins sometime within the next hundred years or so. Cross fingers.

The great fact about the tale above is that, after all, I did remember the two different visitors when I needed to recall them. My memory actually worked.

ROAD WORK AHEAD: SILENT BOOMER OPENS SEGMENT 23

According to my every other day blog entry schedule, I need to be saying something just about now, but I'm always a mite off kilter and a trifle out of synch. I've been more or less stuck for a week, dithering and dallying around with an impaction in my writer's colon. However, day afore yesterday, while walking my hour—this time inside of Freddy Meyer's place—I came up with the next to last scene in the Manning novel. Fits very nicely with the opening I've set in Vietnam where fisherman Qwan Bak Ti is sliced up by a band of wild humans in the jungle darkness. With my finish at last congealed into something interesting, my interest flared up again and set my pants on fire.

Found ant here

So, this morning, I put in my minimal hour and commenced a start into Segment 23. I felt pretty good about that. It's as if an ant atop a leaf on the forehead of George Washington on Mount Rushmore could, for a moment, see all the way into Colorado, his ultimate destination. Things will soon be emerging out of the darkness and events lining up toward the finish of Manning, my future best selling novel and movie. Many miles of sentences, however, wait to be fashioned.

ANXIETY'S A BEAT NAMED THE SILENT BOOMER

Find picture source here:

I'm learning constantly the intricacies of writing a detective novel, specially one set 250 years in the future. Today, I added another piece of complexity to Manning, details about Beaunita and her knowledge (or lack of it) and how that affects her interactions with Charley Manning and how his knowledge of the case will eventually be connected to the new details in Beaunita's own knowledge (or lack of it) about the case. Obviously, the more complex the novel the more risk of inconsistency and implausibility. The anxiety I feel about the difficulty of complex plotting at my age sometimes nearly causes me, like Ken Kesey did, to quit writing. I'll feel all those details out there in space and the impossibility of me remembering them all. Whew!

The failure to recall minute details at my age certainly increases the risk of writing a major inconsistency into the tale. For one example, I forgot that a sinister character, during an encounter, removed one of Manning's molars while Manning was drugged into unconsciousness. It was a warning about future dental work without anesthesia. I recalled the meeting as several things did happen in it, but I forgot the tooth removal detail as part of that meeting. Not central to the plot, it's a detail not to be forgotten since Manning's physical status means the hole in his gum won't ever heal. He'll require a Wayland Patch.

Sadly, the Ooligan Press query about my novel ANGIE'S CHOICE fell through. They decided that "your work does not fit our present needs". However two other smaller pieces having been published already this year brightens me considerably.

BEATNICK SILENT GETS HEAD BLOWN OFF TWO TIMES

Oh, good heavens, Minerva! I'm at Black Rock. Planned to work on my best selling novel, Manning and discovered my brain farted again, left me with soiled frontal lobes. I carry my novel back and forth between laptop work at coffee shops and desktop work at home on a thumb drive. Sometimes, I forget to load the most current Manning file onto the thumb drive for transport. Today, I'm stuck here, drinking my soy Chai latte, with yesterday's Black Rock file on the thumb drive. This morning's home work remains there. 

My forgetfulness is a minor inconvenience today. Worse when I spend a couple of hours reworking Manning and discover, I've been working on an older version of the novel. Then I've got new work in an older version of Manning and a previous rewrite in a separate file. The two versions are irreconcilable, beyond mere copying. They cry to be rejoined. Sayeth, yon Romeo:

Chris and Toni

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. 
O, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!  

On a happier note, my piece of creative non-fiction, "The Kiggins and I Were Meant For Each Other", appears in Feb's Vancouver Vector, and a poem appears in Ghost Town Poetry Anthology, II, eds: Toni Partington and Chris Luna. Coincidental is the fact their photo appears near a mention of  "Romeo and Juliet". Fortunately no family feud  intervenes. 

Speaking of family. No more nasty family could be found as Siyar's murderous bunch in last night's PIFF film, "Before Snowfall". The last scene, a wedding, blew the top of my head off. Still stunned, recalling it.

SILENT BOOMER BEATS HIS WAY THROUGH A NERVE JUNGLE

dendrites

I have tinnitus. Recently Conductor Spritz von Tinnitus added a second movement to the symphony in my right ear, a crescendo. The first night it happened was months ago, and I couldn't sleep that night. I imagined the rest of my life, sleepless, but, already, I've become conditioned to ignore it. Thankfully (or not), the human brain can be conditioned to accept anything.

"Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) is on TCM right at this minute. Back in 1992, I had reached a stage in my psychological development during which time I decided that women who liked that cream puff movie represented everything that was wrong with American women. They were featherweights who would never be satisfied with a real man who had warts on his brain. Then I met my wife who likes the movie, and I found out, yet once again, how wrong headed I can be. She enjoys the warts on my brain. She expresses this love when she asks me, "How did you ever get to be so weird" and laughs delightedly and delightfully. A long time ago another wife asked me, "How did you learn all these positions?" Also laughing. As I climbed down from the monkey bars I told her, "In kindergarten."

What does this have to do with writing you ask? Nothing. I'm marking time, waiting for the next plot development in my Manning novel to appear out of the sleepless deeps of my brain and slip between my brain warts into my fingertips.