BEATNIK SORT OF EXPERIENCE: POOP

Finished for a time the rewrite of a story called "Down Home Man". I have another great short story idea and I've still got a novel to completely rewrite, Delinquent Lives, and I'm working on another poem for Up Your Ass. It's to be called "Two Days" and made up of two oddly contrasted experiences that happened over two consecutive days. Below are the rough notes for day two. It's been a Facebook entry so maybe you've seen it already. Forgive it's length.

Ah, it's great to be old. I had another fascinating experience today. Some would say this will be far too much information. Several years ago I started having bouts of bowel incontinence. I cut out coffee and tree nuts, and I thought I was doing well, but, no, even then, every month or so I'd have an accident. Then the prostate cancer and medicines and specially the radiation treatments can also create urinary and bowel problems, so recently, I've been wearing diapers every morning and leave them on until I get home. This morning we had a plumber over at 8:30am to fix a leaky faucet in the tub in our guest bathroom. He was a pleasant young man and very proficient. We exchanged many pleasantries, and, as he was leaving, I told him, "I think I'm going to celebrate and go out for breakfast. I don't know why. I haven't done anything. You did all the work." We shook hands and he left, and I departed not long after. I felt so healthy that I decided for the first time in months not to wear a diaper [now you all know where this is going]. Intending also to break my vegan diet, I marched out into a brilliant sunshine morning to a newly remodeled Sharis for breakfast. I ordered hot chocolate and from the honored menu a two egg cheese/ham omelet and French toast. While waiting, I was reading a book that a Facebook friend has written, The Triple Diamond Sutra. Humorous as hell and entertaining. The morning was going swimmingly. My interactions with the waitress were pleasant if not informative. Then it came time to pay the bill, and I carried my bill to the cash register, as you do at Sharis, and my waitress was also the one who came to the register to ring me up and swipe my credit card. That's when it happened of course. The credit card was in her hand when I experienced the tiny familiar burp feeling in my bowels that occurs without warning, and I said, "Excuse me, I've got to run to the bathroom." Of course, once I feel that tiny burp, it is already too late. All the way to bathroom, I was offloading a pile of food that had seen better days. By the time I reached the throne room, there was nothing left to offload. What a mess. I had to clean up the toilet, the floor and myself and wrap my soiled underwear in paper towels and throw the whole mess into the trash. Fortunately, the underwear was sufficient to protect my cotton trousers so no stains had appeared in the rear area. Of course, being without shame, I told the new woman at the cash register who was holding my credit card for me all about it. "I had to rush off to the bathroom," I explained. She said, "Yes, I understand those moments." "And I wasn't wearing a diaper," I continued. "What a mess." Later I realized the image my remark must have left in her mind. What can a man make of all this stuff? Yesterday afternoon, a kindly woman, probable thinking of me as a father figure, offers me a cross. Last night the Cubs win their first World Series since 1908. This morning I'm reading The Triple Diamond Sutra at Sharis and, within minutes, I'm shitting my pants. You can't make this stuff up. I'm sure there's a deeper meaning somewhere in all this chaos.

THE QUERULOUS PROCESS OF QUERY LETTERS

Outside, it's a beautiful sunny autumnal day. I'm wearing a brand new pink shirt, celebrating Pink Out for Planned Parenthood day, and currently sitting at the Cascade Park Library where I just finished rewriting Chapter -29- of Ghoul World. An extremely long chapter, I took several days to complete it. Today, 143 people visited this blog. It's the biggest number to visit this Beatnik, Silent Generation Boomer's blog about an old writer whose goal is to get someone other than himself to publish one of his novels before he dies. I'm now circulating three rewritten novels to agents while completing the third rewrite of my recently completed science fiction novel. Still to be rewritten is the novel I used as my thesis for a Master's in English (with an emphasis in creative writing). It's called Delinquent Lives. Also, something is stirring in me about an entirely new novel. Who knows? I recently recommitted myself to sending out more query letters to agents. I realized that every time I enter my office, I flinch to see the 4x6 yellow cards upon which I record my queries and their results. Rejection is always a painful thing to experience. Two rejections of queries came my way last week. For the fun of it, I sent one query over the Atlantic last night to a British agent.

SILENT COMPLETES THE LAST REWRITE OF ANGIE'S CHOICE

A happy note! Wife Mertie did the final reread of Angie's Choice today. Five last chapters and only about six errors found. I will not look at it again, except to send it around to agents and directly to publishers. I culled through the 2013 Writer's Market and built a huge list of possible publishers. More of the kind of work that it would be nice to have an agent do for me as Agent Ruth Cantor once did for me back in the 1980s. 

Today I went into Portland to the Humanists of Greater Portland Sunday meeting. Then took an hour walk in downtown Portland and realized, as I enjoyed my walk, that under my original plan (to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine) there lies another plan—to make enough money from one or the other of my novels to buy a modest condo in Portland. Well ... I'm 76 now and might just as well dream big as small. Eh? Of course the book I'm pinning my hopes on is Manning (working title). Also in the wings for complete revision is my most serious novel, Delinquent Lives. The Porno Writer could be a scorcher if I can write a final polished draft of it. It's done, but needs polishing. I think there's work enough ahead to carry me to the crematory but into a Portland condo...?

ANGIE'S CHOICE COMPLETED. ARKANSAS CHARLEY BEGINS???

Angie's Choice final rewrite done. Oh happy day! Gonna have my ever-reading wife peruse Chapter One to approve my additions to the dinner conversation. If I can catch her lively interest I know I'm good to go. Next decision? Got three novels to rewrite, specifically, Delinquent Lives, perhaps the more serious novel, or the one about the failed author turned porno writer who discovers that his fantasies direct his choices of women in real life, or I could continue the new novel I began yesterday which really excites me. Humn? Follow the excitement or do the serious novel? The new novel begins as per below:

Oh happy day!

"Arkansas Charley dragged smoke from a Pall Mall deeply into his lungs and peered down at the telltale wisp of smoke that leaked between the second and third buttons of his wrinkled Paisley shirt. Shaking his head morosely, he plucked two wrinkled tidbits of flesh from his left wrist where the metal watch band had gouged under the skin. Carefully, he balanced the tiny fragments of himself on the shaky tip of his middle finger and held them to the sunlight that streamed remorselessly through McDonald’s front window. To someone watching, Charley appeared to be giving a finger to the sun.

"The fleshy remains of himself on his finger tip were another sign of the inevitable decline all flesh was heir to. Down into the bone of himself, Charley knew and accepted that in a decade or so, give or take a couple of years, he would be nothing but a hank of hair and a piece of bone. Like all of animalkind, except for those beasts slaughtered young and rendered up for the tables of the globe, he would grow steadily worse until his decaying body could no longer support the thoughts and feelings, the actions that all humans called life. For now, he sighed to himself, he would have to give up wearing watches."

BEAT COFFEE HOUSE FOR OLD BEATNIK MALE

Last night, drove to Portland to the Three Friends Coffee House on 12th Avenue to listen to Chris Luna (Vancouver's poet laureate), Dennis McBride and Mat Brouwer read poetry. Enjoyed their work. Specially appreciate McBride's sarcastic, in a monotone voice, sentiments. His delivery says it all. Didn't stay for open mic. Maybe some other time. A solid venue. Thanks to Chris Luna for telling me about it.

Screeching halt and change of direction: again I'm considering my age and my goal to get one novel published by someone other than myself. I've decided to briefly halt rewrite of Delinquent Lives since Angie's Choice is the novel most ready to go. Over the years, I've looked at the first three chapters of Angie as, at times, I've submitted it to agents or to publishers directly. It's plot is solid and the characters action ready. All I need do with Angie's Choice is run through the entire novel one more time to polish it to PERFECTION. Aha...humph...yes. Anyway...this being done, I can relax and keep Angie in circulation with a peaceful mind while I bring Delinquent Lives up to snuff...or...who knows...I've got a whole new novel on hold that might appeal to a younger audience.

SILENT BOOMER BEATS THE BUSHES FOR MARKETS

market research

As I continue to rewrite Delinquent Lives, I find the novel has a tighter structure than I thought. Close reading reveals chronological details I thought were missing, phrases like "three days later" or "last night" that I missed when I skimmed through. Like improving dialogue, finding the skeletal structure takes attention to detail.

This morning I sent off one of the essays that my local paper rejected to another market exclusive to the Pacific Northwest. I devoted four hours to discovering the new market, rewriting the essay to make it more market correct, and carefully following the submission guidelines. 

head shot

I found the new market by gathering up all the newspapers and magazines on the free literature rack in the lobby outside the Cascade branch of the Vancouver Library and studying them to see what to my wondering eyes might appear. I found a new age production which pays with a year's subscription. Again...no money, but isn't that all part of getting things published and building reputation? Submission guidelines also requested a head shot. See photos. 

Finally, I've not heard back from the senior publication which asked for writing samples and this blog address. Perhaps I'm  75 years too young (or immature) for the target audience these senior newspapers seek out. That's a definite possibility.

SPEAKING OF DIALOGUE

When I admit to the next error in my writing, I have no doubt all real writers will dismiss me as a hack. My only excuse is that this was the second novel I wrote, and it has lain around in my possession for a couple of decades without rewriting. I'm keeping this entry short because wife and I are on the road.

I was looking over a scene between two boys at Lawnwood, the fictional home for emotionally disturbed children central to the novel. The scene wasn't working, then I discovered both boys sounded too much like me. They didn't speak like two of the emotionally disturbed boys I remembered. DIALOGUE problem! I had to go back and research words that rang true for 1970, the year the book is set in.

First word I replaced was "gym shoes". In the 1970s the best word for gym shoes was "sneakers". Next I thought about what derogatory words teens used in the 1970s. I selected from a long list the word "dipshit" which felt just right. No sooner did I select that word, then one of the real teens I'd been a cottage parent for during those days, popped into mind, and I distinctly heard him speak that word, attitude included.

I had begun with the thought that the task of dialogue editing would be monumentally long and boring. The dialogue work may certainly take time, but the scene, with a few more corrections, came so alive that I was excited about the prospect of doing this kind of dialogue reworking throughout the entire novel. The old Beat Boomer Silent has learned another lesson. Where has my common sense (or is it the courage to work at it) been all these years?

REAL BEAT BOOMER PLOTTING ALONG HIS WAY

the whole scene

Of my four completed novels—The Man In The Mirror, Delinquent Lives, Angie's Choice, The Porno Writer—the book I'm currently rewriting, Delinquent Lives, is the most difficult to disentangle. I've been forced to sit down and graph the plot. 

a detail

When I wrote this book, I didn't rely on plot. By switching back and forth between two limited points of view, I saw the book as developing by giving the reader bits and pieces of information about each of the two main characters that would add up to a full psychological profile of them and justify how they came out as the novel concludes.  

Delinquent Lives does develop along a chronological order, but I've used so many flashbacks, I can see where a reader might be put off from reading to the finish. Continuity is problematical. I was letting my love of Fellini's "8 1/2" influence me. Fellini believed his audience had the knowledge to understand what he was doing, but reading a book is different than watching a movie.

I can see the psychological rationales to most of the decisions I made about scene placements, and I tried to make each event have it's own intrinsic tension, but as I rewrite all these years later, I discover scenes and information whose necessity I have to question. Again and again I learn that an old cat can learn new meows if he's motivated enough.

BEAT BOOMER PLOTTING ALONG

I got a surprise yesterday when I realized that Delinquent Lives, the book I translated with Readiris OCR software was missing chapters. I feared I had many more pages to translate one page at a time in a very slow process, but, then, among files dedicated solely to my creative work, I found the missing material already translated in a subfolder under the novel's title where I had not expected to find it. I was relieved because this meant I didn't have to translate all those missing pages. However...in my rewrite, if you recall, I have already caught myself being too clever for my own good. 

Looking at this new material, I see that my cleverness must be corrected again and, this time, thoroughly. My chronology has always been twisted in order to maintain what I've thought of as my clever opening. My plot has to be repaired. A complete rearrangement of early material is called for. O, no! The Nightmare Rewrite is upon me, the kind of complete rewrite that at my age (feeling rushed as I am by the grim reaper) I shrink from, but if this book is to be the one that somebody other than myself publishes (and it could be this book), then I will have to rearrange several early chapters and fragments of chapters. I will have to put my chronology in order.

I take a deep breath. Where will I find the time to keep rewriting Delinquent Lives, making these blog entries, court agents for Angie's Choice, attend the writer's group I enjoy, send off short stories and poetry to competitions, cook suppers for wife, read a book now and then, do the laundry, keep the house straightened up and manage to write fresh material at the same time? And what...if...after all this time and effort, nobody likes the book?

SILENT BOOMER MISSES A CATCH!

Well, here I am, awake in the middle of the night and blank space before my eyes so I'll keep you up to date on the search for an agent to represent my book, Angie's Choice. Unhappily, Mr. Paul Lucas got back to me in less than 24 hours. He tells me that he's a busy man and I believe him.

Of course, I don't know how

close I came!                

Thank you for the opportunity to read your submission. Unfortunately, you have come to me at a time when I am inundated with requests for assistance and representation.  The need to allocate my time effectively forces me to decline participation in many worthy projects, and I regret that must be the decision in the case as well.

I am very sorry not to be able to help you with this project but please accept my best wishes for you in your search for representation. 

Best regards,
Paul 

Paul Lucas  Janklow & Nesbit Associates

I'm thinking next time I'll send off queries to two agents at a time. They get back to me pretty fast. An interesting phenomenon happens every time I send out samples of a novel. I rewrite whatever number of pages they request as a sample. I can never look over a page of my writing that I don't think it can be improved. I don't know whether that's a sign of low self-esteem or just a sign of a too ambitious critic in my head. Sometimes, I change no more than a word or two. Poetry, of course, is a different matter. Frequently, if I've looked over a poem often enough, I can't find a way to improve it's lusture in my mind's eye. 

Yesterday as I walked by the Columbia River, I had an idea for another book that might catch a young agent's attention! But, for now, I want to finish the rewrite of Delinquent Lives. I also have recently finished a short story which I might send off to a short story contest if the entry fee is not too large. 

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.

                                                                                     

A GOOD MORNING'S REWRITE AND AGENT MOLLY JAFFA

This morning I awoke to a productive morning of rewriting of Delinquent Lives, but after a time, I felt impelled to send off another agent query letter for another novel of mine, Angie's Choice. I resent the constant drain of writing time required to do all the "business" of becoming a published writer, so it's been awhile since I took the time to do that because Angie's Choice is ready for publication. In fact, once upon a time, Angie had an agent.

First I looked for potential agents. I used an October 2012 Writer's Digest. In that issue, several agents encouraged writers to send them work. They asked for it and I'll bet they were immediately overwhelmed by queries. I specifically looked for a female agent interested in women's writing since my heroine is a female. 

Next I went onto the websites of the agencies these agents work with to look for submission guidelines which I follow to a "T". Next, I brought up a master query letter for that specific novel, Angie's Choice, and worked it over to make it more exactly suited for the person I sensed on the other side of her written profile and comments, then, I copied and pasted the finalized letter into an email. Next I included ten pages of Angie's Choice (exactly as the agent requested).

Just to add reality to this post, I've included the name of the agent, Molly Jaffa...a nice name with a literary allusion in it. Think Molly Bloom!

The whole process took one hour and forty minutes of my valuable time. With a sigh of relief, I returned to rewriting Delinquent Lives after lunch with my lovely wife.

THE SILENT BOOMER KEEPS ON KEEPING ON...LEARNING

Delinquent Lives is an odd cuss. It was my 1980 thesis for a Masters Degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, typewritten in triplicate with carbons. I was fortunate to have Patrick McManus sit in on that master's defense. I think he liked the novel because he asked John Keeble, in my hearing, if Eastern kept an agent on call for writers. McManus, of course, has forgotten me, and why shouldn't he? I've gone on to ignominious silence since that day in 1980, decades ago when he graced my master's defense. 

Patrick McManus from Celebpictu.com.

Ignominious silence? The publishing of creative writing is so much changed, one hardly knows where to begin. How I'm ever going to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine before I become senile is a challenge not faced by anyone since the days when  Shakespeare needed a Queen Elizabeth to fund the production of his plays, but that's not my topic today. I mean to talk about learning about writing...even at my advanced age.

Briefly, Delinquent Lives is told through two limited points of view...one an adult male, the other a young "emotionally disturbed" teen. The married adult male has taken a lover. She is always in his thoughts. He talks to her constantly. 

Over the first 80 pages I've struggled to separate his normal thoughts from those moments when he's talking to "Mona" (that's the lover) in his thoughts. Then I realized I'd prided myself on making the mental gymnastics cleverly obscure...you know...artsy-fartsy? 

This morning, I rolled back to that first time in the novel when my anti-hero is talking in his thoughts with Mona and entered the following passage: "Paul had conjured Mona. He often did. It wasn’t unusual for her to be there in his head, near consciousness, listening to his thoughts. He was always talking to Mona. He told her just about everything." 

From now on, when those quotes show up amidst Paul's thoughts, I'll be able to make a quick reference to his lover that explains for the reader what the hell is going on. What idiot convinced me that obscurity was the key to writing good fiction? Kafka, you bastard!

THE SILENT BOOMER FINISHES A MAJOR PROJECT!

 Wahoo! It's nearly one o'clock in the morning and I just finished translating all 606 manuscript pages of my novel, Delinquent Lives, into editable files. Months and months of work. Now, all I gotta do is rewrite it. I hope it's interesting enough not to bore me. If it bores me, I'm sure it'll bore a reader. The following is a section of a scene right near the end when Jimmy, the youth, makes an important decision for his own well-being.

A smiling Happy Silent Boomer!

 “All right, Smally. You don’t remember. But I want to tell you something anyway.” Jimmy poked his forefinger into Smally’s chest, lightly.

Smally backed from the pointing, touching finger. “Well go ahead. Tell me. Don’t just keep talking stupid things.”

The flakes fell softly in the sunlight. They touched Jimmy with sharp, cold touches. One glanced from his nose. The barn down there stuck out really red. Then he began to notice the sparrows. Here one. Over there, another one under an evergreen, hopping and pecking the ground. He watched a third one flutter about at the edge of the road, not flying much.

Jimmy slid his hands into his Levi pockets again. “Look,” he said, “it won’t do no good if someone else does it for you. You got to do it yourself. I can’t do it, man. You can’t ask Norm or Meechum or anyone else to do it for you. It won’t do you no good, man.”

The sparrow near the road hopped, pecked, hopped and hopped, pecked twice again, three times rapidly.

“So what?” Smally said.

“Set it right between you and Leroy. Get him off your back.”

“Leroy’s my friend.”

“You dumb ass, Smally. Quit your fucking lying!”

“I ain’t lying,” Smally said. “Fuck you.”

Another sparrow moved along the edge of the road, hopping toward them.

“Shut up, Smally. I know and I saw, and you been trying to get someone to stop them for over a year, man.”

Smally pouted silently.

“Look. Like I say. It ain’t no good if someone does it for you. You got to take responsibility for yourself. You got to do it yourself. You got to get it together and go to staff yourself and tell them. You can’t go around and ask all these other dudes to do it for you. Staff is supposed to help you, but you got to go to them. I’m not going to go to them for you. No one else can do it for you. Everything will just get worse for you if you ask others to do it for you. You got to do it for yourself. Okay?”

Jimmy bent closer to see into Smally’s face, to see if anything was sinking in. Smally glanced at him. His forehead wrinkled. His thumb came up and slid between his wet, slobbery lips. Jimmy thought Smally was going to cry.

He judged that he was watching Smally calmly. He realized if Smally cried, that would be okay, and if he didn’t cry, that would be okay too. Anything was okay. Smally was his own man. Jimmy knew he was going to let Smally go. Then, looking away from Smally’s twisted face, looking around himself, he felt the snowflakes still brilliantly touching his exposed skin and realized that the sky, the grass, the trees, the bushes, everything was lit by this clear winter light and that everywhere he looked was alive with the small, grey flutterers.

THE WRITER'S BRAIN

The one year I taught high school, I still recall Cameron S. coming up to me after class and saying, "Mr. Thomas, you know all the big stuff, but you miss all the little things." These days, I understand that her "big" and "little" could mean different things than I imagined they did at the time, but I had thought all along that my brain seemed to extract generalizations from reading and from experience but did not accurately recall the details. I recently tried to memorize the process by which DNA via RNA makes copies of itself. The step by step drawing of the process was so simple and mechanical, anybody could understand it, but I haven't retained the details. I kick myself for this failing, yet—in kindness to myself—I do understand that had I been a teacher who taught neuroscience every day, I'd probably be more familiar with terminology. 

the brain, high on life.

Of course, the way my brain functions creates my writing style far beyond any conscious control I imagine I have over the process. However, oddly, the following passages are the opening of the second novel I ever wrote and they are rife with tiny detail. Not a generalization to be found. I'm currently translating Delinquent Lives through OCR software from typed pages to editable files. The novel is stream of conscious and darts back and forth between an adult and a boy. The adult works in a home for emotionally disturbed boys, and the boy is an "inmate" there. The plot is an X pattern which I won't  reveal for fear that no one will buy the novel when I put it out (I think) on Amazon as an e-book:
 

    1

    The Zapruder Super-8 had been hand held and shaky. Specifically, Paul remembered how the blurry blowup caught the piece of skull, hairy on the one side and bloody on the other, and the eruption of blood and fluid blown out in the spray of death. Stupidly, he imagined the fragment’s underside to be a kind of mesh material, like the underside of a toupee, and the fragment itself to be tumbling forever through black and most infinite space.
    “Oh yes,” he imagined exclaiming to others, “I can see myself traveling to the loony bin and back on a piece of bone like that!”

     2

     They walked together on a yellow afternoon in the green, city park through the small, grey, hopping birds. She held his hand. In a paper sack, he carried dry bread broken into crumbs to give them.
     “Sparrows, Jimmy,” she said and pointed.

  He threw the dry, white crumbs to them and watched them gather to feed while the heavy balloon man came down the wide, cinder path under the tall, green, high-branched trees.
     “Those are elms and hickories. See?” she told him, pointing."
     Jimmy tilted his face to their far, green tops which blotted out whole pieces of the blue sky. Then, lowering his gaze, he watched the fat, round balloon man come. He watched the red balloons wave above the round balloon man. Oh! The balloons stretched their strings tight, trying to go up.
     Sunlight splashed on everything and made an eye-hurting dazzle of everything in sight. The sun poured on the tall trees, on a brown dog far away running, on the red balloon cherries in the blue, bright sky stretching their strings. The sun splashed on her yellow hair. The sun lit the long, white hairs on the balloon man’s ears. The sun jumped and leaped from the clear, brightly-ruffled wading pool surface in a dazzle bits of light.
     “Balloons,” she said and pointed.
     “Loon! Loon!” he said and pointed too.
     When she knelt to hand him the balloon string, he smelled the soap in the dish by the white tub at home which she used only. Then he held the balloon string and tilted back his head to stare at the bright ball of red she had given him. The wind moved it. It drifted and tugged. He felt it’s life through the string and he laughed.