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.

IT'S A GOOD NEWS MONDAY!

Torque Coffee, tea on a mon(sun)day, bay door thrown up to let Kerouac sunbeams fly and flies in. Framed in bay door of never-ending same dimension—a Hilton's tan plainness on a square of canvass, hint of blue sky and white clouds thin as harem pantaloons in the left corner of a Rene Magritte kind-of painting. Happiness of vision!

YESTERDAY, rewriting at Black Rock Coffee, I was tired in the afternoon (aged man two o'clock nap). Nothing came of the pitiful attempt except drowsiness and drooping spirit...but...

LAST EVE, AN EMAIL: 
George:
Can we use the article you sent recently on 50plusnorthwest.com?  We will include a link to your website.
Greg Johnson
50plusnorthwest

Of course you can, I chirped. Of course, gladly, happily, publish my pathetic, funny essay.... Of course, also, no money. What's new in the current writers' domains? For the barest of moments, I think of Vonnegut. In 1950s, two short stories earned him 1,500 dollars, enough to keep his family afloat for six months. A writer dare not hang at the end of that clothesline. He'll fade in sunlight. Anyhow, damn it, I'm appreciative, and Editor Greg Johnson's acceptance keeps me hyped to my goal, my item on a bucket list—to wit—to get someone other than myself to publish one of my four novels before I die.   

AND TODAY...Happy day, my Chapter Twenty rewrite of Angie's Choice flew by, done before noon. Two chapters remain (and that touch-up in Chapter One to make it more appealing), then I won't look at it again. I'll send it around and around, ceaselessly, until it begs to be let die...or I die...whichever comes next.

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!