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.

WEATHER BEATING TOWARD SNOW WHILE SILENT WRITES

Staring out the window of Black Rock Coffee where I'm writing today, rising out of the distant treeline, I can see the cap of snow on Mt. Hood. In this region, just about anywhere you go, you can spot the snow capped peak of Mt. Hood. It's as iconic to Portland and surrounding Oregon sites as Japan's Mt. Fuji is to the Japanese. This photo I've just taken with my laptop's PhotoBooth camera doesn't clearly show Mt. Hood which I can see in the distance between Al's Bowling and another building to Al's right. It's peak is directly entwined in the barren branches of the first tree back from the foreground tree.

The writing is going well today. Inserted a new segment after segment #6, renumbered the following segments and got well into a date between Manning and weather woman Misty Frampton which will be segment #21. The relationship between my two ghouls is going in its own direction. I keep wanting to make it one thing, but it keeps wanting to be another thing altogether. I like that, but will I pay attention to its real presence in my subconscious?

Sometimes futuristic language can be funny. Would you, as a reader, accept the term "ghoulanity" as having replaced "humanity" in our species' future? Or is it just too humorous for words? Those are the decisions in futuristic writing. Writing is fun when it  goes as it has today. Now over to Fred Meyer to put in my hour walk, during this 32 degree frigidly sunny afternoon.