BEATNICK BOOMER COMES CLEAN IN THE END

Can't believe how my mind bonks around from one pinball bumper to another. I haven't begun the novel that I foresaw while rewriting the short story, "Personal". That tale, novel or short story, is still dangling in space. Instead, in hopes of preparing a novel more quickly in my effort to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket, I'm now four chapters into a fourth [or fifth?] rewrite of my novel, The Porn Writer. I realized that I'd buried the first meeting between the two protagonists in chapter three, using the first two chapters to introduce the male of the dynamic duo—I thought cleverly—but in a novel about a relationship, the two "lovers" or "protagonists" ought to be introduced pretty quickly, don't you agree? "Yes, I do agree," I say to myself in a literary aside.  

So much to learn and so little time, I think. You might ask, "Why did you wait so long to learn these lessons?" And I tell you that it wasn't until I was deeply into old age that I grew the maturity to rewrite any long work four or five times to get it right. Thus, I never treated any novel as a process of learning. I was just rushing through, being as "cleverly brilliant" as I thought I was when I was too young to know better.

The biopsy of my prostate takes place Wednesday morning. If you've a mind to keep me in your thoughts as I lie face down while yet another thing is put behind me. I've had several days of moping about the possible cancer. Today is a little better. 

BEATNIK BOOMER BOUNCING TWIXT PIZZAZ AND BLAHS

ASKING: Find this at this link:

Still reworking the short stories to make a book of them. The project could easily take a year. By submitting them to market as I go along and getting another publication or two my query credentials will have more impact. Have been on "Haunted By Henry Miller" for several days. I'm depersonalizing the narrative, not giving proper names to the characters involved. They are referred to as "the young husband" or "the college girl" and other impersonal nouns. The strategy seems to intensify the feeling of manipulation in the story.  

Have sent queries to several more agents for two novels: Ghoul World and The Porn Writer [aka Programming Frank Singletary]. I switch back and forth between the two names, depending how I feel about the agent I'm querying. Another case of how emotions direct our behaviors. Found a solid list of agents looking for science fiction. Will send Ghoul World to all of them eventually. I feel empowered the more queries I send out. 

I'm very upset that the pictures I put into this blog don't show up on Facebook. Anybody know why this change? Probably a battle between giant corps in which we munchkins become single bite size hors d'oeuvres. 

Ever since we moved to Vancouver from Spokane, I've not had the sort of relationships that nurture me as those did in the past. I feel most alive when I communicate by writing. Among people and sober as I am, I often feel unimportant and detached. 

FOURBYTWO ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP BOOMERBEATNIK

Ten days between entries here. Sorry. Last night and this morning, this old writer got to work and submitted five short stories for consideration at five literary magazines. Also sent two more queries about my novel, Programming Frank Singletary. Feels productive. My reading at this time is the anthology, Cutbank 83, which I received as part of my unsuccessful entry into its recent short story competition. Some of the work within its pages fascinates me. A style I don't yet understand, but I'm willing to understand, at least as willing as Copperfield's Barkis ever was. I believe some young writers might be trying to write stories as robots might write them or by revealing their tales through the eyes of a person without free will. Not sure. Just a guess. I'd like it to be true as it's about time writers align ourselves with the facts. I may be too old to catch up or on.

Also, the most recent FourByTwo is in my hungry clutches. As usual, the look of the little magazine is classy and the poetry sassy. That word choice and rhyme are almost so awful they ought not be connected to the fine thing that FourByTwo is. I'm showing you a couple of poems that are by klipschutz. The other poet is Michael Earl Craig. Craig, by the way, hails from Dayton, Ohio, my own birthplace. Most of the time, I select for sample the poet who is not klipschutz, but this time I went the other way. This is not a comment on Craig's work. It's just that I thought klipschutz ought to have a turn in this blog. Money is becoming an issue for them. Doesn't it always?

PETE SEEGER TICKY-TACK? NO MORE.

Just finished my walk. 85 degrees outside. Tomorrow, back into the 90s. Spent between 4 and 4 1/2 hours, as promised to myself, sending off 4 queries to agents this morning. Three went out for Programming Frank Singletary and one went out for Ghoul World. Even as I rewrite Ghoul World for the third time, I intend to send out the second version. It's good enough to go as is, I think, but another rewrite won't hurt. If someone likes the current version, that's all to the good. As a younger writer, I don't think I'd do it this way, but my age rushes me a bit. 
Part of my walk, as usual, was through an expensive neighborhood to the north. I look at those homes and would like to see us in one of the smaller, one story homes there [$500,000]. Of course, she might reject such a move, being the woman she is. When I was young, and city neighborhoods were Pete Seeger ticky-tack in my head, I could not entertain such an ambition. I was full of hate for the middle class, but my hate turned out to be my hate for my bourgeois self that I feared made me very ordinary and unable to achieve success in the creative world. Now, here I am, 77, and still striving. Speaking of success, my wife and I took along audio books to listen to during our drive to Yellowstone. We listened to a mystery by a woman author who shall go nameless. Not a name I recognized, but my wife has read other of her books. The writer was making stylistic "errors" that I've been upset at myself for making, yet, there her work was, on an audio tape. The story line was intriguing. I feel that Ghoul World has a solid story line. We'll see.

NOT BEATNICKING OFF. DONE.

I stole this picture here:

Third rewrite is done, Programming Frank Singletary. Finished yesterday morning then drove into Portland to attend the monthly lunch with Humanist of Greater Portland men. All old timers, we talked about the various ways to maintain erections after prostate removal. Laughing, we said we were relieved no younger members were at the lunch. They'd be traumatized. 

I haven't mentioned that my novel, Angie's Choice, was rejected for publication in a contest I entered. It was 9 1/2 months in process. 

This morning I've tried to do some poetry rewriting to put another poetry ms. together. A practice run for self-publishing on Amazon, but I wasn't inspired. My heart wasn't in it. I must get busy on rewrite of Ghoul World. Think I'll take a course in screenplay writing at Northwest Film Center so I can turn the novel into a screen play too. It still needs work, I'm sure. Tighten up the tension.  

This morning I also gave myself permission to take it easy for a month or a couple of weeks, kick back and read. Can't seem to do it. Think I fear my mental powers further declining.

SIGH OF RELIEF BOOMS OUT

Still, I'm working on the final chapter of Programming Frank Singletary, but I'm over the hump, the anguish subsided, and happy to be saying what I want to say at the end of a pornographic novel about sexual obsession. Should wrap up this rewrite within a day or two. 

Also, reading with respect and affection the most recent FOURBYTWO, subtitled, elsewheres. The poetry of Klipschutz and translations of several German poets by Scott J. Thompson are inside. Thompson's translation skills from the German are beyond my talents to evaluate but reading the English versions is satisfaction enough for me. Below is one of Thompson's translations of Georg Trakl's (1887-1914) imagistic poems:

SLEEP
Be damned, you dark poisons,
White sleep!
This most eccentric garden
Of twilit trees
Full of snakes, night moths,
Spiders, bats.
Stranger! Your abandoned shadow
In the sunset,
A sinister corsair
In the salty sea of anguish.
White birds flutter up at night's edge
Over collapsing cities
Of steel.

THE WIFE OF A LIFETIME

Hopeful today even though I'm still  rewriting the last chapter of Programming Frank Singletary, the uncomfortable tale of a dysfunctional relationship between two badly damaged human beans.

Find these photos at following link.

I think I'm emerging from the anxiety that had me blocked in such a way I couldn't see my way clear to the end of this novel. I still don't see my way clearly to the ending, but hope that I will has returned.

The very act of writing is critical to my mental health because when I'm blocked, unable to go forward, I'm frantic and in pain. I believe this is a childhood thing when I felt so many things I was unable to articulate. I could only feel and twist in the wind. The act of communication is critical to my mental health. Which makes me feel grateful all over again for the wife with whom I can share most anything. I have not one secret from her. I've shared the most shameful things from my past with her. 

BEAT ME DADDY 8 TIMES TO THE HEAD

Find photo here:

AAAAARG! I'm still on rewrite of Programming Frank Singletary. Who would of thought it would take so long when I began? I'm wondering if my unconscious is heeding my oft spoken wish about writing something beautiful? Of course, a graphically precise novel about dysfunctional relationships in which things very close to rape happen is not the sort of novel that most people would call "beautiful". Still, if it's writ true enough, it might have a "truth is beauty" of its own. The past week has been terrible at times. I've nearly regressed mentally to the heavy drinking past when I'd experience weeks of anguish, thinking everything I wrote was garbage. I had days, back then, when I could not bear to read my own work without twisting in the wind. Everything I wrote, I was convinced, was garbage. However, currently, as I slave away at one or two paragraphs for a couple of hours, and I see they are becoming more closely related to reality as I know it...I continually see improvement. Only problem, now, is will I be able to rewrite my entire cannon of novels before I die. I awoke in the middle of the night last night with the awful knowledge that the novel, Ghoul World, I've put so much hope into is badly flawed. It's set too far into the future, but if I bring it toward the now, then many other problems present themselves. I already know I must improve the beginning or Angie's Choice. Oh, woe, is me—the plight of the aging novelist.

BEAT TOO BEAT TO BEAT THE KEYS

Yeah. Me again.

Today is no better than my last entry. I'm stuck in rewrite of last chapter and don't know why. The heat? Anxiety? Old age? Ejaculatory dysfunction? Maybe the original ending, deep in my subconscious, is making a play to remain unchanged?

SILENT BOOMER PLANS TO END IT ALL

Brief note about current writing project. I'm still trying to complete a third rewrite of Programming Frank Singletary once known as The Porn Writer. I imagined I'd be done in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Had two chapters left but have hung fire on them for weeks. In fact, I'm altering how the novel ends. The original ending [see below], I thought of as existential and clever. Now, I'm hoping to make it more realistic and positive, I suppose. 

"Jesus Christ, what a mystery I am to myself! Penetrated with shame and emptiness, I lower my head and stare at the floor. So this is how I live, who I really am, I think, as I bend to pick up a small square of paper which lies on the floor, half under the mattress. Some writing on it. In an odd mood, I tell myself, Pretend this is a message left by the great big bang evolutionary force of the universe specially for me. I begin to read...."   THE END 

Wow! Writing is so mysterious. After reworking this ending paragraph, I'm now leaning toward leaving the ending as is. Of course, it's obviously a way to start a novel. Guess, I'll stop now, go for a walk and ponder the imponderables.

IN EVERY OLD SILENT BOOMER IS A CHILD

Art about imagination found here:

If I don't improve on the number of entries I put up here, I may lose potential readers of this writer's blog. I notice all the single visits or the odd two visits as readers check in to see if I've put up new material. Actually, nothing much is cooking except my hopes arise anew as I think of new ways to improve the four books I'm rewriting currently. For example, I'm considering changing Programming Frank Singletary to a third person narrator rather than the first person, Frank, who now narrates the fiction. As far as rejection letters or acceptances? Still no new events. I've decided to put Chapter One back into Ghoul World. The chapter goes a long way toward informing the reader of how the Rotting Plague works on human biology. Odd, that I read something into one rejection letter and IMAGINED that removing Chapter One would answer the complaint I IMAGINED was being made. Tonight, my wife and I were watching a science fiction movie, and I noticed the writer made a mistake I continually am learning to avoid...extra words and illogical reality. The piece of dialogue went, "I felt almost like I was drowning." If the character "almost" felt like he was drowning, then he couldn't have felt as if he was drowning. He either felt like he was drowning or he didn't. I told Mertie the line should read, "He felt like he was drowning." She suggested, even more forcibly, "He was drowning." The character was not describing an actual near-drowning event. The remark was a psychological remark. Another word I overuse is "just" as in "I just wanted to get your opinion." Wouldn't, "I wanted to get your opinion" work just as well. Granted...I do see occasions where "just" is justified, just between you and I [me].  

GALLERY 360 BOOK FAIR A TRIUMPH

They bought my book, Tenderfoot

I sold four books at the Gallery 360 Book Fair put together by Peggy Bird and promoted strongly by Clark County Poet Laureate Chris Luna. Mertie came down to Gallery 360 to take a look and bought 9 books from one of the other book sellers...children's books for her nieces and nephews in Spokane. We're losing money, but who cares, as long as writers and poets get the money. We're heading to Spokane during whatever week of July holds the 13th... Mertie's birthday. 

The young man, above, opened Tenderfoot and began to read the following poem: 

SKATING THIN ICE

 

Stepping from the landlocked trees to ice,

On thin, steel blades, the skater leaves

His two sure feet and sails;

     He skims the grey-smooth ice on out

To places where the firmness softens and water's deep.

There, black holes gape and bubbles rise

Through thick, black water like thoughts of gods.

     That far out on flying edges,

The skater's body quails with soaring fear,

And shore fires cast a fitful light

On small musings that freeze like cubes of ice;

     That far out

The rugged shore and threadbare trees

Seem dreams that edge a frozen universe

Where bubble thoughts drift up through thick

Black air on spumes of mist to burst away,

     And water's deep.

I told him I thought the poem was about taking intellectual risks, about thinking like an atheist...or something like one. 

Still no news on the novels and short stories I have in circulation. Down to two chapters on the rewrite of the novel Programming Frank Singletary that was once upon a time called The Porno Writer.

HIP BEAT SALES EVENT!!!!!!!!!!

I'm the one on your right. I've got absolutely nothing to report on my goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine. No recent rejections or acceptances. I'm still busy on another rewrite of the novel I used to call, The Porn Writer. Now it's called, Programming Frank Singletary. It remains a story about sexual dysfunction between two damaged people told with pornographic detail. However, if you all live in the Vancouver, WA area, stop by this coming Saturday, 20th of June, at Gallery 360 between noon and 3 where several local authors, myself included, will be selling our books. I have two poetry books for sale. 

However, if you're not local, you can find both my poetry books on Amazon: Tenderfoot and Gray House By Cold Mountain. The second one is X-rated. 

FORGING A NEW TITLE

Find photo here I'm considering a major change in my novel, The Porn Writer. I'm trying it on for size. The new title to be Programming Frank Singletary or The Programming of Franklin Singletary. And the first three lines of the novel will be as follows: "First, we must agree. I’m a robot of flesh and blood. Everything else follows from that during those days I shared a second floor walkup on Main Street with Rosereo and Irma." and so it goes. This alteration will cause not much else to change in the novel either but it's an entirely different take on what happens in the novel without changing anything that happens. Over the past couple of years I keep toying with how to approach a novel in which all characters are portrayed as the robots that neuroscience is proving we are, and nothing will jell. The few times I've tried, the language feels awkward, but, then, maybe the expressions only feel awkward because reality is changed. I think DeLillo's work probably shows some of the ways I might go at this late time in my writing career. I mean, after all, DeLillo is all of a year older than me.