Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."
Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.
The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.
I feel the necessity to comment even though demand is
down. Since May 9, I have created 24 stories, beginning with "The Line Ahead". I just finished the 24th story, "The Phone Call". All this began when I picked up an old collection of Ray Carver's tales Will You Please Be Quiet Please that was yellowing on a bookshelf in the office. So he was influenced by Hemingway and Chekhov? Now I'm influenced by his writing. I also doted on Hemingway and Chekhov back in the 1960s. I believe a line can be drawn through the connections. What a bitch that Carver died at age 50 of lung cancer. He was a smoker. Now e-cigarettes are killing people with lung ailments. Drawing anything but air into our lungs is risky. Thus the need [political opinion follows] for protection of our atmosphere. Clean air is a necessity for the human species. For all mammals to be exact. Even fish need oxygen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGvQsWW1As
Eighty-six people checked in so time for another entry. I sent off a short story ms to a prestigious competition. I believe I have no chance. A name writer will have the best chance. The press will want to make money on their publication. A name draw will do that. Still, I had fun putting the ms together—stories written in many styles over the years. In truth, I think I've been a myna bird kind of writer. A copycat of styles. I read something and a story pops into mind in that writer's voice. The stories in the ms represent Hammett, Allen [Woody], Carver, Hemingway, Salinger... at least that many voices. Maybe Dickens in spots. I don't seem to have developed a voice of my own. Maybe I'm just an inauthentic character in someone's novel without a voice of my own.
At SIU during my first stab at a Masters In English, a fellow TA [Terry Brown] asked me to type up a ms for him, a paper he wrote
on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I couldn't help myself and began to imitate Swift's style, altering the style of my friend's paper quite a bit. He couldn't believe I'd done such a thing. Looking back, I can't believe I did it either.
I've written 17 stories in the past two months. Reading Carver set them off. Him being a recovered alcoholic might have something to do with my sounding like him and their themes being similar. I seem to be happiest when I'm writing or when I'm in my wife's company.
Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."
