Currently reading The Moral Animal by Robert Wright for a second time while plowing ahead on my untitled sci fi screenplay. Nearly finished with first draft, I'm enjoying the process a great deal, and, I already have another idea for a film script. This is an odd trajectory because it's even harder to find an agent for a film script than a novel.
A couple of days ago, I sent off a query for my novel, Angie's Choice, to a New York agency. But the interesting thing was how I felt about the query process since it was an old fashioned agency and wanted a hard copy query in the U.S. mail service. As I took out the two pages of auto bio and 20 pages of manuscript and tapped them on the desk to align their edges, I experienced a bodily sensation that returned me to the years when all queries and manuscripts were sent through the U.S. mail. I recalled putting together and sending out whole manuscripts, boxed up and carried to the local post office. I felt connected to all the past writers of the world, through all the most recent centuries of the world when manuscripts were ink on paper.
My children, now all grown up beings in the world, suggested I ought to begin to make these "Silent Boomer" blog entries as videos. They say that many people have found multitudinous followers by doing blogs as video presentations. My oldest boy says that it seems the more awkward and unprofessional the video is, the better followers seem to like them. I'm intrigued and think about it from time to time. I ask myself if that would really help me to achieve the one item on my bucket list: to get someone other than myself to publish one of my novels before I kick it.
Addendum: Or film script.
My oft stated goal in writing the futuristic novel Manning (working title) is to see if before I die I can get someone other than myself to publish a book I've written. I'm talking success, here, with a capital, SUCK! For publisher, film maker and for me.
In The Moral Animal, author Robert Wright uses Charles Darwin's life to demonstrate
that human animals share values with other species. He points out
that good monkey Darwin, for all that his ideas shocked the world, was
very careful about his approach to relationships and to expressing his ideas. Darwin held back for 20 years announcing the facts he'd
gathered because he didn't want to destroy his
wife's faith, and he was choosy about his friends. As Darwin's influence and
friendships grew among the intellects of his time, he slowly dropped
friendships with people who were not as well known as he. Darwin did not consciously reject them. It just
happened. The more he was caught up in success, the less time he had for
many old friends. (Recall Woody Allen's Stardust Memories when an old neighborhood pal comes up to Sandy Bates and asks Bates if Bates remembers him? Pow!)
On occasion, I've been in the presence
of writers of distinction and have felt out of place with them. It's as
if their experiences with financial success put them automatically into an experiential realm I'm not acclimated to. My reticence created my half of those situations. Let me tell you, if I hadn't had to deal with my personal issues before I could tackle the world of success, my life would
have gone swimmingly different. I can see the experience for writing a successful book
getting strong in me just as age is slowing my mental reflexes and memory. Will I reach the other side or fall through a crack in time?
