IT'S ALL ABOUT ENDINGS

Guess who had a tooth removed? And who's a bit giddy with Hydrocodone? You're right. Me. The hole isn't permanent. Going for broke with an implant. But since this is a writer's blog, let me get to the point. Just finished watching What They Had. Ah, the trouble with endings. Elizabeth Chomko wrote and directed this little gem, but she had problems with it. The ending. I think she tried to end the film maybe four times.I recognized at least three potential endings. 

We writers? Don't we always struggle to get an ending right? I see it all the time in films and books. Sometimes, I get so philosophically above the craft that I realize no ending's right. When Mertie and I bought our last home in Spokane, Washington, I recall saying, "This is it. This is where I'll end my life." Then Mertie, my darling wife, decided she wanted to make a little more money. She deserved more money, she said, so we came to Vancouver, Washington for a better paying job. Now, I think this might be where I die, yet, Spokane is always on our minds. If only it weren't for the snow.

So you see? Life keeps going on after the artistic ending of any book, story, film or play. When I'm in that mood, endings trouble any creative endeavor for me. Fact is that for each of us there is only one ending, and who doesn't know what that is?

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE HUCKLEBERRY

The rewritten "All About Jane" has already been rejected by a magazine called Chestnut Review which collected a fat $5 fee for considering it. They took all of 5 days to consider it. Fair to say I get rejected a lot. Most writers do unless they have huge name recognition, but 5 days and $5? Makes me think it could be a scam. Easy... form a magazine, put it into Poets & Writers Magazine and charge a $5 reading fee. Publish the magazine online for very low cost and make at least pocket money rather than lose money as I did publishing George & Mertie's Place. Most magazines these days use Submittable to handle mss and Submittable gets $3 to handle a ms. Fair enough, but $5? I'm tearing up my file card for that market. Too suspicious. 

by rob mulally @unsplash

Good news on the other hand. One of my poems has been accepted by current Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna. It appears on the map. You will find the poem by clicking on the red button about 2/3 of the way on Interstate 90 from Spokane to Seattle. A very handy blip on I-90 occurs just below the red dot. The dot represents Huckleberry Mountain in the North Cascades whose name is in the title of my poem "Group Encounter at Huckleberry Mountain".

SILENT MAN'S SILENCE IS TROUBLING

It looks black when nothing inspires me.......

I'm sorry I've neglected this blog for so many days, but a couple of days I was in Spokane watching my youngest son, Patrick, perform with his improv group at the Bartlett. Sold out, lots of laughter. The Bartlett is an interesting venue. A bar, an espresso joint and a performance room in the back are interconnected. Later we walked Spokane's downtown streets, and it is a jumping place nowadays, people spilling out on the sidewalks. We couldn't find a quiet bar where we could talk so we ended up at the Onion where I got myself a bowl of their forever great onion soup. So delicious. My oldest son Sean and my daughter-in-law Sheila are coming over to visit, and Mertie and I are looking forward to visiting and maybe playing some board games.
 
On the other hand, many days these days, doldrums set in and nothing creative goes on in my head—"NOTHING," he shouts—and it's scary. These days I have to have a particularly sharp day in order to work at something. My inspiration is weak and faltering. I ask myself if it will completely disappear someday soon. 

On yet a third hand, I do sit down and submit poetry, short stories to magazines and queries to agents for the novel. Working at that does give me a sense of accomplishment. Currently, I have between 15 and 20 submissions out.

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. 

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.

THE BEATNIK CONTINUES ON HIS NASTY WAY

Twelve days have passed since my last entry. According to authorities, if one keeps a writer's blog, he ought to make a brief entry every other day in order to keep readers interested. Brevity and frequency are the hooks, but there's little to report. At this time, four novels are out to agents or small press publishers, and I dispersed another 56 dollars to enter 3 short story contests. Currently, I'm reworking The Porn Writer for a 3rd time. I like the book better each time I work on it. It's truthful, but will unhappy material sell in our current culture? For my own guidance, I've reduced its theme to a single sentence: The Porn Writer explores the dysfunctional dance of sexual addiction between a man who grew up without the nurturing love of a mother, and a female victim of sexual abuse.    

 The first person narrator of my tale isn't particularly appealing, and the female is written as a lost soul. What troubles me in all such tales is that, usually, the lost woman gets all the sympathy while the male protagonist is frequently cast as a villain. The truth is that each chose the other in order to work out his and her issues with the opposite sex. The fact that I use pornographic writing to intensify the struggle between them will probably also turn off more delicate readers.

The photo above is my own of the Spokane River in Spring as it runs through downtown.

HENRY MILLER, STEP ASIDE. HERE COMES THE BEATNIK BOOMER

Can't tell you how much this 77 year old writer is enjoying the rewriting of his novel, The Porn Writer, once known as The Porno Writer. I wrote the novel when I lived on Cannon Street in Spokane, Washington. That period in my life was when I also wrote all the poetry that is now included in Gray House By Cold Mountain which is probably the most authentic poetry I've ever written. So far, I've already rewritten 11 chapters, nearly 100 pages, in a week and a half of work. Everything about this novel thrills me and carries me forward. I'm excited to rediscover all I put into it. For some damn, probably fearful, reason, I put the novel aside, finished but discarded for some reason. As I slowly rediscover this novel, I'm excited at how it deals with the many issues I faced in my own recovery from alcoholism and also worked through my issues with women. The style and subject matter is a shocker for the timid, but how else can the timid, as I was timid, deal with sexual matters except by exploring them unabashedly and forthrightly? 

BEAT BOOMER'S SILENT DAY TRIP

Felt so "dead" this morning, I couldn't force myself to work on the Manning novel. Instead, took a drive North into a rainy, gray landscape of hills and expensive homes, hunting for something. Back in Spokane, I used to drive into scab rock areas, seeking out roads marked as "Primitive" so I could enjoy this feeling of ... what?

Today, I realized I'd been hunting a specific "feeling". Some call that feeling a spiritual feeling. Modern religious people continually seek new churches ... they wish to get that spiritual high. They want to be moved. Popular music brings modern youths to those "spiritual" moments, just as the symphonic music moved me to tears a couple of weeks ago. Others have sought god in the wilderness and many have had experiences of transcendent power in a natural landscape.

Atheists, like myself, are no different. We like to feel "spiritual" experiences too. The fact that atheists can have transcendent experiences separate from the idea of a god is one proof that all highly charged emotional moments have nothing to do with god or gods or goddesses for that matter. The one is an idea; the other is a purely physical sensation.

The thing I keep in mind when I think about "religious" experiences is that all highs are universally accompanied by lows of a depth equal to the intensity of the high. In my experience, cycles of highs and lows signal an imbalance of feeling. Moderation in all things is the antidote to emotions run wild. Now, that said, will my urge to complete the Manning novel return or has Jorge Tomas reached another dead end? 

"Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Vantucky
With the Memphis blues again?"

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/stuck-inside-mobile-memphis-blues-again#ixzz2vDcFcRGI"