BEATNIKING IT ON THE ROAD

I'm still alive. You'd think I'd stay home and write my head off, but staying home feels like prison. No more coffee shops to write in. Have been getting out on the road and driving, listening to jazz, making videos. But, hit or miss, I have polished off two more short stories that I began months ago but set aside when they weren't going anywhere. So I'm happy enough, waiting for my poem to appear in Zero Dark Thirty.

Have weird feeling from time to time before I set out each day to drive or get a soy chai that no one is outside anymore, but, there they are at the Starbucks for "grab and go" service only. The Vancouver Mall is closed currently for at least two weeks. Some small businesses are really getting hurt. The potential for this Covid-19 is awful, but if too many people feel as I do—not very scared at all—then they'll be doing risky business for seniors like myself. What is only a cold for a young dancer in a bar is death for a guy at the supermarket. 

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BARBECUE AND BEATNIK THOUGHTS

I just ate a pulled pork barbecue sandwich at the Van Mall. Delicious. Could have used a bit more of the delicious sauce. Will ask for it next time. A local company, the Backyard Barbecue.

Now to business. Has been suggested by several websites that these entries ought to occur every other day or so. To keep readers titillated. But I figure, why write if news is sparse? Just finished rework of poetry ms about cancer treatments YOU WAKE ONE MORNING, REMEMBERING and submitted it to BKMK Press contest at University of Missouri. Cost thirty dollars to enter. Administrative costs, they say. Well, a bit too much I figure. But, the contest is prestigious and those who enter do so anonymously. Fair and square.

Next task is to put together another short fiction ms and enter it in contests too. The one I have already put together contains too many stories that modern editors will reject. Their style probably sounds out of date to a youthful editor. I imagine they don't get the charge out of those that I do. I hope another surge of short stories arises in my psyche.

Last task on list is to put together a poetry ms from my lifetime of work, the published and the unpublished — the very best I have written and circulate the ms in contests.  

PS: The prostate cancer news is so so. Need more talk with urologist, I think.

SHORT ONE WHILE I CATCH MY BEATNIKING BREATH

Got photo here!

I'm falling behind in these entries, but the final rewrite is taking a longer time than I expected. Has it been 3 or 4 weeks, and I'm only on page 152? If 3 weeks have passed that's less than 50 pages a week. Or less. However, I'm still very pleased with how well the novel reads. It appears to be a very publishable novel. So, I'm halfway to my goal of getting someone other than myself to publish a book of mine. It's an interesting novel and it makes room for lots of sequels... probably one of the prerequisites for publishing these days. Now, a lady has sat herself down next to me at Barnes & Noble to talk on her phone at the counter where I'm working on this blog entry. So I'm done and out of here. Off to my walk at the Vancouver Mall. It's raining, you see. On and off.

FARTS BLOW AWAY, BEATNICK BOOMER REFRESHED

Me happily at work in the moment

In the Van Mall where I'll walk soon. Took half a morning here to download my "Silent Boomer" blog site on Blogger. A great morning. Broke through a month of writer's block. You readers may have caught a whiff of blockage in all my posts before this one. Lots of gaseous farting around with quavering "chin up and muster on" from the British films of my past. 

The way now opens into the next third—or more—of Manning—the secrets I'm keeping from the reader, the revelations and twisty turns of plot laid out before me in a rough order. It's congealing, the plot is. See many chapters ahead. My interest freshens. 

I may have mentioned this, but it bares repeating. By jotting down brief statements about Charley Manning's actions and thoughts and discoveries, the plot, as it comes to me, can be laid out in short statements through my main character:

1. Manning discovers that [   ] is not really on his side.
2. Manning learns that [   ] was killed by [   ]. [   ] does not know this, but [   ] does. 

That plotting device helps me remember and structure the book. I'm not revealing more. You won't buy the book when it comes out if you know all the surprises and twists. 

Today, I worked on Manning at the downtown Vancouver library, one of the three places I like most to write in when home feels too confining. The other two are Black Rock Coffee on 164th where I worked on Tuesday and Torque in downtown Vancouver where I worked yesterday morning.