BEAT BEAT

Caption

There are days like this in everyperson's life when s/he wants to quit writing at last for good. Confronting the very small odds that one, even if one writes pretty well, will find an agent who will find a publisher, let alone a movie producer who'll produce the film s/he wrote the novel Ghoul World to reach, is daunting. Sigh. Specially if one's age suggests his/her thoughts may be out of date. But here s/he sits, poised at a Barnes & Noble with laptop open ready to go to work. 

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD AGENT?

One of the agents I send my work to.

The past few days have proven to be worrisome. Several times I thought I was ready to let go of the insanity of continuing to seek publication of a novel or to send out poetry and short stories to lit. mags, then, yesterday while walking in a beautiful local park and having cancer on my mind, I told myself, "One day at a time, dude. Stay in today. Today you're alive and well. Let that be enough." Then this morning, the fog and gloom lifted, and I'm ready to get back to reworking the stories I hope to collect together under the title Many Voices, One Head. I get it that when a writer is sending stuff out and hoping for one of his novels to land an agent, he or she is living always in hope of a future event. When stuff starts trickling back from the outside world, rejections mostly,  an ominous sense of futility begins to bite one's ass. It has always been so, but staying in the now, the writing gets to be fun again.

SILENT BOOMER BEATNIK BOILS SOME SPUDS

Had a good day of rewriting The Porn Writer yesterday and all the doubts that I expressed in the previous blog entry had disappeared. Yesterday's writing is okay today and the story is meaningful again. My doubt today is about agents and what they want. Serials for one thing. Also two women, not agents, have told me they wouldn't read a novel about a dysfunctional relationship between a controlling male and an incest victim in which the male begins to understand that he needs help while the woman goes on to [censored/spoiler]. Most agents these days are women, so that's a potential problem. Watch Lifetime movies if you want to see that limited viewpoint in all its crabbed glory. I don't know how a male author can deal with that mindset. Why must the woman nearly always be the victim? Aha! That statement ought to make the pot boil. It's a hot potato for certain. Also, I must warn that porn passages  my protagonist writes are included in the novel, and for good esthetic reasons. Some readers, of course, won't accept my explanation and will daintily hold the novel between thumb and forefinger as they extend it above the trash heap and release.

SKIPPING A BEAT IN THE BUCKET LIST SONG

Art by Clip, captions by George

Christmas is about to blow your budgets into town on the hooves of Credit Card and Debit. Following that, New Years Evening enters and closes the year under a lampshade chapeau in the carriages of drunken drivers. Probably all the book agents whose ears I seek will be drunk on those ears and worrying about next years shrinking list of publishing houses, so I've decided to stop sending query letters until a new year enters in a stinky diaper. It's been a long time since I've had to dangle a soiled diaper between my fingers while I pee. However, I'll continue to work away at the untitled film script. Even plan to work some on Christmas Eve day tomorrow. 

Just finished reading Japanese author Haruki Murakami's novel, After Dark. That novel, following Craig Lesley's Winterkill, made quite a collision of styles in my literary senses. Now embarking on a 2nd read of Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

If I have any resolutions for the New Year, I'll try to be kinder to troubled people, trying to recall how I felt during those years when suicide was always in my thoughts, and I wished that people would be kinder to me.  It's a rough world for tender consciences.

THIS BEATNIK, HIPPY, SILENT GEN NEWS

Sixty degrees outside and the lucky ol' sun beaming down. Me inside all morning, crafting and whooshing off query letters to agents for my several novels. I'm trying to pay attention to one suggestion that an agent mentioned in an interview—personalize the query if you can. That takes some time consuming research, and, a man my age, how much time do I got? A writer's gotta be almost as creative in writing query letters as he is writing the novels, the poems, the short stories themselves. 

Even though I don't smoke, I took the photo from an online magazine called The Daily Sheeple, an alternative magazine, it says, to help the sheeple "wake the flock up". So it says. I decided I didn't want to know more, even though the alternative news might be tailored for this writer, hissef. I'm not a sheeple, and I'm far too wide awake for my own good as it is.

HAVE BEATNIKED MY WAY TO COMPLETION & NO PROSTATE CANCER!

Found image here....

Today is all happiness and joy. Two great things happened today. Just now, I finished the last rewrite of the novel, Ghoul World. Last night, anticipating the completion, I had already dispatched inquiries with ten page samples to three agents. One of them came back immediately. A form letter that the agent is too busy to look at inquiries at this time.

Today, an hour before I completed the rewrite, I departed the doctor's office with the knowledge that my enlarged prostate is probably not cancerous at this time. The PSA test revealed a smaller number than last time. Though still above normal range, my PSA declined from 6.1 back down to 5.5. It appears my numbers, when graphed, create a sawtooth, up and down, with a small increasing average. Plus my doctor put a blessed digit up my behind and proclaimed he could find no nodules or bumps on my prostate. Somehow, that digi-check and proclamation is more reassuring than bare numbers. 

I CAN SEE IT JUST AHEAD, ON THE ROAD

This is even a shorter blog entry than the last one. Today, a month after beginning the final polishing rewrite of Ghoul World, I crossed the halfway line. So, I'll need at least two month rather than the one I had hoped. Still? Almost there. Then begins the search for an agent. Do any of their species still live on Planet Earth?

BEATNICKING MY WAY THROUGH THE FINAL REWRITE

Scandinavians are happy. Me too!

Today, I reworked the first 27 pages of Ghoul World, aka the Manning novel, smoothing out the rough patches and making consistent the cultural effects and the feel of this futuristic work. The book reads pretty damn good. My wife finished reading it last week and was pleased with it. When I suggested she's biased and might lie to me about the novel, she tells me, "I don't like your novel, The Porno Writer." Well, that's true enough, even though I plan to rework it next................ I think. She found no major plotting errors. That was a great relief to me. 

I spent only two days going through the entire novel and correcting all the grammatical and logical errors that Mertie red penciled for me as she read it. Thanks to her for that read through very much. If all continues as today did, the rewrite ought to be done in no more than a month. Maybe two. Once I get 1/2 way through, I'll start sending it out to agents. That first submission is going to be nerve wracking. I'm expecting this to be published, a movie even, but what writer doesn't feel that way?

I'm specially happy with how the novel ended. I wasn't certain until the very end how it was going to feel, and as the final two chapters flowed out on the computer screen, I was as excited by how it looked and felt as if I was a new reader, rather than the author who slogged away at it for two plus years.

SILENT BOOMER MISSES A CATCH!

Well, here I am, awake in the middle of the night and blank space before my eyes so I'll keep you up to date on the search for an agent to represent my book, Angie's Choice. Unhappily, Mr. Paul Lucas got back to me in less than 24 hours. He tells me that he's a busy man and I believe him.

Of course, I don't know how

close I came!                

Thank you for the opportunity to read your submission. Unfortunately, you have come to me at a time when I am inundated with requests for assistance and representation.  The need to allocate my time effectively forces me to decline participation in many worthy projects, and I regret that must be the decision in the case as well.

I am very sorry not to be able to help you with this project but please accept my best wishes for you in your search for representation. 

Best regards,
Paul 

Paul Lucas  Janklow & Nesbit Associates

I'm thinking next time I'll send off queries to two agents at a time. They get back to me pretty fast. An interesting phenomenon happens every time I send out samples of a novel. I rewrite whatever number of pages they request as a sample. I can never look over a page of my writing that I don't think it can be improved. I don't know whether that's a sign of low self-esteem or just a sign of a too ambitious critic in my head. Sometimes, I change no more than a word or two. Poetry, of course, is a different matter. Frequently, if I've looked over a poem often enough, I can't find a way to improve it's lusture in my mind's eye. 

Yesterday as I walked by the Columbia River, I had an idea for another book that might catch a young agent's attention! But, for now, I want to finish the rewrite of Delinquent Lives. I also have recently finished a short story which I might send off to a short story contest if the entry fee is not too large. 

THE BEAT BOOMER'S WRITING LAIRS

Black Rock

I was impressed years ago when I learned John Updike maintained an office away from home so that he could treat his writing like a regular job where he would show up and "do his writing". Thing is...one must already be successful as a writer to afford an office away from home. With my poem here and short story there success record, I've never reached that degree of financial success. I've always had to go away from home like a coffee shop beatnik or, in the Cheney years while working on my MFA, to The Fireside restaurant where the waitresses were friendly.

Torque

For a short time, while my third wife worked, I stayed home and wrote in the mornings, five and six hours at a stretch. I had an agent at the time, Ruth Cantor in New York, who was handling a book of mine. I thought I was on the verge of a breakthrough, then the marriage collapsed like a punctured bag of hot air, and I fell into a long period of psychological work that improved my life tenfold but did nothing for my writing (ha!) career.


Currently, I'm enjoying another spate of good writing and have published a few more things lately but still no money, never any money. I've included two of my favorite places to write away from home. I stay home, usually, in the morning these days and go out in the afternoon or late morning to write and/or read. They are the Torque downtown at 501 Columbia Street and Black Rock on 164th Avenue in east Vancouver. The Black Rock was designed to feel futuristic and it does and it draws quite a number of young people. The Torque looks like the sort of place that humans hide in to escape the aliens who've taken over the Earth...a warehouse for real. It's got plenty of plugs and an open airy feel that is very stimulating as if it weren't stimulating enough to be the target of prowling aliens.

Happy writing, friends, old and new!

A GOOD MORNING'S REWRITE AND AGENT MOLLY JAFFA

This morning I awoke to a productive morning of rewriting of Delinquent Lives, but after a time, I felt impelled to send off another agent query letter for another novel of mine, Angie's Choice. I resent the constant drain of writing time required to do all the "business" of becoming a published writer, so it's been awhile since I took the time to do that because Angie's Choice is ready for publication. In fact, once upon a time, Angie had an agent.

First I looked for potential agents. I used an October 2012 Writer's Digest. In that issue, several agents encouraged writers to send them work. They asked for it and I'll bet they were immediately overwhelmed by queries. I specifically looked for a female agent interested in women's writing since my heroine is a female. 

Next I went onto the websites of the agencies these agents work with to look for submission guidelines which I follow to a "T". Next, I brought up a master query letter for that specific novel, Angie's Choice, and worked it over to make it more exactly suited for the person I sensed on the other side of her written profile and comments, then, I copied and pasted the finalized letter into an email. Next I included ten pages of Angie's Choice (exactly as the agent requested).

Just to add reality to this post, I've included the name of the agent, Molly Jaffa...a nice name with a literary allusion in it. Think Molly Bloom!

The whole process took one hour and forty minutes of my valuable time. With a sigh of relief, I returned to rewriting Delinquent Lives after lunch with my lovely wife.