GHOUL WORLD, GHOUL WORLD, GHOUL WORLD

Me behind reflections on my glasses with crooked smile as I begin the unknown number of another rewrite of my science fiction novel Ghoul World. You know? I believe in this novel. I knew it was a good idea when it first struck me in the head a decade or so back. Agents are dumb things, looking for I don't know what, but they are sure missing a good book with a potential to be turned into a sci-fi movie.
 

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 Specially if one's age suggests his/her thoughts may be out of date.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. 

SILENT BEATNIK BOOMER AND THE BARTLETT

The Bartlett bar

75 people looked in on my bucket list quest yesterday. They find it on my Facebook page, The Silent Boomer, rather than directly here, I believe. I'm still confused by Google, Facebook and Silent Boomer connectivity. I'm going to have to step away from writing for the next five days or so again. On road to Spokane again, and I can't seem to write on the road. Speaking of the road, I watched On The Road last night for a 2nd time, a faithful chronological rendering of the novel. We're visiting my father-in-law who has recently entered hospice care from complications of diabetes. My wife has had to deal with my cancer last year and now her father is in decline. Think loving thoughts. While in Spokane we have previously ordered tickets for my son's improv group at The Bartlett.

I requested and received a confirmation about my poem "The Legacy" but still waiting the contract that makes it official before I say anything here. It's been months since I sent out any of my novels to agents. It's so hard for me to take the time away from actually writing to send out my work, tailor the query letters to the agents. I know there is now a service that takes over a writer's submissions, but I am slow to pick up on it. It's like having a paid agent for agents. Where does the retrogression end? Sometimes I feel I'm right on the verge...the "verge" of what?

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.

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.

BEATNICK BOOMER INSIDE THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

This is me in the external beam irradiation machine at PeaceHealth. I got Deana one of the techs to snap the photo. The big round head looking down on me is the piece that shoots me with radiation. To its left on the diagonal is one of the arms that takes x-rays. The other x-ray arm, a square, is peeking out below the table. The x-ray arms are retracted at the moment. The techs go into another room and extend those x-ray arms. The entire unit circles my body, then the x-ray readings of the location of my prostate with the implanted fiducials is fed into the computer and the table I lie on makes the final adjustments, then I'm zapped. The process takes about 20 minutes. Compared to the 40 minute Cyberknife treatments, it's fast. I tell the techs with a laugh it's a "zip... zap... zoom..." process. I'm hopeful and tranquil enough about everything. 

Mertie and I went into Portland to see Cafe Society, Woody Allen's latest. We weren't as impressed as by Paris Nights. We aren't alone in our judgment, but the film was interesting enough. 

The rewrite on The Porn Writer still moves along nicely, but as I said in an earlier entry, I'm giving myself permission to let the writing go hang if I feel stressed. Mainly I need to stay rested and get in some exercise and run necessary errands and prepare or serve [already made meals] when Mertie comes home from work. Nine more treatments. Will be done a week from this coming Friday. Though I haven't been sending out many things, I still have about 15 items out being looked at. The queries for my novels are falling behind because they require more work. I try to make my query letters fit the agent I'm sending them to. I imagine I sense things about them from looking them up on Google and from the presentations on their websites.

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.