THIS AND THAT...A LITTLE BIT OF

Holy Jumping Jehoshaphat! Last two days of rewrite of Ghoul World, I've done two chapters each day. Will begin Chapter -15- tomorrow. Moving right along. I thought Colbert's second show was stronger than his first. His sendup of Trump during his first show was silly and juvenile, nearly, but his second night's political bit sounded more like the style he originated at Comedy Central. More sophisticated. Oh, listen to Mister Sophisticate, George Thomas, or Silent Boomer or ex-Beatnick hippy, and whathaveyou. 

Had a great time at the recent National Beat Poetry Festival: Portland PDX version. I mean it was grooving and moving, loud and packed.

For our 15th wedding anniversary, my wife, Mertie, took us to

Jimmy Mak's jazz club to listen to jazz and eat dinner. She did this because every time we've walked past Jimmy Mak's since arriving in Vancouver, I've said, "We gotta go there sometime." So, she got us there. What a sweetheart she is. I got her Crystal earrings and a Glen Campbell DVD because, lately, she's been saying, "We gotta have some Glen Campbell in the house." Secondly, because the 15th wedding anniversary is the glass or crystal anniversary. I've used Mak's in my Ghoul World novel, but the club in my book doesn't look anything like the real place, but, of course, it's two hundred years from now. 

SILENT BOOMER BOMBS ON BEATNICK PLOT

Here be Iam...clearly not keeping the every other day rule for blog-keepers, but I'm hard at work, writing away. Writing an adventure slash mystery is a fascinating process.  

The hard part about being an ancient sentient like myself is that I've got to write a lot down so I can refresh my mind about what's gone before. I've got reams of notes.Today, looking ahead, in order to clarify the future, I wrote down several coming moments, discovering that plot elements require causes and create effects. I tried listing, separately, actions which Manning must take and the conditions that necessitate those actions and what conditions must follow after those actions. Actions are precipitated by the knowledge a character must have in order to do that deed and actions also precipitate further actions. Actions have consequences.

This problem is all about dividing the plotting process into categories of some kind. The categories are hard to describe and list. For example, I write down "Manning meets with McDaniel's representatives". Simple enough. Then, I've got to provide a clear reason for the meeting. Who called the meeting and why? McDaniel's or Manning? What does "who calls the meeting" reveal about the sorts of knowledge each party has in order to meet? 

More than once, I've written an action into the plot that can't happen unless other things have happened before it. The actors must possess certain information that will precipitate the situation or the action can't occur. Sometimes a character will do something he can't be doing if he really knows what I've written that he already knows...and vice versa. If one is not careful, some ridiculous things can happen. Maybe even this last paragraph is hard to follow, eh?