REJECTIONS I CAN ALMOST LOVE

What can I say? So close, yet so far. A story published last month, two poems forthcoming soon and this near miss, rejected with high praise. I knew as I wrote these recent tales they are fair to good. This one caught the eye of the very respected Fiddlehead magazine. All this happening as the battle with my prostate cancer moves from my urologist to an oncologist, a sign the disease is worsening. The visit with the oncologist, though, left me with hope for several more good and useful writing years. 

I want to visit Wales this year or next, the home of my ancestors and Dylan Thomas whose work I once upon a time could not get enough of. Those were also my drinking years. 

What a conundrum. I'm hesitant to submit something else to Fiddlehead that might spoil their good opinion of my skills. Ain't that a dandy form of writer's block?

 
 

BEATNIKING THROUGH THE RAPIDS

 Photo by Ivana Cajina @unsplash

What more can I say? I've been roughing out a story every couple of days. Found a groove that works and that I trust. Will have to go back for rewrites, of course, but I like how these tales adhere to reality as I've experienced it and think about it. I tell you this...some of the trick is to change the names and tell it like it was. Words pouring out like rushing waters. Would not imagine that an 81 year old could feel this rejuvinated as a writer.

SILENT BOOMER BEATNIK GOING TO THE PIIF

Drove into Portland this morning to buy tickets for 10 films during the Portland International Film Festival. For me starting on the 9th thru 23rd September some of my writing time will be interrupted by the Festival and the required dislocating travel to and from Portland at odd hours. I especially look forward to two 10:30 pm films at the Bagdad theater for adults only. Lovely experience to come out of theater magic into the nighttime Portland streets and feel all alone creepiness. These foreign films will have subtitles and that allows me with my bad hearing to enjoy films at theaters that don't have captioning devices for old codgers like me. Sometimes when my schedule is so disrupted, writing time gets scramble too, but I'm anticipating great viewing experiences ahead. Mertie who works will go to one film with me on Sunday the 12th. She's okay with this since she likes her routine even more strongly than I like mine. This PIFF extravaganza has become a routine with us. It will be great when she can retire too and join me, but, of course, I'll be in my 90s then...as long as cancer doesn't come back to get me.

BEANICK BOOMER FINISHES A TASK AND TALKS ABOUT INSANITY

Yesterday I finished the 7th rewrite of The Porn Writer, but the doubts are back, a swarm of squids on the sea floor of my imagination. Today I'm reading at the Black Rock on 164th Avenue, Vancouver. Twelve ounces of soy chai for $3.75. At Starbucks it's $4.39. I found a shiny dime on the floor just now. I'm making the mistake of reading Plimpton's book on Truman Capote: in which various friends, enemies, acquaintances and detractors recall his turbulent career. If you read it you'll conclude that you must be alcoholic or bat shit crazy to be creative. It's a picture of how I tried to behave and talk during my drinking years. I thought craziness equated to genius. At least two women in my past told me that the way I used language in those days was a sign of a mentally unbalanced mind. A psychologist who was leading a weekend group encounter session in the Huckleberry Mountains north of Spokane once told me I had a "quicksilver mind". I was quite proud of that, then he asked me if I was there to learn something. When I said, "Yes," he asked me to shut up and listen to what the others had to say. I kid you not, I fell over on my side and went immediately to sleep. That first session he'd put out bottles of wine to loosen us up. I was quickly very loose. The second time I showed up I'd quit drinking. During a walk down a mountain road, the psychologist told me he hadn't liked me very much that first weekend. He said I was now a very different person. I was, but for all my trying to behave like a creative person [my output is immense], I'm 78 [79 on October 20] and have little financial or public acclaim for my efforts. Sometimes I wish I could grasp even a fraction of the way my mind shot between metaphors and linked them in mad clusters of language when I drank. I can't even come close. 

BEATNIK BUMBLES UPON A BEAUT OF A TALE

Find this photo here....

I hope this is short. A biopsy is scheduled for the 11th this merry month of May. Then two weeks following we'll see how aggressive the cancer is. However, more importantly, as it comes to this blog about a writer who is trying to get someone other than himself to publish a novel of his before he kicks the bucket, I'm suddenly smacked between the eyes with a potentially new novel. As you know, I've been rewriting some of my short stories lately with the purpose of putting a collection together to self-publish and to send out individually to see if I can find markets to publish one or two of them and, thus, strengthen the bio that goes out with query letters to potential agents for my novels. Well, I came across this 10,000 word incomplete tale of mine, "Personal", about a frustrated religious woman who responds to a personal ad in a tabloid. The writing is probably some of the best writing I've produced, and, as I've worked through it to get to an ending not yet imagined, I realize it's a potential novel. A novel with rewrites is a two year process, one if rushed. My father had two years from the time his prostate cancer was discovered before he died. I've got to work faster or achieve a better cancer result than my father got. I don't know what to make of my teasing myself about death. I really don't. I'm hoping that under it all is the motive to beat this damn thing and find more time to do the writing I so love to do. And get published to boot!

BEATNIK BOOMER STRIKES OUT AGAIN...AGAINST THE ESTABLISHMENT

Not much to say, here. Today I finished one more rewrite of another short story, then did a complete rewrite of another very short story and came up with a better finish for a third story I'd already finished the rewrite on several days ago. 

See Hemingway influence here? Died age 55. Alcoholism.

What I wanted to say in this entry is something about an impression I have about a couple of published writers. I just finished Whistle by James Jones. Now I'm reading a book written by a writer whose name will not be mentioned. The second book won a Pen/Faulkner Award sometime within the last 15 years. That's a prestigious award offered by the top people in the world of MFA programs for one group. The award winning book is all you "expect" it to be. It's well researched and offers snapshots of many people in many fields of work and play, all of whom talk and act as if the writer knows about or has researched those fields. Phillip Roth, anyone? It's glib and polished and well constructed compared to Jones's novel. You can see that Jones put his poor damn passion in his book for better or worse while the award winning book reveals an easy handling of memorized tactics for writing an award winning book. And talk about a pile on of praise offered by magazines and newspapers? In short, the novel so far bores me. It's got no pizazz. No passion in it. Cooly intellectual, I'd say, and that's all I'm saying here. Detachment? Is that the modern mood? Of course, I haven't finished it yet. Who knows how I'll feel after I finish it? Just before Whistle, I  read Asleep by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto [in translation] and it took me 2/3 of the book before I was dragged into an interest in it. I guess I sort of feel saddened by the fact that the passions of my youth for the men who fought WWII is no longer in style. We've all died and gone to heaven.

4X2 or FOURBYTWO BOOMING ALONG IN BEATNIK TIME

The 8th issue of FOURBYTWO is out from the hands of Klipschutz and Gaulke. If my scan of its contents seems askew, that's in honor of the skewedness of the layout of this particular issue and also of the "poems as in process" of  some the poems by James Schuyler (Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for The Morning of the Poem) included herein, plus the variety of the  typefaces for the various poems by Klipschutz, Rene Ricard (also, like Schuyler, deceased) and Schuyler. Of the three, only Klipschutz (latest, A Visit To The Ranch) is not deceased. The poetry as always is interesting and entertaining. Who could ask more of poetry than that?

As for myself, recently long lost in novel and short story and screenplay writing, poetry has fallen by the wayside, it's little vowels scattered and broken by the winds of fiction. All I have to report is that I'm plugging away at the short fictions I hope to imprison together into a book probably by the end of the year. Other stories are drifting into my imagination to be written for the first time. BUT, will I? At 78, I almost think I hear a gallop of creativity thundering over the far horizon, coming my way. Or, maybe, it's only the sound of my horse drawn hearse. 

POET, SILENT BOOMER AT GALLERY 360 IN VANCOUVER

Putting on my poet hat in 16 days. On Saturday, June 20th, from noon to 3, I [and several other writers] will be at Gallery 360, right next to the Farmer's Market, hopefully selling one or two of my books of poetry, during the book fair put together by Peggy Bird. Thank you, Peggy Bird. Come down, sample a locally grown tomato and pick up a book from any of the writers at the fair. Click on Gallery 360, above, and the complete list of participating writers is there, down the page a little ways. 

My books will be in two piles. Gray House By Cold Mountain will be marked "MUST BE 21". It's sexually explicit in the latter half. The other, Tenderfoot, is a collection of my poetry from my thesis that found their way into print here and there through the years.

Today was a frustrating novel day. I discovered I'd lost all the work I'd done on Wednesday and, after 4 hours of slogging away, I was right back where I finished on Wednesday. I lost some pretty good writing too.

THINKING LIKE A WRITER ABOUT THREE NOVELS

I'm making changes. I hate changes. I don't want to do the work. I want agents to flock to my novels as written. After all, they're completed. Why do I need to do more work? Probably because I see weaknesses myself. I've decided two of my novels need better starts: Angie's Choice & Ghoul World. Angie's Choice once had an agent, but Ruth Cantor couldn't place it. She sent it to the very largest and best publishing houses. She liked it. It's first and second chapters are used to introduce characters. I've decided to get to the moment when Angie and her husband are taken as hostages more quickly. In a flashback, I'll put the info in later. I see the movie scenes.

I've already made an improving change in Ghoul World, dropping completely Chapter 1. Fortunately, it could be dropped with no other changes necessary. Instead, I'm starting it at what was Chapter 2 when my protagonist, Charley Manning comes into view, sitting at a McDaniel's eating a couple of McNugguts, waiting for a client. As a movie, I'd start in either one of two other locations. Action scenes. I intend to rewrite this one more time for more style changes if someone doesn't pick it up sooner. Meanwhile, so I don't feel as if I'm doing nothing toward publication, I'm sending Ghoul World around with the one major alteration. 

Immediately, because it'll go faster, The Porn Writer is already getting a third rewrite to make every line as simple and forceful as I can make them. It's structure is fine. I just want to take all the fancy writing out of it. This will go fast while I send Ghoul World around. I get lots of erections, working on it. Let us celebrate the miraculous powers of the creative imagination. It can create an erection as easily as it creates god!

REWRITE OF PORN NOVEL COMPULSIVELY UNDERWAY

PORN

I could only stand one day without something to write at. I'm now rewriting an old novel about a guy who turns to writing porn as a way to get published since he's a flop in so many other ways. His writing and the new romance in his life with a mysterious woman lead him into a situation he doesn't expect. Yes, I've put real porn in it, but even the porn [you can easily see, if you've ever read porn] is not the kind of porn that porn dogs want. He's a flop even when writing porn. Only he doesn't know it. My wife doesn't like this novel, The Porn Writer, because of the porn in it. She fears, I fear, that it might get published. Then, her family would know what an outrageous nut she's happily married to. I'm kind of interested, also, in what a traditional publisher would do with The Porn Writer.

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?

ON THE ROAD WAS LONG. FIRST ROUGH DRAFT IS DONE. FIREWORKS!

My friends, it's time to leave the library where I'm writing and get my car out of the parking lot before my two hours expire and I get a ticket. Going to walk down by the Columbia River and drink in the 63 degree weather and the feeling of being done with the first rough draft of Ghoul World. I cheated the finish just a little bit and before I start a rewrite on page one, I do have to go back over closing paragraphs to tweak out the exact feeling I want to end the novel with. My feelings about this being the final day of rough draft are a little ambiguous. Still I'm calling this the last day of rough draft.

GHOUL WORLD IS THIS BEATNIK BOOMER'S TITLE OF CHOICE

Just finished the penultimate chapter. I enter the last chapter, see the final scene before my eyes, at last. First draft, of course. Tentatively, I'm going to end the novel on a sad note, but if the team that makes my Manning novel into a movie wants to make it a happy ending there's plenty of room for that too. I don't care. Just pay me well. I'll happily go along. I'm easy after a lifetime of turning my nose up at writing profits. 

Seattle lost. Brady is among the best quarterbacks—if not the best ever. What a way to lose too. I didn't watch. I can't take the stress anymore. I identify too completely and my spirits rise and fall with wins and loses. I've tried to understand why some people so completely identify with sports teams while others don't. Like almost everything in life, self-worth plays a part. It drenches the sport follower's psyche with gloom or celebration. The less self worth one has, the more important the outcome of his favorite team becomes. I'm pretty sure I'm onto something there if I'm any example.  

Ghoul World is, at this moment, my chosen title for the Manning novel. 

PS: Just met Gabriel in Starbucks today, a young man with a Phd who has returned to US and PNW from Korea. I see much success ahead for him. He writes tech pieces at this time, with a book on his mind. 

SERENDIPITY STRIKES THE UNCONSCIOUS BEATNIKING HEART

I completed Chapter 43 and commenced on Chapter 44 of the Manning novel. Forty-four may be the final chapter, but I'm not certain. I believe 44 might be the penultimate chapter with a brief info-bearing conclusion in a Chapter 45.

I had an interesting creative experience recently. I came to a place in Chapter 39 where Charley Manning had to already possess certain information in order to make sense of something happening there. I soon realized I could easily add a fourth person to a luncheon in Chapter 25 that would allow Manning to know what he must know in Chapter 39. So I paged back to the luncheon to add a character only to discover I'd already added a fourth person to that luncheon, an unnamed character. That caused me to recall I'd added the fourth character when I wrote Chapter 25 for the purpose of giving certain info to Charley Manning, then, I forgot he was there waiting for me when I returned to that luncheon. Even this old writer has  subconscious mojo working for him, eh?

It's nice, also, for a writer to see manuscripts lying about in his home. What would a writer's house look like without them?

EVEN BEATNIKS GET THE HOTS ... FOR CREATIVE WRITING

Find photo source here.

The years 2013-14 have turned out to be a most successful period. Poetry published in three places and anthologized in two other places, a poem won a spot in a local contest that joined art to poetry, a humorous health piece appeared in a local senior's magazine, a creative tribute to the Kiggins, our local art house, in another publication (thanks Olin Unterwegner), and a short story in a third (tip of hat to Julie Madsen). Three opportunities to be a featured poet, due to the help of poet and friend, Christopher Luna. A complete rewrite of one novel finished and, as you who read this know, I'm nearing completion of the first draft of a new science fiction novel. Stimulated by these events, in the last two weeks, I dug out three of my best short stories and reworked them, intending to submit, and, tonight, I finished a two day stint of reworking of Chapter One of an old novel, The Porno Writer, that I have great ambitions for. I've put in close to 8 hours of writing each day recently and can't wait for each new day's dawning to do more writing. Finally, I'm looking seriously at putting together a ms of short stories and, perhaps, looking at my accumulated unpublished poetry to find enough suitable ones to make up a third poetry ms. Ambition, hopes and lots of writing? Pretty good for a 77 year old once upon a time beatnik writer. In 2012, I wouldn't have imagined these last two years turning out this way. Now wouldn't it be nice if a little money came along with it?

THE END IS VERY NEAR, SAYETH THE BEATNIK WRITER

Hello readers. More boring news, repetitious, unexciting news. Sitting right now in warm knit sweater, temps outside in the 20s, in New Seasons, having just enjoyed a smokey lentil soup. Writing is done for the day. Three scenes left to produce for the novel's ending. Could take anywhere from 1 to 3 chapters, at least two. Then begins the rewrite to tighten up style and make certain cultural characteristics consistent throughout the book. In the writing, I've discovered cultural traits I wanted to use. Not having the patience to go back and make changes at the beginning, I made notes of them so, during the rewrite, I could make the changes then. For one, I decided to dirty up the culture because of overcrowding and lack of care by the ghouls who now run the global culture. Printed the first 50 pages so that Mertie can begin to read it.

HEADLINE: BEATNIK COMMUNIST SAP IS FINISHED

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press."

It has been reported to this columnist, your pal among the infamous, friend of Joe McCarthy and Milhous Nixon, that the novel of communist sympathizer and loose cannon, Mr. George Thomas, is suffering from faulty plumbing. The strings of his violin are snapped. Mr. Thomas was spotted at his favorite club, the Torque, in the heart of downtown Vancouver, crying the blues to his ever-loving partner and confidant, Ms. Mertie Duncan. It has been reported to this columnist from various sources around town that novelist Thomas hasn't got a finish. He hasn't got an ending. He's hanging out there in his communist commune, his pinko heaven, surrounded by various cronies and communist saps, and he's going bust. That you can take as golden from this columnist, your truly, 

You Know Who?

I'M BEATNICKED, BUSHED AND LEFTOVER

I looked into what they need at the Red & Black Cafe in an owner/associate. Damn! I see it would require a greater investment of time than I want to give, and, also, a physical stamina that's beyond my capacity though I'm healthy enough. My ambitions saw all the upside and overlooked the cliff of the downside. Thanks to Olin Unterwegner for following through and coming up with the information about the Cafe's needs. He writes they are also fund raising and pursuing a crowd funding option. For more info, see link to Cafe above. Any contributions to the worker-owned business would be appreciated, I'm sure.  

see photo source

As for moime's boy, I haven't written on The Last Days of Planet Earth (aka Manning) but one day out of the last six. Political nonsense has wakened me at all hours of the night and early morn. Yawningly tired and distracted, I've not been able to find the vitality that leads to good writing. However—CELEBRATION—I did finish entering the last pages of The Man In The Mirror into editable files. Will print it up and give to Mertie to proofread and make suggestions, if she has any. I wouldn't have made this effort had she not said she liked the novel when she read it, and she's an avid mystery reader. Frankly, I see some problematic writing in it, but I've polished as best I could while I typed it into computer files. No major revision. Mertie said, as I typed the last sentence, that she was amazed that a person could take on a typing task like that and complete it. She hates the paper work part of the job she now has.  

Now I have two novels to send around while I finish Manning, and I have two other novels that need rewriting.

SILENT BOOMER BEATNIKS HIS WAY TOWARD A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Writerly things! An automatic mental jump shift occurs in my approach to Manning, the character, when I write the words "Charley Manning" in a sentence and when I write only "Manning". In the first instance, I experience a jump shift of POV from the interior Manning into my roll as the omniscient observer. This shift encourages me to look around at the scene Manning's entering, to give some details that aren't attached to Manning's stream of consciousness. I believe it adds realistic pieces that Manning might miss because of his intentions in the scene and that I might miss because of how I intend to advance the plot.

For a' that, writing went damn well this morning down at the Torque in the heart of Vancouver. Most of the afternoon, I've been in Portland, walking around, preparing to meet a couple of cronies at Bob's Red Mill for dinner. I briefly visited Powell's Books. Right now, I'm eating chips and drinking a Sprite at the Lucky Lab on Hawthorne. I tried to go up 12th to the worker owned Red & Black Cafe only to discover that no one was working at the moment, even though the hours posted say someone is there. Talking to a couple of young men sitting at an outside table, I learned that only three workers currently own the joint. If someone's got some cash and a lot of energy, there's a chance at the Red & Black to make something happen. They recently bought the building so there's a mortgage. You know? When I finish my damn novel, I can see myself working there and making it happen. Another place for poetry readings and talk of revolution. The Portland Wolf Pack was meeting there last time Mertie and I visited. What couldn't be accomplished with some imagination and a little cash? Huh?

BEATNIKING THROUGH A SILENT'S WALL

This morning's entry will be brief unless during the course of the writing, new ideas appear. They often do. Yesterday, in Facebook discussion, the idea came up that people who write almost always are discovering what they know and feel in the process of writing. If it's true that the human animal is an electrochemical robot, that idea makes sense. As words arise from a writer's unconscious to appear on the page, they become very aware of what is in their unconscious, and they have an extensive record of themselves on the page. Writers and readers are, by and large, much more self-conscious than those who read little and, thus, know little about themselves. (I don't know if that last sentence is true. Today, I seem to question everything I try to generalize about.) At this moment, if I were being honest, I'd say that even writers don't know themselves. 

The picture, you ask? What about the bloody picture? Yesterday I made a pretty significant breakthrough in the Manning (working title) novel. I discovered a good way to bring in the corporate elements in the novel who are aligned, unknown to him, against Manning's investigation. Will Wile E. Coyote get to the other side of the wall is another question. This is a good metaphor (I just realized—see above) for writing. The road running bird (writer's unconscious written down) leads the way, with the coyote learning about himself as he follows it. Sometimes BLAM into a wall. 

PS: Many things did appear out of nowhere in this brief account.