Can't believe how my mind bonks around from one pinball bumper to another. I haven't begun the novel that I foresaw while rewriting the short story, "Personal". That tale, novel or short story, is still dangling in space. Instead, in hopes of preparing a novel more quickly in my effort to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket, I'm now four chapters into a fourth [or fifth?] rewrite of my novel, The Porn Writer. I realized that I'd buried the first meeting between the two protagonists in chapter three, using the first two chapters to introduce the male of the dynamic duo—I thought cleverly—but in a novel about a relationship, the two "lovers" or "protagonists" ought to be introduced pretty quickly, don't you agree? "Yes, I do agree," I say to myself in a literary aside.
So much to learn and so little time, I think. You might ask, "Why did you wait so long to learn these lessons?" And I tell you that it wasn't until I was deeply into old age that I grew the maturity to rewrite any long work four or five times to get it right. Thus, I never treated any novel as a process of learning. I was just rushing through, being as "cleverly brilliant" as I thought I was when I was too young to know better.
The biopsy of my prostate takes place Wednesday morning. If you've a mind to keep me in your thoughts as I lie face down while yet another thing is put behind me. I've had several days of moping about the possible cancer. Today is a little better.
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!
Time as they say, whoever they are, flies, but I've never seen it fly nor, for that matter, have I seen a doggone dog. Still working away on my short fiction piece "The Acceptance of Jane". New things are happening to Jane and her friend during the rewrite, specially when he shoves Jane's wheelchair across the street while a drunken driver is....
Currently I'm alternating between the short stories of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Library of America editions. The Fitzgerald volume is much more care worm than the volume of James's stories. You can imagine what an exercise in contrast those stories are in my imagination. I've never felt better about my writing than I have in the past month. I don't know how I got here, finally, at age 78, but my new attitude is "this is the way I write and how I see the world. If others don't like it, that's okay with me." I'm doing it my way.
Made big mistake tonight. I sent off a query and sample of a novel to an agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. only to discover I'd already sent a query to another of their agents a month and a half ago. Sent immediate retraction of query. Ah, well ... shucks.
Currently rewriting a short story I first put on paper—yes, lined paper and pen—sometime during Fall of 1964 through February 1966 while floundering as a teaching assistant on the campus of Southern Illinois University—The Acceptance of Jane. The first version is very simplistic, almost childish, written in an emotional burst of high energy, and I more or less set it aside for 50 years. Now I'm trying to give it some depth. It's original impetus was okay, but I tried to make an image carry the story and the narrator lacks sufficient depth. Of course, the narrator is an older man, looking back on a moment in his high school life. Such a narrative offers technical difficulties. How much does any adult narrator truly know about his past life, eh?
On a good note, I received an immediate rejection of a story I sent off last week, BUT the editor said the story was well done but too long for her magazine. Could I send a shorty piece of writing, she asked. You bet I could, and the turn around time was less than 24 hours. The magazine is located in Philadelphia, and I forgot to say, "Go Philanova". Basketball fans will recognize the reference.
