THE BEATEST SILENT BOOMER GETS LOST IN HIS REFLECTIONS

klipschutz

The personality trait about myself hardest to accept is that I'm a writer. Came through to me two days ago when a publisher I queried asked to look at Angie's Choice and also asked for "intended audience, marketing ideas for your work". These days the writer not only writes but he must market his work. Panic! I never took a course in marketing, have no talent for selling myself or the book I've written. The thought of selling myself terrifies me. 

my hidden nature

I don't know marketing from grocery shopping or networking from fishnet hosiery. I've been writing about my life and the reality it exists in since high school with absolutely no financial success or major critical acclaim. If I'm not writing a poem or short story, I've been at work on a novel, most of those unfinished. Those times when I'm not working on creative stuff, I'm pounding away at internet debates with strangers, letters to the editor, emails to friends and family, and essays or journaling, now blogging or Facebooking—thousands and thousands of pieces of my reality all over the place—plus those scholarly term papers when I was in school. Several decades ago I got tired of carrying them around and found a home for them in a dirty green dumpster. Could it be, I ask myself, that I'm trying to disprove the idea that if a writer sticks with it, he'll make it. "Make it" itself is loaded with ambivalence and ambiguity. 

Here's the problem in a nutshell: What is it about a human nature that it must have someone other than itself approve of what it's doing before the value of the doing becomes evident to him or her? At the top, I've included a photo of klipschutz, a poet/songwriter who understands the art of presenting the self. His work is pretty damn good also. Take a look at it. We published him long ago in a microzine wife and I published and edited: George & Mertie's Place.

THE SILENT BOOMER LOOKS FEARFULLY TO THE MILLENNIALS

It’s 4:50 am. My interior alarm awakes me in a sweat. At this time of the day, the world always appears extremely dark (unless you live at the North Pole during the winter solstice). I’m a worrier. Always have been. Proof of that fact is the fact that I’m 76 and worrying over a future—over a fictional tale about reality in my brain—that will have no real power to affect me but that really affects me as I worry about it.

Find photo here...

In another 50 years—I tell myself—the bookless and newspaper-less world as I know it will be so different, I truly can’t imagine it, but I’ve got a few favorite dystopian ideas. I see a world returned to the Dark Ages. Lots of information at humanity’s fingertips, but each man jack of us, at his or her starship computer station, will be tuned solely to their favorite world views. Like a villager at the mythological time of Jesus, we won’t know what’s going on in the next village except the hottest gossip and most frightening and disgusting news as distorted by world leaders whose best interests are served by the distortions. Charlatanism will be the order of the day and all sorts of fake systems of knowledge (like clairvoyance or telekinesis or theology) will have new power in the stories that people tell themselves about their personal realities. Meanwhile the zillionaire rulers of Planet Earth, flitting here and there to secret meetings on yachts all over the globe, will be uncontrollably dishonest, beyond punishment, as they accumulate more and more of the world’s wealth, leaving the rest of us to take the hindmost. No longer will there exist a fourth estate with the money and reach to watch over the plutocrats and sound the alarm.

Then, again … the sun also rises and the sky lightens, and I return to the hopeful business of writing a futuristic novel about a worldwide plague as if the bookless dark age ahead will have any place for my fantastic novel.

SILENTLY TIME FLIES, THEN IT'S TUESDAY AND ONE IS 76

find photo on this site

I've been thinking about the phrase "once upon a time" that I discussed in my last blog entry. I asked myself why would anyone (why did I) use that phrase in a work of fiction that is not a fairy tale? I fear I'm guilty of using that phrase frequently. I suppose it represents a lifetime attitude that most of life is a fairytale in the minds of most people. I've used the phrase unconsciously and sarcastically until it's become a sort of writer's tic. 

It's sadly true that most people grow emotionally until they reach the age of 12 or so, then they freeze into that emotional state, half escaped from fairy tales and gods and romantic notions about life, country and family they picked up in the home. They reside in those falsehoods until, in the last decade of their lives, many realize they've been foolish. 

Sometimes, I imagine my alcoholism, my three divorces and all the pain in my life and pain I created in others lives was the price I paid to escape the fairy tales that still entrap so many humans. It's not always comfortable outside the human family that remains sitting around the campfire and endlessly retelling the old fairy tales they continue to live by, but I'd rather live on the fringes than live in the fairy tale. 

What proof do I offer for what I've just said? I look around my world. Would a species of grownup, sensible people create the sort of mockery of life we force ourselves and others to live in if we actually knew better?

OLD DOG FROM SILENT GEN. LEARNS NEW TRICKS

find this photo at

Jefferson wrote "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." Why argue with the man who wrote America's "Declaration of Independence"? Yesterday, I wrote a sentence that ended with "an old building that once upon a time housed the famous Powell's Bookstore." How many times, I wondered, had I written "once upon a time" when "once" accounted very well for the longer phrase? I can't imagine how far along I'd be if I hadn't first had to deal with alcoholism and woman issues before I got down to serious attempts at successful writing. I can't fret about my wasted years and lack of confidence or I'll have regret to deal with next. One does what one can and at whatever pace he discovers he can do it at.

On the far northeast section of my daily walk, I sometimes enter a neighborhood of expensive homes, and I imagine living there one day ... if, of course, I can write one successful book that becomes a movie. I think I'm writing that book now, and walking through that neighborhood always fires my imagination. Who knows? More unlikely things have happened. Once that sentence would have read "More unlikely things have been known to happen"? See what I mean? I can now instruct Jefferson too: "The most valuable talent is never using two words when one will do." The superlative "most" eliminated the need for "of all" in Jefferson's maxim. Of course, history reveals that the pronoun "that" would have been required in Jefferson's time to refer to "valuable" and that historical circumstance is why Jefferson constructed his sentence as he did.

SILENT COMPLETES THE LAST REWRITE OF ANGIE'S CHOICE

A happy note! Wife Mertie did the final reread of Angie's Choice today. Five last chapters and only about six errors found. I will not look at it again, except to send it around to agents and directly to publishers. I culled through the 2013 Writer's Market and built a huge list of possible publishers. More of the kind of work that it would be nice to have an agent do for me as Agent Ruth Cantor once did for me back in the 1980s. 

Today I went into Portland to the Humanists of Greater Portland Sunday meeting. Then took an hour walk in downtown Portland and realized, as I enjoyed my walk, that under my original plan (to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine) there lies another plan—to make enough money from one or the other of my novels to buy a modest condo in Portland. Well ... I'm 76 now and might just as well dream big as small. Eh? Of course the book I'm pinning my hopes on is Manning (working title). Also in the wings for complete revision is my most serious novel, Delinquent Lives. The Porno Writer could be a scorcher if I can write a final polished draft of it. It's done, but needs polishing. I think there's work enough ahead to carry me to the crematory but into a Portland condo...?

ANOTHER SILENT BOOMER, MANNING'S MODEL, JERRY ORBACK (born October 20, 1935)

Lennie Briscoe/Jerry Orbach

Today the writing went extremely well. Finished segment 14. I don't call them chapters because their length is irregular. In a filmed drama, they'd be scenes. That's how they break into segments—as scenes.

In this 14th segment, Manning's character becomes more fully revealed. I sometimes picture Manning as Jerry Orbach in character as Lennie Briscoe of SVU. Coincidentally, I was born on Oct. 20th, 1937. In this segment, one of Manning's longtime friends goes missing, and since it's Manning who has brought his friend into harm's way, he feels guilty. He's already lost an acqaintence to whatever the forces are he's dealing with, and he's pretty far from knowing what those forces are. He's certain they're pretty bad forces. Being a physically fragile ghoul, Manning would like to give up this job, but his friend is missing now. 

Also had an interesting sense of time today. I'm setting novel this in Portland, Oregon, 250 years in the future. Anyway, I've got Manning going to a Starbucks on Lombard Street, near U. of Portland. Then I stop to wonder if Starbucks will be there in 250 years. Two-hundred-fifty years is a long time as far as cultural icons go. Compare it to Sears and Roebucks which began in 1893 as a mail order catalog. That's a mere 120 years ago. According to some people, Sears is fading even as we speak ... or as I write. 
 
Zags won again last night! Olynyk is playing for Celtics. My feeling is Kelly's the type to make something of his opportunity. Maybe even moreso than the solid Ronny Turiaf.

BOOMER, SILENTLY BEATS ON

More than a week since an entry has appeared here. Had to do with a gap when I had nothing to say, then a family visit followed by another period of nothing to say. I've been working on a plot outline for Manning, rereading everything I've written and condensing the material into synopses to help me recall important information about characters and future plot elements. 

the Oregon Coast

I continually fear I'll lose interest before I finish the Manning novel. Many times recently, I've begun books only to lose interest after 50 or 100 pages. Ideas come easily, but the finger numbing job of sitting down and typing has not been a happy process for my poetical psyche. I'm good for the short dash, but the long haul is difficult. I've managed to complete four novels, but it's been awhile since that happened. 

Burroughs and Kerouac

Went to watch Big Sur, based on novelist alcoholic  Jack Kerouac's book by that name, and I wish we'd gone to the Oregon Coast this last summer. I don't know what can be said about his alcoholic take on life since it led to his own early & ugly death. I've always thought one section of Big Sur represents a true picture of Delirium tremens if you're curious about how it feels.