Today is a disturbing day. A day of dizziness, and I can't get started on my science fiction screenplay, plus fecal incontinence threatens. Instead of sturm und drang, I'm suffering from shite and stress. Ah, well, it's a good excuse to put this writing day in the can (double meaning there) and unwind, maybe finish reading Craig Lesley's Winterkill. He lives in Portland, you know, just across the river from where I type this. He was born in 1945 and is 8 years younger than me. Makes him 70 or approaching 70 or leaving 70 for 71, depending upon the month.
Plotting my science fiction movie has been giving me fits. I want certain things to happen and certain feelings to be aroused, but I can't quite focus on the necessary steps. I'm trying to imagine, instead of writing toward (as in fiction) certain frightening moments, but I can't grasp them imaginatively. A blank. It's old age and a failing imagination, or a case of plain old writer's block.
Speaking of feelings, a friend of mine put the e.e. Cummings' photo and screed on my Facebook page, and I'm sharing it here. Feelings are wonderful. Younger, I suffered for many years with the near absence of emotions. Severe depression. A cold dead sensation. Without emotional guidance, a man makes awful mistakes, tries to make decisions based on rational premises. Only sociopaths are successful at that.
Only four days between last entry and this entry. Still waiting for an intelligent agent to seize on one of my novels and sail with it... when next to me on a long bench at the Starbucks in Kelso someone across the bench from me knocks over their coffee cup and a tsunami of coffee heads toward computer to the left of my own—commotion, confusion, lights, camera, action—as someone experiences one of their most embarrassing moments while another feels pure terror...but, as noted earlier, I'm now onto a film script for a scifi movie, having decided it might be more fun, because novel, than writing another novel. Enjoy the use of the word novel in two of its historically connected forms.
Having usual steep learning curve when attacking a new procedure...script writing. Long ago, in the 60s, I did have a TV script agent-forwarded to the Bob Hope Chrysler Theater. The script was returned for being too short. As I rewrote it, the Chrysler Theater's lights went dark. Missed again, have another drink—my reaction in those days.
In order to proceed with a semblance of professionalism, I Googled "script writing" and came up with far too many suggestions about how to write a script, some of them frankly contradictory. Then I Googled "horror film scripts" and found James Cameron's first draft (May 28, 1985) for Aliens. How better to learn than to read a pro's script, eh? I read it through yesterday afternoon and this morning. I recognized he followed roughly the form most experts recommend, but, at times, as his excitement mounted, he'd slip out of form and go for the gusto, he'd forget about camera directions and write prose. Typos sprinkle the script. Then I noticed a comforting thing about his "scene description" elements. Many of them were cliched emotional directions. I could see the child in James Cameron, getting carried away and appealing to the child in his viewers, in some cases, appealing to the youths who are drawn to his movies. This was comforting to me, to see a great movie maker and how his sometimes immature emotions are laid bare by the script he's writing. Fingers crossed, emotions tingling, I embark on the script writing ocean. And, he's a vegan.
I'm not making the suggested every other day entries in my blog. That pace is supposed to keep people interested in my bucket list quest to get someone other than myself to publish one of several novels I've written over the decades and recently rewritten... before I die. I'm still sending out queries while I continue to work on a nameless, so far, science fiction screenplay. Looking into buying software for script writing, but some appear to be so loaded with goodies they'll create a slowdown while I learn yet another software program. Slugline is quite simple, but it must be downloaded into a more complex script writing program to prepare it for electronic submission. Frustration, then I came across a simple macro-enabled format that will give me what I need to create a script for electronic submission... I hope. I'll have to become more familiar with macros. I've used them in the past, but not recently. I've had some really powerful internal moments lately that feel like the attitudes of a successful writer. Now... will that come true?
Reading: just finished Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask and have commenced to read a change of pace novel, Craig Lesley's Winterkill. Mask is a first person interior monologue while Winterkill is presented by a third person narrator. The first is full of confessional abstractions, the other full of concrete details. Thank you for checking in on my progress whoever you are, and if you're on the same quest as I am, good luck to you.
Have been doing nothing for the last several days except play games and eat because it was turkey day for those who aren't vegans and spaghetti day for those of us who are, and Mertie and I had family over from Spokane and down from Seattle to feed and partly house. Looking forward to tomorrow and return to sci-fi script I began two [?] weeks past. But I also had the emotional energy for a novel enter my brain tonight and perk up my synapses. If it's still with me tomorrow, I might try to type down the beginning scene for it. It would open with a half-ass suicide attempt and continue from there, backwards and forward in time... maybe. Today, I sent out two queries for my novel The Man In the Mirror and a question about my novel Angie's Choice to a small film company, wondering if they'd like to read it with a movie in mind. Hope everyone had an enjoyable and dietary Thanksgiving. Jeez, we ate so many bagels and pieces of pie with ice cream made with almond milk that our dietary regime blew South with the wind. Current reading is Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, basically a confessional novel about his homosexuality in the 1940s and 1950s.
From 1995 through 2000, wife Mertie and I published, and I edited George & Mertie's Place, a monthly microzine that appeared February through December. Lately, I've been putting together a list of those poets and writers who appeared in our microzine. In doing so, I've come across cartoons that "Art Clip" and I put together in arrangements that tickled my fancy. The two items on the left are samples of my work in that vein.
The list of men and women we published during those years is quite interesting. At the time we published them, I never paid much attention to who they were or their reputations. I was interested only in what they wrote. As I've compiled the list, I've Googled a few names and am very pleased to discover more about them. I had no idea of the extent of the work they've done and still do. I've sent off some emails to a few, merely to touch base and see what they're doing now. Quite exciting. Sadly, one of those we published was Madeline DeFrees whose name I did know of at the time. I discovered that she died on November 11, 2015...8 days ago.
Ten days between entries here. Sorry. Last night and this morning, this old writer got to work and submitted five short stories for consideration at five literary magazines. Also sent two more queries about my novel, Programming Frank Singletary. Feels productive. My reading at this time is the anthology, Cutbank 83, which I received as part of my unsuccessful entry into its recent short story competition. Some of the work within its pages fascinates me. A style I don't yet understand, but I'm willing to understand, at least as willing as Copperfield's Barkis ever was. I believe some young writers might be trying to write stories as robots might write them or by revealing their tales through the eyes of a person without free will. Not sure. Just a guess. I'd like it to be true as it's about time writers align ourselves with the facts. I may be too old to catch up or on.
Also, the most recent FourByTwo is in my hungry clutches. As usual, the look of the little magazine is classy and the poetry sassy. That word choice and rhyme are almost so awful they ought not be connected to the fine thing that FourByTwo is. I'm showing you a couple of poems that are by klipschutz. The other poet is Michael Earl Craig. Craig, by the way, hails from Dayton, Ohio, my own birthplace. Most of the time, I select for sample the poet who is not klipschutz, but this time I went the other way. This is not a comment on Craig's work. It's just that I thought klipschutz ought to have a turn in this blog. Money is becoming an issue for them. Doesn't it always?
Sixty degrees outside and the lucky ol' sun beaming down. Me inside all morning, crafting and whooshing off query letters to agents for my several novels. I'm trying to pay attention to one suggestion that an agent mentioned in an interview—personalize the query if you can. That takes some time consuming research, and, a man my age, how much time do I got? A writer's gotta be almost as creative in writing query letters as he is writing the novels, the poems, the short stories themselves.
Even though I don't smoke, I took the photo from an online magazine called The Daily Sheeple, an alternative magazine, it says, to help the sheeple "wake the flock up". So it says. I decided I didn't want to know more, even though the alternative news might be tailored for this writer, hissef. I'm not a sheeple, and I'm far too wide awake for my own good as it is.
