December 21 - January 27. 55,000 words. Spend the week between Christmas Day and New Years Day at Graytona Lodge in Grayton Beach. The Saunders Brothers play at Cerulean's, in WaterColor. I pitch SQUIBS to LSU Press. I send the first week's work to Andrei Codrescu, Exquisite Corpse. The rejection slips for GULF COAST BLUES dribble in. I send the complete MS to River City Publishers. I am invited to enter a show called Texts at the Gallery Above. I write a pamphlet, Texts. I will sell it the next day at my book-signing table at booksALIVE 2007! I write a second pamphlet, Plagiarism. I see that SQUIBS is divided into three parts. Part One, Preparing To Go Into the Field (35,000 words), Part Two, In the Field (13,000 words), and Part Three, Back in the Lab (7,000 words). Brenda and I drive to New Orleans, New Iberia, and Ocean Springs, Mississippi. In New Orleans, we go by Dr. Bob's Bywater Studio. Be nice or leave. Dr. Bob is in Memphis, recovered from the beating he took when the police mistook him for a looter, and disarmed him, protecting his property from looters. Hazel plays a Dread Clampitt song, "Granny Brown," on her radio show, and Brenda tells an anecdote about the song. We see the Hurricane Katrina devastation firsthand. It's still there. The Walter Anderson Museum of Art is closed for renovations, but I buy a documnentary, Walter Anderson: Realizations of an Artist, at the train depot. Pottersville Press says they'd like to publish my Charles Willeford book, but don't have the money. They will publish it cooperatively with me if I have the money to pay the printer. I don't. I order 75 copies of Adventures in the Underground, at a 40% discount off the retail price of $15.95, to help with the printing bill for that book. It won't be ready in time for booksALIVE 2007!, but will be available in weeks, rather than months, and I will have a picture of the cover to take preorders for, at the book fair. A man who studied pottery with Jack Neff at Alford looks him up in Google and gets a hit on my website. He emails me. I had been thinking about Jack Neff since I saw the manuscripts of my stack in Larry's outbuilding. What happened to Jack's life's-work, or oeuvre? Did moths and rust get it? Was it thrown out? Is it moldering in some lonesome grave, like John Brown's body? How lucky I am to have a reader who treasures my work. Who has read every single word of it, and knows it like I do. Maybe better, now that my powers are fading.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Part One. Before SQUIBS. Taking Stock, Catching Up, Moving Forward: Two Weeks in the Life of an Underground Writer. December 9 - December 22. 20,000 words. I type up and post HEAP and THE BLACK MEMOIR at The Daily Bulletin. Write people about Seedy, Stove-Up, and T-A-R-D Tired. Keep a journal. Figure out where to go next in the writing. The journal is just to keep my hand in. I'm not posting it online. I combined Goat Song: A Black Comedy and Seedy, Stove-Up, and T-A-R-D Tired: Three Books About the Writing Life and called them, together, Working, At the House. I am calling the new series, this series, Untitled (Working Title). I feel like I'm at the end of something. Or at the beginning. I feel like Working, At the House was a culmination. It's time to fall back and regroup. To take stock. Also, I need to put my affairs in order. Do some housekeeping tasks. I add CATCHING UP to the title TAKING STOCK. I write Lyons Press, Chelsea Green Publishing, and River City Publishing about GULF COAST BLUES. Add MOVING FORWARD to the title TAKING STOCK, CATCHING UP. I see that the next book is called SQUIBS. Short for VIGNETTES AND FEUILLETONS: SQUIBS FROM A WRITING LIFE. This book and that one make up a boxed set. SQUIBS and Additional Material: A Boxed Set. I start thinking about a proposal to send to LSU Press. I get together boxes of manuscripts to take to Larry and Hazel, the hard copies of books I wrote after Hurricane Katrina but didn't mail because of the disruption of services. Five Amazon.com shipping boxes, containing 19 books. Two linear feet of single-spaced manuscript. I get Adventures in the Underground ready for the printer for Pottersville Press. I write a proposal for SQUIBS and send it to LSU Press. I add the subtitle TWO WEEKS IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND WRITER to TAKING STOCK, CATCHING UP, MOVING FORWARD. Whew--white folks! What a two weeks. I went from being depressed about GULF COAST BLUES to being excited about SQUIBS without anything happening, externally. I change the title of SQUIBS from VIGNETTES AND FEUILLETONS: SQUIBS FROM A WRITING LIFE to SQUIBS: TEAM WUPPIE DRIVE TO NEW ORLEANS.
Part Two. After SQUIBS. Down and Out in Parker, Florida, or, Fortune’s Favorite Child. January 25 - January 31. 10,000 words. I call the book FORTUNE’S FAVORITE CHILD, then I change the name to DOWN AND OUT IN PARKER, FLORIDA, then I change the name to DOWN AND OUT IN PARKER, FLORIDA, OR, FORTUNES’S FAVORITE CHILD. Then I see that DOWN AND OUT IN PARKER, FLORIDA, OR, FORTUNES’S FAVORITE CHILD combines with TAKING STOCK, CATCHING UP, MOVING FORWARD: TWO WEEKS IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND WRITER, which was written before SQUIBS: TEAM WUPPIE DRIVE TO NEW ORLEANS, to form ADDITIONAL MATERIAL, the second book of the two book series SQUIBS and Additional Material: A Boxed Set. I see what I’m going to write next and end the book. I pitch a column to the Panama City News-Herald and the Tallahassee Democrat, a novel, I ask them to serialize a novel, online, as I write it, two 500-word columns a day, or twelve 30,000-word books, in a year. Help Wanted: A Year in the Life of a Roving Correspondent. I start writing the first book, WORD MECHANIC.
Part Three. Word Mechanic. January 30 - February 1. 7,000 words. I begin writing the "Roving Correspondent" column. Two 500-words columns a day. I pitch the idea to the Panama City News-Herald and the Tallahassee Democrat. Then I see that "Word Mechanic" is Part Three of ADDITIONAL MATERIAL. I will write about attending the Text show at the Gallery Above, having a book-signing table at booksALIVE 2007!, and my book-launch activities for Adventures in the Underground. Owen is playing in Thomasville February 10. There’s a Job Fair at Haney Vo-Tech February 16. I’ll end the book February 16. It creeps up to three, and four 500-word columns a day. And no one wants them. They’re too much. It’s more of the same. River City Publishing rejects GULF COAST BLUES. Who wants to read about that? Decide to pitch SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: A BOXED SET as a single book, that outlines the conditions of production a literary writer faces, in his daily work. If The New Journalism was a revolution, it was co-opted by the counterrevolution. By corporate media. Book publishers and movie studios. Slick magazines and mass circulation newspapers. SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: A BOXED SET shows what a novelist can do if he isn’t interfered with by the people who can publish and distribute his book, that is, if he does the job himself, in pamphlets and at a website on the worldwide web, The Daily Bulletin. Hell, all you have to do to write a squib is sit down and write it. Anyone can write a squib. It’s just one page, single-spaced. And they mount up.
Part Four. Casual. February 2 - February 6. 7,000 words. I attend the Text show at the Gallery Above and booksALIVE 2007! I sell one Root Doctor. No Text, no Plagiarism. I submit three poems and one short story to City Limits and "Saunders Family of Parker" to Heritage of Bay County, Florida. They pay one copy each. I attend the presentation Southern Living 101 to find out how to crack the freelance market at Southern Living magazine. Am I not a southerner? Don’t I write a journal? Southern Journal, the last section of the magazine, is freelance-written. Zzzzzt—wrong. Close, but no cigar. We want tunas that taste good, Charlie—not tunas with good taste. We’re talking business casual, not hippie chick. What are you—a Dreadhead? No, a Clampette. I just like the music, man. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I change the name of SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: A BOXED SET to SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: THE AUTHOR’S CUT.
Part Five. Crank-Lettres. February 5 - February 6. 1,000 words. I decide that SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: THE AUTHOR’S CUT is a masterpiece and quit. In the next book, OVERQUALIFIED, I rename the book SQUIBS AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL: HEAP LETS-FLY.
Part Six. Overqualified. February 7 - February 12. 7,000 words. I apply for a job as customer service associate in a video store I can walk or ride my bike to. Owen and Ella visit. Balder, Cale, and Rowan come over. We drive to Thomasville, to hear David Davis and the Warrior River Boys play. Then we go to The Red Bar Sunday to hear Dread Clampitt play. I think my hard disk is about to crash.