Q: What is daily typewriting?
A: It's a cross between what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac, "That's
not writing, it's typing," and what Milt Jackson said about Dizzy Gillespie,
"Every time I hear Diz play, I think: `He was just now developing into what
you heard tonight.'"
I am just now developing into what you read right
here.
Also, I am writing a long series of connected works like Kerouac's
Duluoz Saga, only with the real names left in. None of the trips combined or left
out.
Q: Do you write every day?
A: I write every day.
I post what I have written on the worldwide
web every day.
I answer reader comment in the next day's work. Sometimes
for days after, as I think through what a reader told me.
Writing is a lonely
activity.
You talk to your wife, after work, and your kids, on the weekends,
and clerks, librarians, postal window-people, during the day, but you don't get a
lot of feedback about your work from people who aren't reading your work. When you
do, you listen to it.
Q: Who do you hear from?
A: Members of the Buzzard Cult.
Q: Who are the Buzzard Cult?
A: I call my coterie of steadfast readers the Buzzard Cult, after the Southeastern
Ceremonial Complex, a revitalization movement that swept the Lower Mississippi Valley
just before and after European contact.
The Buzzard Cult was a mortuary complex,
formed around interment of the dead.
I say I'm like an explosion in a charnel
house.
From the gases from decomposing corpses.
Blaster Al drew a
picture.
Q: Wow, that's neat.
A: Yes.
No readers, and you're crazy.
One reader and the
two of you are just outnumbered.
A handful of readers, high one-, low two-figures,
is a cult following.
Many writers only have a cult following, until they
cross over from the underground to the mainstream.
I was a Charles Bukowski
fan as soon as I read Post Office and his stories and poems in the NOLA
Express.
Q: How long have you had a cult following.
A: I published Playing Hurt and Raw Energy in 1976. Sent
them out to fans.
I was doing what I'm doing now, online, through the post,
with pamphlets, chapbooks, fliers, and four-page sheets, since them. Since 1976.
I have published 227 pamphlets, chapbooks, fliers, and four-page sheets.
I published a couple of books in pamphlet form.
I xeroxed book-length manuscripts
and sent them to people.
It's no insuperable burden to pay the reader to
read your work.
Q: Do the Buzzard Cult read you online?
A: Yes, I have readers who read what I post online every day, when they drink their morning coffee.
Q: At home?
A: The ones who work at home. The ones who work, read it at work.
Q: So it's not like you were shouting into the void.
A: Pissing in the wind.
I know they're there, but I don't hear
from them.
Who I do hear from is agents and editors.
And from them
I get no reply or a form letter rejection slip.
Q: How do you deal with rejection?
A: I ignore it. I complain about it. I let it get me down. I shrug it off,
and take care of business.
It's part of the racket. You get used to it.
Work through it.