Q: You have to work to support yourself. How do you combine writing and work?
A: I don't waste time.
I write before and after work.
I
don't watch a lot of television.
If you don't watch television, you'd be
surprised how much time you have.
Q: Don't you stare out of the window a lot?
A: I'm thinking. That's not wasted time.
I think on my walks, too.
I used to walk a lot.
Q: How did you work as a laborer and write both?
A: I wrote in my head at work.
I could keep a day's writing in
my head.
I went over it again and again, polishing it, refining it.
My job was mostly repetitive tasks, that didn't call for thinking, or close attention.
When I got home at night I would type up what I had written in my head at work.
It was like taking dictation.
Q: When you got a desk job, and had to write technical manuals, you must have had to think about what you were doing. How best to do it.
A: I was a quick study.
After you've done it once, it's repetitive.
But even the first time, I was an experienced writer. I had written term papers and
site reports in college. And I had written nine novels. I was not an inexperienceds
writer. I wasn't groping for words. I had a facility for it. A knack.
I could
do my assigned work in a fraction of the time my co-workers needed to do the same
work.
After I did my assigned work, I did my work.
At work.
Q: Did they know?
A: I was discreet about it. I didn't confront them with it. I snuck. We
both looked the other way. Because I did a good job on their work.
I might
say I have gotten too old to do that.
I can't motivate myself to do it.
I'm like a donkey. You beat him with a stick he won't get up. He just grits his teeth
and takes the beating.. He might bite you if he sees a chance. For beating him.
Q: What is your goal, as a writer?
A: To get at and witness to the truth of who I am through daily typewriting.
Q: What truth is that? Have you got at it?
A: If you keep your eye on the lodestar, and create, you'll get there.
Don't quit, don't make excuses, complain, if you must: longing and regret are a part
of the truth.
Q: Just what have you accomplished?
A: I produced a body of work, my stack, invented a form to present it in, daily typewriting, and found a medium to get it out to the reader through, a web site on the worldwide web and self-published pamphlets.
Q: How big is your stack?
A: 337 books. And growing.
Q: That's not chopped liver.
A: No.
I guess my goal now is not to quit, sell out, or turn bitter.
To see it through. Finish the job.
Not disgrace myself.
Not let the
flag down.
Q: You're like Henry Darger, churning out your collections of black papers in your lonely room.
A: Yep. One day they'll find me slumped over my computer keyboard, dead.
My head exploded. From the pressure.
Q: What pressure?
A: Life. Work. The usual.
Ordinariness. The bills.
The
constant attrition of the wood. That is, the nutmeg.
I fly the black flag
of a pirate.
Being a pirate isn't easy. It takes its toll.
Q: Does your work have a theme, that runs throughout?
A: Vocation and career in conflict.
One time I took a writing seminar
and they asked us to state our theme in five words or less and that's what I wrote
down.
How do you get at, and witness to, the truth in a world that doesn't
want it. That is hostile or indifferent to it.
How do you keep body and soul
together when you keep getting your dick knocked in the dirt.
Q: How do you?
A: You get back up.
You grin your death's-head grin at them.