On Sabbatical
Q: How many books did you write in a year?
A: 22.
Q: Did any of them sell?
A: No.
Q: Then what happened?
A: I drove to Wakulla Springs for Creaturefest.
I wrote the pamphlet Blue Ball Blues.
When I got back I got a job as a technical writer.
I stopped publishing roman-feuilleton.com and started publishing The Daily Bulletin.
I thought I’d hold it down more, in The Daily Bulletin.
Q: And did you?
A: I guess not. I got fired for blogging after six months.
Q: Were you blogging at work?
A: I was reading blogs, and thinking about them, at work.
I didn’t write at work.
But I read and thought about my writing at work. Then I wrote at home.
I guess my sabbatical year had spoiled me for working.
Q: Writing spoiled you for working.
You never were one for working.
A: I was as good a writer as they had at IBM. And at Lucent Technologies.
I just could do so much more than they wanted from me.
I wouldn’t rein myself in. Tone myself down.
Q: How long were you out of work?
A: Not long. A month. And then I got a job writing grant applications. For a mental health center.
Q: Did you not blog at work? Had you learned your lesson?
A: I wrote a book about writing 250 books without
selling one. To
Then I wrote a book about my last two jobs. Called Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family.
By analogy with
Bukowski’s picture book about touring
Q: Bukowski never did do what you had done.
He got a publisher.
His publisher gave him an allowance to quit his job at the post office and write Post Office.
The ten years after Post Office were good years for Bukowski.
The ten years after that were very good years.
That’s 20 good years you didn’t have.
A: My last 20 years were good ones.
Q: What happened to Bukowski Never Did This?
A: LitVision Press read it online and asked to publish it as a book.
Pat Simolelli. He published it.
I quit my job, cashed in the annuity I rolled my retirement over into, and lived on that for a year, while I promoted Bukowski Never Did This, and wrote about doing that.
Q: Then what happened?
A: I took a job as a custodian in a mental health center and rewrote Edward Sapir’s essay, “Psychiatric and Cultural Pitfalls in the Business of Getting a Living.”
I went to street fairs and crafts shows. Writer’s conferences.
Michael Lister, Pottersville Press, invited me to edit an anthology for the Postcards From Pottersville anthology series, Vol. 3, Adventures in the Underground.
I edited that.
That was a good collection.
The best thing on underground writing since Green Isle in the Sea.
Q: Did you quit your job and promote that book, too?
A: Actually, I did.
My mother died and left me some money.
I lasted six months, that time.