WHITE LEVIATHAN. July 5 - July 14. 12,000 words. Get used to combining writing and working full-time. Get used to not posting the day's writing at The Daily Bulletin. See that White Leviathan is the third book of the series Immobilized in Point and Shoot: Saving the Culture on the Worldwide Web. Am I saving it by taking my web site down? Is a silence louder than a noise? The news today is Sarah Palin quits and Michael Jackson's memorial ceremony at Staples Center is to take place. Debbil crabs, debbil crabs, debbil crabs. Poetry is news that stays news. A book that asks what happened to Moby-Dick after he rammed the Pequod with his head, and sank it. I see that WHITE LEVIATHAN goes on the end of STOP ME, BEFORE I WRITE MORE. Stop yourself. Who told you to write? Immobilized in Point and Shoot is two books, not three. I change the subtitle of Immobilized in Point and Shoot from Saving the Culture on the Worldwide Web to Florida Proust Takes Make-Work Job, Writes Own Book on the Hop. Who told you to write a book? I look up literary agent, Florida Proust in Google and get no hits. Ha ha, does not compute. Florida Proust? Proust was a French dandy who didn't get out of bed. I am working my butt off. My head hurts. One time I told a co-worker on an archeological dig, "My back hurts," and he said, "My feet stink." Like, that's a personal problem. Nobody wants to hear about your unpublished play.
PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF A WRITER AND ITS PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS WORK. July 15 - July 26. 15,000 words. I write a training course at work and write in the mornings before work and after work at night. One of Brenda's chickens has biddies. This delights Rowan. Grant Peeples plays the Martin Theater in downtown Panama City. I go to see him play. Walter Cronkite dies. There are tributes. To me, he led to dueling shouting people and the crawl. Gatesgate. I see that Immobilized in Point and Shoot: Florida Proust Takes Make-Work Job, Writes Own Book on the Hop, is three books, not two, but start the third book, Held-in-Abeyance (HIA), after PERIODS WITH BILL and before WHITE LEVIATHAN. That is, Held-in-Abeyance (HIA) includes WHITE LEVIATHAN, PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF A WRITER AND ITS PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS WORK, and HIATUS. The three books I didn't post at The Daily Bulletin, daily, as I wrote them.
HIATUS. July 27 - August 1. 4,000 words. I change the subtitle of Immobilized in Point and Shoot from Florida Proust Takes Make-Work Job, Writes Own Book on the Hop to Yoob Novelist Censors Himself. Then I see that Held-in-Abeyance (HIA) is short. The third book, HIATUS, is only 4,000 words. I change Yoob Novelist Censors Himself to Elegy for Irascible "Razz" Heap. Time to move on.
BRENDA'S OLD HOME PLACE. August 1 - August 10. 11,000 words. BRENDA'S OLD HOME PLACE agglutinates itself to Held-in-Abeyance (HIA). I have to see the job through. Finish what I started. I finish the draft of the sheetmetal fabrication course at work and start writing an electronics technician course. After that it's machinist. Then back to the unemployment line. Sarah Palin, Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite is an announcer, holding up a box of macaroni and cheese and saying, "I think I'll make macaroni and cheese tonight." While in the background a pack of Old Gold cigarettes dances past. Potter called him Walter Crankcase. "May we Marfak your car?" "This is my brother-in-law's car, Walter--Marfak you." I go on August recess, like the Congress. No cash for my clunker, it doesn't look like. Well, conservation is a personal virtue-eh, what?
CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF AND OTHERS. August 8 - August 14. 6,000 words. Don Riley's younger brother learns that Bill has died and puts me in touch with Don. We talk about Bill on the phone. Classmates who have died. We're still going. He fishes, I write. But my sons fish. I cook fish. One reason I live where I live is so I can get fresh seafood, the saltwater fish and shellfish I love to cook and eat. I read Michelle Mercer's Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period. "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period." I thought I'd be J. D. Salinger. What happened? I didn't write short stories. I wrote a 40-year-long novel. What do you do with a 40-year-long novel? That's the plot. I see that CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF AND OTHERS goes on the end of Held-in-Abeyance (HIA). I add the subtitle Talking to Myself to Held-in-Abeyance (HIA). I see that Immobilized in Point and Shoot: Elegy for Irascible "Razz" Heap is a series of seven books, like Remembrance of Things Past. Whew--white folks!
OLD BEATNIKS EATING DONUTS. August 15 - August 24. 12,000 words. I prepare
to speak at the 10th annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference on Black Papers.
That's collections of white papers the War Heads in publishing, the media, arts
agencies and cultural foundations, and university Creative Writing programs and English
departments don't want to see aired. Why do that? It's irrational. The writer
is a truth-teller. He speaks truth to power. He eats donuts like everybody else.
He has been worn down by life. The American schoolyard has beat him again. The
junior college. The 13th grade. Heap trudges out to Gulf Coast Community College.
The keynote speaker is Michael Connelly. His last book, The Scarecrow, is
about what happened to the profession or reporter in America. Heap writes black
papers about what has happened to the profession of writer in America. He has become
the Chronicler-at-Large of the Mall Builder culture. He stayed put and the culture
came to him. Through a wire, into his living room. Into his small, desktop computer.
He can't escape. One can't write to escape. There's no escape. It seeks you out.
Might as well stand and fight. Wherever you are. Stop running. Make your stand.
Fight who. With what. Fight dem. With a pamphlet of poems. I'm not the Sage
of Baltimore, I am the Belle of Amherst. The Madcap Titan of the Dustbin. A bricoleur.
A knacker in an abattoir. Half-assed and piecemeal. Jakeleg and for-the-nonce.
Ephemeral. Transitory. A fart in a whirlwind. The Bahamian in the Winslow Homer
painting, Gulf Stream. The redneck in the trailer with the pit bull chain.
I write a pamphlet of poems, Black Papers. Then I write a presentation,
Black Papers. Then I write a pamphlet called The Madcap Titan of the Dustbin,
comparing myself to Kurt Schwitters. Then I write a pamphlet called This Is Not
a Pamphlet. I see what I am going to write next. I have a breakthrough. I
see that I'm going to write Breakthrough: The Great American Comeback Novel.
My breakthrough is I'm not expecting to score a breakthrough. I'm just going to
write Breakthrough and post it at The Daily Bulletin. Daily, as I
write it. I'm not unpublished, or underpublished, I'm published at The Daily
Bulletin. In real time.
In 1985, Anthony Burgess said the future held "work and television." In 1978, when Burgess wrote 1985, it did. Now it holds unemployment and television.
WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2. August 25 - September 21. 28,000 words. I celebrate my 38th year as a writer. And 70th birthday. My temporary technical writing job is running out. I prepare to give two presentations at Gulf Coast Writers Conference, one on publishing as a business, and one on self-publishing as a strategy. It's more a tactic. A means to an end. What's the end? A career as a mainstream commercial novelist? You can't get there from here. It's about possibilities not matching ambitions. The American dream turning into the Bush-Enron administration, its perfect flower. Newspapers are dying. The polar bear and the panda are endangered species. Bigfoot is extinct. Shit happens when you're fatalistic. I get my news from reality TV. From pundits shouting lunatic-fringe slogans at each other. Who's got time to read a good book anymore? I barely have time to write one. You can read my book on the worldwide web. At the library, if you're homeless. At work, if you have a computer with an Internet browser like Netscape. Ha ha, that's a joke. They probably have MS Windows Internet Explorer. The company I work for lost a mil spec tech manual contract. The whole writing group is superannuated, or made redundant. I still have some work left on my economic-stimulus-package trickle-down grant writing training programs for the unemployed. In whose number I will soon find myself, again. Once more. Audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace. Audacity forever! This is my chance. I write a pamphlet called They, or dem. Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one. I own The Daily Bulletin. I write and publish in real time. They, or dem is the best justification for publishing your own pamphlets since John Milton's Areopagitica, in 1644. Thoughts have wings, say the Rosicrucians. Go in a cave and think one true thought.
WORK. September 22 - October 2. 15,000 words. I am reverted to my permanent rank: yardbird. I stay at home and write a book called WORK. It's a sequel to BLACK HARVEST. 1985 was essays on Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and a novella. Househusband is WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2 and WORK. WORK will probably be a novella. I feel comfortable at that length. WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2 was 28,000 words. It was a memoir, or meditation on writing. Or a correspondence novel. A correspondence novel isn't a novel, it's something you get in the mail, or go to a writer's web site and read online every day. As it is written. If you write the author, he answers you in his book. Oops. I see that Househusband is subtitled Thoreau or Kierkegaard at the Writers Conference. That's a seven-word pitch. That's the plot, in seven words or less. Of course, Thoreau and Kierkegaard didn't have a wife and family to support them. Grandchildren. Swiss Family Paranoia-Critical. WORK turns out to be a long short story.
NOMOPO. October 3 - October 5. 8,000 words. At the house. I adapt HOUSEHUSBAND for the screen. Instead of six reels, or four, it runs a little short (3½).
LARGE PYLE'S LAST WRITERS CONFERENCE. October 7 - October 11. 6,500 words. In progress. I change the subtitle of HOUSEHUSBAND from THOREAU OR KIERKEGAARD AT THE WRITERS CONFERENCE to A CORRESPONDENCE NOVEL. What is a correspondence novel? Everything under the kitchen sink. Just what David Zack says it is. A memoir, a novel, pamphlets of poetry, a screenplay. Literary theory, literary criticism. Self-interviews. Letters to imaginary friends. Written, and published, on the worldwide web, in real time. It's the means of getting them out to the reader that's new, not what is in them. I wish Zack could have seen the Internet. He predicted it, you know. He was doing this through the mails. From Tepoztlan, Mexico. His dog, Bleeto. Short for Diablito, or Little Devil. A Mexican hairless hairy friend. He didn't have no tail, he had a very short tail. I don't have no cult, I have a very small cult.
FISHING STORIES, OR, BEER-CAN ISLAND. October 12 - October 13. 4,000 words. Poems. I make a pamphlet, and send it out. Fishing Stories, or, Beer-Can Island.
HALLOWEEN. October 15 - October 17. 5,000 words. I finish up my temporary job. I see that HELD-IN-ABEYANCE (HIA): TALKING TO MYSELF and HOUSEHUSBAND: A CORRESPONDENCE NOVEL combine to form On Assignment: Four Months of Daily Typewriting, with one more part, to take me to the end of October: IN MY ROOM: IMMOBILIZED IN POINT AND SHOOT.
IN MY ROOM: IMMOBILIZED IN POINT AND SHOOT. October 18 - October 21. 5,000 words. I see what I am going to write next. I finish my writing job. I didn't get fired. I didn't quit. I completed the assignment.