Atlanta

I started writing UNDERGROUND WRITER:
A LIFE OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM
and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR today.
See how they're going to go. I'll write them
when I finish writing this. I am excited about the project.
I added "With a Death in the Family, in Between,"
to the title of INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING:
TWO ZINE FESTS, A HOOTENANNY, AND A SIDE TRIP
TO PARADISE GARDEN. I left the trip to Tallahassee
out of the title. Also my comments on creative writing programs.
A diary, it's a hodge-podge anyway.

Q: Is INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING a diary? This book?

A: Yes.

Q: What's the difference between a diary and a journal?

A: Diary is from deis, or day. A written daily record.

Journal is related to diurnal. Also a written daily record.

They're synonyms.

Q: What's the difference between INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING, this book, and JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR, one of the next two books?

A: INSIDE UNDERGROUND WRITING is a daily record of the month of July 2005. A month in which I travel, speak in public, meet new people.

I comment on books, and writing, but I do something besides sit in front of a computer monitor and type.

JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR is a daily record of the writing of UNDERGROUND WRITER. It's more literary. More, ah, removed from direct action. I do go places, and meet people, but by and large, it is about the writing process. The publishing process. As I send out query letters and proposals.

Q: Too many undergrounds. Too many outsiders.

A: Nausea is also known as The Diary of Antoine Roquentin. And Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground is like a journal. Defoe wrote A Journal of the Plague Year, a novel. Kafka wrote A Hunger Artist, which was like a diary.

It's confusing.

Q: Is the JOURNAL OF A MEMOIR where you're going to put the whining, excuses, invidious comparisons, and bragging?

A: I'm hoping to leave them out. But if I just have to put them in, that's where they'll go. Better there than in the memoir.

Q: I don't see how you can write about your life--what you did, and the conditions you did it under--and not compare what happened to you to what happens to most professional writers.

A: I will tell that. It's all in the tone of voice.

What happened happened.

You can look at it with a bemused tone, with anger, with despair.

I'm striving for bemused.

I applied for a booth at Oktoberfest, on Harrison Avenue, downtown.

I had to register to collect sales tax, with the Florida Department of Revenue, but now I have a permit. Garage Band Books is a registered vendor.

For location preferred I put, "Away From Music."

I don't mind an oompah band. But that radio station disc jockey is more than I can stand.