Tuesday, February 3

One time I bought a copy of Jeff Herman's guide to editors, publishers, and literary agents, and was inspired to write a pamphlet called Areas Not Interested in Agenting: Poetry, Autobiographical Fiction, Anecdotes and Ravings.

I didn't plan it that way, but I see now that THE KING OF DAILY TYPEWRITING, a book in three parts, expands the pamphlet to book length.

MINOR POET: A COUNTER-NARRATIVE TO WRITING SCHOOLS AND WRITER'S GUIDES. January 1 - January 18. 31,000 words. An exposé of the business side of writing like Kitchen Confidential. Imagine if Upton Sinclair had to submit The Jungle to the meatpackers. Contains the Garage Band Books pamphlet Art Brew: The Spent Effluent Collection. Posted at The Daily Bulletin daily, as it was written, with some entries redacted, so I wouldn't put my day job in jeopardy.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION, OR THE FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: I JUST CALL IT A KUNSTLERROMAN. January 19 - February 1. 30,000 words. The allusion is to Billy Bob Thornton's movie Daddy and Them and a John Prine concert tape, Sessions at West 54th, in which he and Iris Dement sing duets from In Spite of Ourselves. I publish the pamphlet Let's Get W*t, and post the book at The Daily Bulletin. I compare genre indeterminacy to gender indeterminacy, or smorgasbord: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and undecided. I also set up and resolve the opposition vampirism versus turkey marinade syringe injection.

JACK THE RAVER: THE CREATIVE NONFICTION BYLINED COLUMN. In progress. February 1 - February 29. Newspaper columns I have written and web sites I have maintained on the worldwide web. The search for a regular outlet for one's work. Making fun of President Bush's War on Totemism and the Homeland über alles Security Czar. He calls it the War on Totoism, but we know what he means. Run, Toto, run.

In sum, THE KING OF DAILY TYPEWRITING tells how I produced a body of work, my stack, and invented a form to present it in, daily typewriting, while holding a full-time job (when I wasn't at the house, on sabbatical, or unemployed), doing my share of the housework and the parenting (until Owen and Balder grew up and moved out), and socializing with Brenda, with her family and our friends, when they came to visit, and with my coterie of steadfast readers, the Buzzard Cult, in person, at book fairs, small press publishing workshops, and poetry readings, by mail, and over the Internet.

It gives the flavor of the life of a working writer writing books agents aren't interested in agenting, but readers the writer reaches in person care intensely about, seek out: namely (the present audience) aspiring writers, the loved ones of writers, and the general reader interested in the place of serious writing in a society of entertainment, disinformation, political propaganda, and commercial advertisements, plus a disingenuous "How To" industry of bad-faith advice, karmically speaking. An industry of blind guides and hypocrites, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. What does such a conflict augur for the culture, and its literature--the very way a culture has of knowing who it is, and what it stands for?