Q: You can't just put a preview of coming attractions in the middle of a movie.

A: A series, they will put the first chapter of the next book of a series at the end of the current book, to whet the reader's appetite.

I don't see why I can't put it where I write it, rather than waiting to put it at the end.

In an introduction to his Archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, Willey (1949) thanks a foundation for giving him a grant to write up his report.
He talks about how difficult it is to do such a thing piecemeal.

You lay it down, and take it back up, and every time you do that, you lose your place. You lose your momentum. That's the way, owing to circumstance, I have to work.

So I am used to writing something as it occurs to me. If I don't write it down, I will lose it.

I am working on so many things at once the way I work is the only way I have found to work.

It started as a stopgap, an emergency, a dance of desperation, but now, I'm used to working that way, and see no reason to change.

It takes some getting used to, but I adapted.

In fact, I like the way I do it better.

I am enamored of my method.

Q: There's an expression, "Kill your darlings."

A: There are lots of expressions like that.

Lumped together, they're called the conventional wisdom.

New times call for new approaches. New technologies. New media.

Romer's Rule says that evolution is conservative, in that a new adaptation wasn't trying to be what it became, it was trying to go on being the old thing in the face of changed circumstances. But the new circumstances opened new niches, and what wasn't adaptive before, suddenly was. And vice versa. What used to be adaptive no longer was.

I wasn't trying to invent a new form.

I was trying to do the old form without any of the necessary props. You need certain things to write a novel, and I didn't have them.

I wrote my novels on the run, as Kerouac said. On the hop. That gives them a certain improvised quality. I use what life serves up. Like a reader googling Jack Neff and writing me about him. Coincidentally, I was just thinking about life driving artists like Walter Anderson and Jack Neff--and me--mad.

How do you cope?

How does one cope?

Q: I don't follow.

A: In the tables I prepared, showing the different stages I went through, to arrive at where I am, one of the columns was labeled "Medium."

I went from manual typewriter, to electric typewriter, to small, desktop computer, to Internet computer.

Now with each advance in technology, I had more money, to spend on my writing, on my self-publishing, my publishing activities, and I had more time, to write, at work. Because I was more productive, as a worker. The tools I had at my disposal made me more productive. I created surplus value.

I stole some of the surplus value back, since I was creating it.

But a side effect, an unplanned consequence, was I became independent, of publishers, as a writer.

I found a way to publish my work, myself, as I did it, that eliminated the mediation of a publisher, an editor, lawyers, marketing people, publicity people, I disintermediated myself from the whole claptrap and baggage writers have always needed to get their work out to readers.

I produced a body of work, my stack, invented a form to present it in, daily typewriting, and discovered a medium to get it out to the reader through, the worldwide web.

The only reason to have a career as a writer is to do that. A career helps you to do that.

But if you can do it without having a career, what do you need to have the career as a writer for?

You don't.

I did everything I wanted to do without having a career.

Q: And?

A: And driving to New Orleans, thinking about Walter Anderson, and Jack Neff, made me realize what I have done. Talking to Larry about my work, the development of my work, over 35 years, made me aware of what I have done.

It wasn't just a life on paper and I'm not just raving.

I did it.

Q: Wait a minute. I see.

JACK THE RAVER: A LIFE ON PAPER isn't the next book.

It's the last section of this book.

A: There you go.

Q: That's what you went over there in search of. That's the answer to your quest. It isn't over that hill yonder. It's under your feet.

A: We don't need no stinking badges, man.

The royal we.

I don't. I am America's greatest writer. Unheralded and unsung.