MUSICMAKERS: POEMS ABOUT FLORIDA. October 23 - November 8. 35,000 words. I start writing GULF COAST STORIES, about driving along the Gulf Coast, from Key West to Corpus Christi, Texas. Then I change the title to FLORIDA WRITER: A PI NOVEL, investigating what form a book like FLORIDA WRITER will, at my stage of development as a writer, take. I hang a right in Pensacola, drive across the top of the state, and head down the East Coast, to Delray Beach. Around DeFuniak Springs, I see that I am writing HILLBILLY HEAVEN: I DREAM OF DYING. I'm dying here, Ma. Nobody wants to hear about death. Around Jacksonville, I see that I am writing MUSICMAKERS: POEMS ABOUT FLORIDA. A celebration of family, children, fresh seafood, and live acoustic string band music. No hard times blues I got chickens in my back yard. A barrel of flour and a bucket of lard. 40 years of marriage. The hippies were right. Nixon was wrong. Bush was Nixon.

MYTHMAKER: OUTSIDER POEMS. November 9 - November 19. 22,000 words. School, the military, work. I see a program on BookTV about a Restored Edition of A Moveable Feast. I buy the book and reread it. I compare myself to Hemingway, starting out. And at the end. I compare our respective careers. Measure dicks. I see that I'm no more an outsider than any other writer. I just have a chip on my shoulder. The Cow Chip of Doom. As he told Scott Fitzgerald, "We're not tragic figures, Bo. What we are is writers, and what we should do is write." I see what I am going to write next. WRITING STORIES. I have a job interview for a temporary technical writer job at the last place I worked, where I wrote training programs for the unemployed. We will make it through December this year.

WRITING STORIES. November 19 - November 22. 4,000 words. I see that AT THE HOUSE is Hick Lit. I change the title to lower case. at the house. Like in our time. I read Mary Karr's Lit. She stole my genre. And shortened it.

SOCIAL SECURITY: AN ASYNCHRONOUS MEMOIR. November 23 - November 25. 4,000 words. I thought SOCIAL SECURITY was Book I of The Salvage Archeologist of the Mall Builder Culture, but it turned out to be Book IV of at the house. I see what I am writing next. BLACK CHRISTMAS. Charles Willeford's Something About a Solider meets Donn Pearce's Dying in the Sun. My father called me Old Bah, Humbug. Dickens wrote a Christmas story every year. For money. He hated writing them. Me, I love writing Christmas stories. The book is called CHRISTMAS STORIES. But the first few poems of the book form a pamphlet called Black Christmas. To send out as a writing sample for the book.