SUNDAY 11:17 PM
fathersday shoutout to dr arthur flowers sr, doing what i can dad, to be the man you taught me to be, and to babajohn killens, my mentor in the longgame, for teaching me not only how to write but how to be a writer - good looking out
rdoc
SUNDAY 11:36 AM
what ive decided i have to do is keeping driving forward like i still think i can win this
thats all i can do, keep driving forward in the state of acute desperation that gets the work done
and see how far it takes me, i got about a month that i can give this a full court press
before i have to start thinking about family and schoolhouse matter
when i realized i wasnt going to make it i immediately started chilling, start taking it easy, and realized i had
been in an acute fever of work, that amadeus working himself to death scene, and thought how unhealthy
that was and that i was better being more paced about this, thought about that great line in shogun
where the shogun tell the aggressive young prince patience puppy, then i start thinking about the manuscripts
i need to read, the books i need to read, the projects i need to do, movies i want to watch, but this state
of bliss does not last long, my mind still racing, i still got the fever, i need to stay on the sungun, i need to stay in the zone, drive myself to creative madness and see what happens, 4 more hell lets say 5 more weeks of the madness, see what happens
all my love
rdoc
SUNDAY
look like that window of opp in iran is closing, without benefit of those huge numbers
it will be easy for the mullahs to pick off the bold ones, but the state has lost critical validity
it will be interesting to see how they go about reestablishing their authority, hard or soft
the window may be closing but this is still a seminal moment and i have to say im not sure
how this is going to play out, kinda depends on what the state does at this point, i just dont know
i suspect moulavi will want to retain his insider status and back up but i just dont know
i hate it when i just dont know
im at a crossroads of my own here, i have to decide if im still going for a moneydraft or just a coherent 2nd half, i dont believe i have much choice, coherent 2nd half and hopefully have a couple of weeks in august for a desperation redpen before school start
if i get a coherent draft i can do redpen over the semester, raw manuscript is what i dont want to be trying to do during the schoolyear
i am really discouraged, computer down, woodshed down, slogging thru the narrative mud, and
folk will be asking me arthur you finish the novel, and ima have to say no not yet and ignore the doubt
in their eyes, ohwell, life goes on, just keep slogging thru the mud rick, keep the faith
rdoc
SATURDAY
this slow computer is killing me, i feel like im in some 3rd world cybercafe
got to have 3 screens up in order to move at a decent pace
okay, a couple of comments about obama, been disappointed in his handling of the financial
crises, does not appear to me that he putting those financial boys in sufficient check
obama play his game a little more cautious than i would but then he aint me is he
at the end of the day i assume his game will be tight and he will have left a good legacy behind
i still assume he will do me proud , i got your back brother
as for flak he getting on iraq i think he calibrating that about right, he got players game
any opportunity for the mullahs to blame america for the unrest will be counterproductive
iranians doing just fine on their own, oama and the wests position is clear, they know they being watched, the know they being judged and found wanting, inside and out
interesting how many of those signs in english
i believe the hammer is inevitable, i speculate when it come
to velvet revolution or tiananmen square the mullahs will square
i am constitutionally opposed to theocracy, among which i include saudi arabia, israel
and americas own fundamentalist attempts to impose their religious dogmas on the rest of us
in my ateempt to be a literary instrument of the human condition
i am always going to be in favor of democratic impulses over the autocratic,
this iranian election seems to be, in its own context, as significant as the election of obama
in many ways democracy just a facade too
but such in life in the human condition, you take what you can get
like this slow computer
ol boy wading thru the literary muck now, that soulsucking bane of literary existence - raw manuscript
raw manuscript: you go into the old draft you pull out everything but the few sentences/passages (sometimes just a bunch of notes to yourself) that might still be useful, you take that skeleton, you read it over, then you reconcept, what is this passage trying to do, what is it doing, what could it do, what dynamics at play, you do this on paper, or screen rather, freethinking, you start writing down random metaphors, you run random characterriffs, dialogueriffs, stagedirections, et al, you try everything, you keep doing this until you got a good stock of material to work with, you do this until you just cant take the standing still no more, until your soul is crying for momentum, but you need multiple pages because cutting out the chaff will cost you about 80%, the remaining 20% you use to start the whole process over again and again until you got viable manuscript - so the only question is how many drudgery hours a day can you take,
does it make sense, no, its just a bunch of mess, but you keep wading thru the muck until you
until you remotely got something look like a viable scene, thats when you got something to work with
redpen time - those 1st redpens are brutal though, what i call bleeding all over the page
this is when it shapes up into real manuscript - you have to do them over and over until all you doing is
working the poetry
thats when it becomes fun, when one or two words/phrases/passages can add layers of meaning to the whole novel
basically what im trying to do stylistically at this stage is have every passage every paragraph be a
piece of flash fiction unto itself - one big epic narrative poem, its taking me forever
i thought i was at redpen, had all the holes filled in, but it turns out whole 2nd half is a hole and i been pushed back to raw manuscript - what a revolting development this is
im out - this post has become a diversion - you know what i want to do, i want to just quit, just be a teacher and not try to be a novelist no more and just coast thru the rest of my life, i make a decent paycheck, i got tenure, i dont have to do this
i got folk so trained to me not delivering this novel i can tell them im still working on it for the next 10 years, until im too old to care
live a normal life like everybody else in the world, get me a little rest sometime
but my pride wont let me, my pride wont even consider that
punk out like that i couldnt hold my head up amongst my peers and students
much less future generations
i will make my destinic bones as a novelist or i will die surprised
i saw a colleague at the grocery store yesterday, she said how is the summer going
i said im trying to get a little work done, she said you supposed to be having fun
i am i said, this is what i call fun - this what i live for
ever reach the point i cant struggle with the work id put the shotgun in my mouth too
rdoc
THURSDAY
hello world, system crashed, with all the work ive done on that rough passage
my bad, hadnt backed up, my bad, IT dept trying to bring my system back, one can only hope my work is
still there, so anyway i decide no sense fiddling with that passage no more till i see whats what
so i move on to the next one and its worse than the previous one, i read thru more passages and they getting worse and worster
i realize then not only is 2nd half of novel rougher by definition but cleaning up previous chapters have
rendered much of 2nd half no longer viable, critical movements no longer work, im thinking oh hell
took me damn near two weeks to fix last passage, if remaining passages are as bad im dead in the water
theres no way i will be thru with a clean draft by end of summer, i will be lucky to have a draft period
IT keep telling me we will have your computer fixed by tomorrow art but its been 4 days now and i been sitting around having a pity party - then i decide if one of my students came to me talking about my computer crashed i cant work - i would be so not wanting to hear that, i would be so intolerant of that - what you mean you cant work, what kind of punk bullshit is that
so i dug out an old computer we had just not gotten around to throwing away just yet and im back in the game, balky and irritatingly slow but back in the game, that pity party wasnt working for me, ima professional - limping, lame, whatever it take
realized during my downtime that whats fallen apart is not the passages but the concept of novel
ive taken 1st half so far beyond what i had that 2nd half just doesnt work anymore
thats life in the literary lane
i dont see a chance in hell of making my deadline now, but that wont stop me from trying
im looking for a miracle now, im looking for 12 hour days now, im looking for a miracle, lord
if i thought i was on defcon 1 before i didnt know the meaning of defcon 1, its fucking total war now
facebook, sociallife, housemaintenance, blogging, family - everything got to go - fat chance of that but ima try
i been noting how twitter and facebook et al been used in iran in the eternal conflict between
authoritarian/democratic forms of government, in the ongoing effort to enhance the human condition
thats one of my things you know, enhancement of the human condition, ima have to monitor that
and im realizing ima have to twit too at some point, but twitting/facebooking/blogposting
all that, thats gon have to wait till i get back down to defcon 3 - right now its total war up in here
had to go on campus to take my computer in and somebody saw me, start talking about lunch, i told them,
this aint me, this a fucking mirage, this just my traveling spirit, you just think you talking to me
god this computer is slow, i will be glad when i get my instrument back, then ima have to go thru the hassle of rebuilding it - ohwell, at least im back in the game
in struggle we trust
as for iran its more complicated than it appear, but then what isnt
im outta here
rdoc
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