TUESDAY
hello world, im not really posting, trying to stamp paid on this novel, feel like w/a serious push
i could finish this thing today, but you know thats not professional flowers, just keep your steady
roll, im really really ready to be thru with this draft, take a break, start the next one, i mean really
but finish it by friday clean will be better than by today raggedy, im gone, the closer i get to the end the
more emotional friction im running up against, it may not move other folk but its designed to move me
and its fucking with my head now, its got me twisted
and all of a sudden i got both family and health issues trying to distract me, total collapse coming down on me
like a runaway freight train, got to hold it off till im done, its step by step stomp city now, its all in the pacing flowers,
focus and pacing, hold steady
its kinda deep this ongoing account of my process, between this blog, and facebook its like
a communal process of some strange sort, very 21st century, look i really have to go
i got hellhounds on my trail
SUNDAY
hello dear regulators, im afraid, im about 20 pages from the finish line and i am afraid
after all these years its like a crutch is about to be pulled out from under me
i have not shown this novel to anybody since i had to use it to get tenure
god help me that was almost 7 years ago, i sent it to my agent a couple of years ago
so she would know i was actually working on it but both times everybody knew it was in process
every couple of years i give bonnie a copy so she would see im actually working on it but i told her
dont talk to me about it, i dont even want to know youve read it, i know its flawed, you dont have to tell me that
reason i havent shown it to anybody is because it wasnt working, for 10 years now i have been working this novel strictly
on faith
and to have somebody tell me this is an awful piece of trash would have broken my faith
next draft, in about a month, im going to be sending it out to my new reading squad
my old reading squad has died off or we arent close anymore, its been almost 15 years since i had
a manuscript for folk to look at, this is a very surreal moment for me and its frightening me, problem is
mr mackdaddy has raised the bar so high, folk that know me expecting a masterpiece, just 'a good novel' wont get it
and if its a 'bad novel' ima want to just crawl into a hole, mostly its my students i dont want to disappoint
and the folk who have kept the faith over the lean years, and treated me like im sitll a contender, i dont
want to disappoint them, thats you dear regulators
i feel like i could keep faking folk out, live out my life 'working on it' - folk would be fidgety on me
but the literary world has already written me off - i could coast, got a good job, got tenure
i could coast on out, doing other projects, anything but the novel - but you know i aint going out
like that, win or lose ima keep on stepping, all my life ive wanted to be a great novelist, all my life
20 pages from closure, just as scared as i can be dear regulators - but already ive been dreaming
of all the creative energy thats going to be freed up, projects thats been waiting on me to show some love
so here i am, 20 pages from closure, last 3 weeks been a rough ride, a daily grind of exaltation and despair
but im proud of myself - i work hard last month schoolhouse to get some momentum so i can hit the summer woodshed ground running - still it always amazes me when my little x pages a day schedule/discipline actually works -
i just hope my students clocking pages - summer woodshed a blessing for wouldbe writers and
winning by myself doesnt thrill me, i need them to win too - i told them what to do, x pages a day
works every time
now that i got a little psychological space i might get in touch with them, see how they doing
20 pages from closure at 5 pages a day, i should be thru this week -
pray for me
rdoc
FRIDAY 10:48 am
i have caught up w/yesterdays count, the pressure is off, one day behind is customary, everyday i wake up
one day behind, its two days behind that i cannot abide, i think i will take a break, take care of some errands
or maybe better another hour or two, get a couple of pages into todays count,
that will make me feel good, right now im just relieved, i want to feel good
FRIDAY 9:22 am
slogging, but i was thinking, did a facebook post of my last observation, then im thinking half hour later i should check to see if i got anybody liking it, all anxiously concerned and then im thinking flowers dont you have enuf anxieties
that you got time to worry about your facebook popularity, when i make good observations here i cull them down to fb size and then twitter it and its like an excercise in being able to poet them down to the essence
but i cant be obsessing over who like me, i dont have time for that, i need to concentrate on this novel, i need to focus, this section im working on is killing me, but i got to stay focused, cant let it buck me off - life trying to defeat me
FRIDAY 8:52 am
mortal cry of a writer who has sat here about 3 hours and done a paragraph maybe:
it takes a special kind of discipline to just sit there when you
know that it will take hours to get a paragraph, after awhile you just
kind of run out of steam, i want to go lie down, watch tv, do a blogpost or something, but if i dont work today i will be 10 pages
behind, i cant have that, i cant have that - i got to focus, i got to slog thru the narrative mud, i got to win
FRIDAY early am
weak day yesterday, im about 5 pages behind, got to crunch it today - probably spent too much time chuckling over rand paul yesterday, so did michael gearson
in wapo article saying paul example of libertarian tea party folk:
"Paul and other libertarians are not merely advocates of limited government; they are anti-government. Their objective is not the correction of error but the cultivation of contempt for government itself. There is a reason libertarianism has never been -- and probably will never be -- a national political force: because too many would find its utopia a nightmare."
i suspect rachael maddow real pleased w/herself for not letting rand paul wiggle
i bet hes named after ann rand, i bet he is
what tickles me is the blowback from republicans trying all these years to tear the government down starting to realize all these fervent fanatics they been fanning consider them part of the gov too
bout the only chance dems got of surviving the onslaught is if the tea party splits the repub vote
and nominates paulites who are unlikely to be as appealing to the electorate as they are primary voters
the tea party still frightens me but hopefully we can drive a wedge between them and the republicans
for a minute i was calling them teabaggers but everytime i did it i felt soiled, like i had gotten down in
the mud with them
and whats with this attempt to flip the script by saying he does not support efforts to repeal the civil rights act
nobody accused him of wanting to repeal it, he just trying to erect a strawman he can forthrightly deny
some repubs defend him by saying it was a rookie mistake, he told the truth, shoulda known better
reason relatively small political mistakes become bigtime is when they reinforce prevailing concerns
in this case that the tea party are racial troglodytes, let me leave you with a little tea party rap
its the fiddle i like, or maybe news that obama killed michael jackson and knocked up bristol palin
i didnt know that
im out
rdoc
THURSDAY
mr ima work till 3 am, take a nap, get up and work some more
got up after my nap doing my zombie thing, had wore myself out
didnt do a lick of work yesterday, am no longer ahead of the game
im okay cause i had my cushion but i dont feel good
such is life, did get the mockups of my mlking graphic novel coming out w/indian press
its some kind of beautiful work, a couple of cross cultural glitches cause im
working w/this indian tribal artist and when i did the drummajor speech he did a
painting of some guy sitting there playing a drum set - okay, you cant mess up
the drummajor, southern folk wont allow that, not the drummajor
when mlk say he want to be a drummajor for justice he wasnt
talking about sitting there playing a drumset
he was talking about leading the marching band
also some of my vernaculars i dont think worked as well
im supposed to be going thru it w/final tooth so i need me some cushion
guess i best get to work, got to clock my daily bread
reading this fabulous work called spectacular blackness: the cultural politics
of the black power movement and the search for a black aesthetic
the black arts movement is what nurtured me, seeing this insightful breakdown of its dynamic
in the evolution of african american culture is fascinating reading for me, too fascinating
ima burn thru it w/o getting caught up, feel like i need to have read it for rest to fully manifest
still researching it seems, went online to check up on a fact in rest and ended up reading an
reader on the formation of black manhood in the 19th century,
a question of manhood: a reader in us black mens history and masculinity
one article of which: memphis raceriots of 1866 by kevin hardwich was an account of the role of black soldiers as protectors
of the besieged black communities of reconstruction and how they were attacked during memphis
riots of 1866 as symbols of black masculinity, had all this info about life in south memphis and fort pickering
during the civilwar and reconstruction, which is a major part of my novel, they quoted extensively from
the congressional report of that riot, 347 pages of testimony from the exslaves that exploded the
population of early memphis, how they lived, their living conditions, their thoughts fears and dreams
i have a xerox of it but reading all the quotes from it filled me with the hunger and i hunted it down online (its very rare) and ordered the only one available in all the world apparently, rather expensive as you can imagine
found it day before yesterday, it was more than i wanted to pay, i bookmarked it and figured i would buy it later, but yesterday i went just to check on it and it had gone up, what could i co, i ordered it
what can i do, i need to read it again before this novel actually done because i got a lot of my early memphis from it and and you always insecure about your historicals, you know you never get them right
374 page oral history of the earliest colored community of memphis, the seed of black memphis, what can i do
im out, im tired, im weary, yesterday was when your body take some rest whether you agree or not
but its not real rest, you still pushing, only time you get real rest is when you just collapse and just lay
there for a couple of days, ima try to put that off til i finish this draft, end of the month hopefully
not supposed to be doing no research but i guess research is just an ongoing thing, specially historical fiction
historical fiction you always know some of what you depicting is laughingly bogus
you go as far as the research will take you and just kinda make up the rest
research, historicals, familyissues, finances, i feel like im going under, didnt work yesterday
just too wore out tired, now im behind, now im stressed - there is no rest for folk like me
not like that day off gave me enuf rest to really be rested, just enuf to keep going
there is no rest for folk like me, there is no rest for the driven, there is no rest for the weary
rdoc
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