i see the promiseland has dropped, step by step im getting there

 MONDAY

a shot from promiseland, supposed to be me in performance, i look like some hindu deity dont i

okay i was off on off on all weekend about whether to send rest for the weary off or polish it one more time, decided one more weekend wont hurt, after 10 years whats one more weekend for a cleaner, richer work

finally opened it up yesterday and realized its not about the last 10 pages, i need to do one more readthru of whole thing - last one took about 3 weeks, which means novel is cleaner, this one should easily be 3 days or less

was reading article this morn in washpost about black preachers exhorting blacks to vote in the name of struggle, took me back to the civilrights days, voting rights struggle and all, what we went thru to get the vote these kids just dont realize, the dues we paid to be able to vote -

article say Rev Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist sounding the warhorn, so is Rickydoc:

"Go to the polls Tuesday in the name of our ancestors," Warnock said to cheering listeners who rose to their feet. "Know that your ballot is a blood-stained ballot. This is a sacred obligation."

a luta continua

 

 

SUNDAY ADDENDUM: ive decided im going to send it off monday, whatever i dont get done today dont get done, im tired of it, i want it off my plate

also promseland been sold to brazil - looking for paying gigs on the college circuit now, bhm and mlk day, anybody interested email me, arflower@syr.edu, working up a performance based on promiseland and mlk now

SUNDAY

dont know what to do with myself, used to being invested in that novel, ive pulled up those last 10 pages and fiddled with them some but its basically a done deal, think ima hold onto it a week and next weekend woodshed fiddle with that endgame, just try to enrich it somehow, just to make myself feel gooder about it

im preparing myself mentally to expose it now, to show it to people, its just been me and it for 10 years now
now im about to let the outside world judge it, look here, this is my soul, tell me what you think

this is the moment when you put it all on the line, i am about to acutely embarrass myself, and i cant take disapproval, interesting that its different from previous novel launches, back then i didnt have a constituency

to care about, now i dont want to disappoint all the folk who have continued to believe in me during the lean
years, now im worried about my constituency, now im worried about my legacy, its a lot more fraught now

before i was just too dumb and uninformed to know how fraught it was, to launch a novel into the world

ohwell, if you not willing to pay the freight get out of the arena, make room for somebody who is

ima take advantage of this breath between works to get my life back in order, its pretty much fallen apart
if it aint essential it aint been done, i got to use this unleashed energy to stablize my life

it wont be long before i am invested in another book, in fact i think ima do a rewrite of mojo rising 1st: plan
to update my memoir every 10 years, i got ideas to do to that book will make it something i will be proud of

and it shouldnt take more than a couple of months, i could do it now, in fact thats what i might do
use nov and dec to do a rewrite of mojo rising, in prep for its paperback publication

i can invest a measely two months make that a worthy book, (right rick, a project never takes the time
you initially invest, it always takes more than you could have possibly imagined, but i think i will gamble)

that way i can let the novel get cold while its hopefully making the industry rounds, pick it up with an

increased personal clarity, whatever, first thing i got to do is the lookat read/endgame enrichment for rest
next weekend and then rest/stabliize for a couple of weeks,

look like the mojo rising revision might only have a month, cool, cause i dont want to invest but so much in a rewrite anyway, what i really want to get to is my holybook, the hoodoo book of flowers, the great black book of generations - thats my next big one

on promisedland, i was convinced being listed ya on amazon was ok, the publisher was not, they are having it changed, its interesting because we had that discussion at start of project and explicitly rejected it

i got to start working on a presentation for readings, they are, specially for bhm and mlk day

also im going to do shortstories now, write them, study them as artform, since its the coin of the mfa realm and what im most often advising students in, its time to master the form, o i been attentive because its what i do, but you know me, i want to be the best i can be when it come to helping young writers

and lord knows i just dont have another novel in me, shortstories about all i can handle now

all my love

rdoc

 

SATURDAY 1:24  done deal  -  time to go collapse for a minute
ima send it off monday, good lord willing and the creek dont rise

SATURDAY 12:51 10 pages and counting, think i will have to take a break, woreout tired - also i think when i am thru i will do a redpen of the last 20 pages sometime this weekend, that will perhaps satisfy this need in me to refine my endgame on gp

SATURDAY 10:59

18 pages and counting, encountering some wierd psychological resistance, each page getting harder to work,
harder to hang in there, to focus - basically fear trying to cripple me - i will not have it, i will not be defeated

SATURDAY

okay, im going for the gold this weekend, ima just brutalize my way to the end, i want to be thru

old literary running buddy of mine - terry mcmillan, is in the city today for her new novel, really really wanted to run down there and jack her up

tmac been dissing me lately, over the years she has stopped forwarding her contact info, i got what everybody else got now, when i call the old numbers she never call back, when i contact her over on

facebook she never respond, and im like aint this nothing, i know tmac dont think ima let her cut me loose

me and tmac go all the way back, but its like that sometime when one literary companero get more success than their peers, you get a new set of friends and colleagues sometime, i been guilty of that myself but never your core buddies - success dont come between core buddies because we all realize what a fickle finger of literary fate that is and success aint got nothing to do w/power - ima forgive tmac

anybody else i would put her on my extensive shitlist, cause most of the litworld has written me off

they are all on my i will show you list, my fuck you too list, and i cant wait until they try to act like we still cool
after this novel come out and its clear im back in the game folk will be sucking up and my attitude will be

polite enough but inside it will be fuck you too, stepped on my face when i was down and out, fuck you

but tmac one of the few folk on this planet i love unconditionally, she will start returning my calls and

such when my new books come out, thats the way it works with some folk, im just
not going to hold that against her, she is who she is and i love her unconditionally

(this all of course assumes my novel will be a blowout success and not die on the vine like all the others have)

o i really really wanted to go down and get in her face and ask her tmac what the fuck do you think you
doing, quit acting a damn fool, give me your current contact info and return my calls when i call you,

and she would have been all effusive and toughgirl loving cause her heart is right, she just got that
defensive wall up these days and has lost perspective, would have been good to see her

would have took me back to our cub days, the stories i could tell (and did in mojo rising)

but i got to clock these pages, thats the strong move, a 10 hour drive to the city for
20 minutes of pleasure against finishing my novel, thats not even a real contest

i am about 25 pages from being thru, and its just about having the brute discipline to just sit here at
the sacred desk going over this text sentence by sentence, word by word and its decent text so

its not like i got to stop and figure things out, its just painstaking word by word slogging thru the narrative mud, the poetry draft, after doing it for the last 3 weeks i am really really wore out and tired of this novel, my brain is tired, my soul is weary, cause a novel entail a lot of soul wrestling you know

people ask me why are you always tired, all you do is sit there, and i tell them i been wrestling with my soul and im very tired

but now the thought of actually being thru w/this thing got a holt of me, im going for broke dear regulators, im betting the jook tonight

now that im in the endgame i got a concern that im just ignoring, endgame is where you want your novel to shine and i would love to be taking the endgame to higher deeper ground and i hate doing a draft that dont take the novel to a new level,

other day i gave my boy ayinde extensive feedback on his novel and he was like cool, i will have a draft done by december and i very delicately told him you wont have a chapter done by december  -  you try to inject a little reality into a students aspirations without discouraging them, i wanted to tell him it would be about 2 or 3 years before this novel is ready if you lucky but i couldnt bring myself to do that to him

i told him what you talking about man is what i call a nip and tuck

when you do a real draft you want to break the novel down, rebuild it, take it to another level, take it deeper
you do not want to nip a sentence here, tuck a word there and call it a draft, unless of course it is

the poetry draft - okay rick, this is what you been training for all your life, this day, this very
moment, lets do it, focus rick, focus, discipline, perserverence - you can do this

FRIDAY

30 pages and counting - im in my endgame now and i fear its not as powerful as i need it to be but i cant worry about that now, im on micronarrative now, word by word and sentence by sentence, aint got time for the big picture this go around, it would stop my flow

so anyway, my i see the promisedland is out, well almost out, its up online, books will be available next month,

what happen was i did that state dept tour of india right, and they were treating me like i was some kind of literary guru,

im still in recovery from that, another reason to get this novel done cause i want to be treated like that all the time

so anyway tara press asked me to do my storytelling thing in conjunction with bengali artist manu, on martin luther kings life,

so i strive right to capture the complexity of king in it, so they tell me its up for pre order on amazon, so i go to check and its listed for grade 9 through 12 and im like wtf, i did not write that book for the kiddies, i wrote that book for the generations, i call myself going deep

call myself being subversive, i see what the industry thinks of my threat potential - ya - thats cool, they welcome to purchase a copy too

by nature of a dialogue over on facebook i am now very cool w/being marketed to ya w/that book, im told that is a very hot market, and its not like it makes the book any less what i intended, im am now pleased w/ya interest - just a greater disbursement of my vision

karen lafreay simpson commented that if its truly the generations you want to speak to thats exactly what the ya market is, i couldnt argue with that

either way i fear it will be another collectors item instead of a commercially viable book, do me a favor and get a copy will you, boost me up

 

THURSDAY

40 pages and counting - ima try to get this finished this weekend, all it call for is a brute discipline - step by step word by word sentence by sentence keep marching

interesting, had been concerned last 3rd would be roughest, but so far recent redpen is holding up, im marching thru,

clip of obama on daily show, stewart jacks obama up on presidential timidity, say some of the reforms seem to paper over a foundation that is corrupt, obama say had to get things done, in an emergency situation that cause me to have to work thru the process i was given, interesting interview, worth the 15 or so minutes

been reading this book blooms critical analysis gabriel marquez

and its got me envious of what 100 years of solltude did, ive always aspired to that scope but rest doesnt have it and i have to accept that, 100 years is out of my league, have to once again remind myself what aishah rahman told me when

in my impressionable youth i said i want to be the greatest novelist ever lived, she said thats not what you want, art

you want to sing your song the best you can sing it, that way you can appreciate other folk singing theirs

rest for the weary is the best song i got, best shot i got to give, whatever the judgment is ima live with it

WEDNESDAY

hello all, sorry i havent been on point, between schoolhouse and clocking pages i been underwater

im about 60 pages from closure now and moving well, i just got to stay focused, im bured in schoolhouse

manuscripts now, and thats so fraught, you want to give folk good empowering feedback, if you in any way conscientious its a very humbling space to be in - and very time consuming - but its a job i love, teaching young writers how to write, whenever i get to whining i remind myself of how fortuitous this is, that they pay me to do this, that this what i do for a living - ohwell, i got a couple of free hours before i check in w/the schoolhouse, let me try to clock some more pages, every page counts - im out

SUNDAY

VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN - as in faciliate somebody who wasnt going to, what did you think i meant

i am so buried in this novel, deeper i get in it the thicker the mud,

im woodshed buried now, weekend woodshed, past the halfway mark so im on the downstroke but its almost november and im still buried - how many times have i told folk im thru with this novel,

i feel like the democrats, dont matter how hard i work, i dont get nowhere, seems in fact
to be an inverse ratio - ok enuf whining rick, i been clocking about 10 pages a day

damn near 11 oclock and i have not yet made my daily 10, catch you on the flow, got to go

rod, thanks for that package, good looking out

rdoc

Comments

[BuffaloSoldier]

SO ONE DAY WE WOULD BE FREE BuffaloSoldier salutes Mrs. Garnett. No, she's not the figure I usually choose. You can look up anyone the Soldier salutes. Not Mrs. Garnett. So why her and why now? SoulDoctor, I must tell you my experience with the VOTE. Malcolm's edit was the Ballet or the Bullet. We didn't choose the Bullet, so we're left with the Ballet. Back in '70, I made my failed attempt at attending "higher education" I was a student at Tuskegee Institue. That was voting season down there and a bunch of us students were recruited to man voting booths in rural Alabama. The Southeners were so organized, we were taken into homes, bedded and fed the next morning. I was stationed at a booth in Geore Wallace's hometown. Now, being teens, we were, of course, bickering and trying to keep watch at the same time. Martin Luther King's lawyer was running for some office and we'd met him the day before. We were cautioned to watch out for people either being intimidated or being "guided" to vote for the candidate of the pollster's chose. We bickered and picked at each other until a hush came over us. A very old woman who needed assistance walking painfully made her way to the booth. She had a smile that stopped all bickering in its tracks. I was the last to help her to the booth and I stared down their appointed "pollster" When she came out, She looked at us with that bickering stopping smile and tearfully said, "I want to thank you young people for this glorious day." We learned later she was Mrs. Garnett and she was one hundred years old and it was the first time she'd ever voted. We were all young and were mostly Bullet folks. But we became proud Ballet folks then.
Flash forward to today. Before the LionKing, the booths were mostly empty. I voted in every election since. In the face of such toxic remonitons by fellow Black males, "I don't vote. Voting don't do nothing for nobody. I don't see why you do it, man" In my jobs in the hood, I've been outnumbered on the corners, in the workplace and in the barbershops. But I push on. The LionKing won't be on the ballet this time. And his folks made the kiss of death move of turning the last election into a cult of personality. So he doesn't have the needed coattails to pull in the Black Vote. But he nor anyone else has to remind this perpetual 19 year old. Since it's not the Bullet, it has to be the Ballot. Thank's Mrs. Garnett for this glorious insight. I'm BuffaloSoldier and I approve this message.

[arthur flowers]

so do i

[masterymistery]

congratulations on "I see the promised land"., If the writing in the book is anything like the writing in this blog, I'd better place an order, quick!

masterymistery at cosmic rapture

[arthur flowers]

thanks mastery, appreciate the props dear regulator