SATURDAY
had a meeting a w/film faculty, richard breyer, he disabused me of the notion of learning videochops, he say
the way you do that is collaboration, you dont try to learn the skilz, whatever you come up w/wont be primetime
then he told me i shouldnt be cutting clips like ive been, he looked appalled, he say those belong
to somebody, i told him i thought i had artistic leeway but dont inside i knew i didnt,
so im kinda discouraged about that videowork i was going to do, but thats cool, who got time to learn a
new skill, and ive actually gon thru this before w/the hypertext thing, parker told me then collaborate
richard said he had a brilliant student who might be willing to work with me, he will connect me when im ready
so i put that down, thankfully, and have turned to mojo rising rewrite, finished the piece for callaloo and
feeling good about working on a book again, and its not quite as bad as i felt on first dig, im just holding my nose and microstepping, sentence by sentence, and resisting the urge to do real rewrite, just revise rick
at about 10 pages a day should take me about 20 days to get thru this, then pick up Rest fresh and im rolling again
with a new product - sound good to me - im out
FRIDAY
apparently senegals 85 year old president tried to pull a mugabe, - change constitution so he could run again
& setup a new position, vice president, for his unpopular son so if he died in office his son would take over
apparently senegalese street said no & made it stick, interesting development, once again senegal shows the way
i guess the baby in that notorious african renaissance statue was pointing the way out, get thee hence
(o i just love being a literary wit, in reallife im shy & lowprofile, put a keyboard in my hand i turn into a beast)
THURSDAY: 7:21am: just tried to go into mojo rising to start revising it; damn thing is unreadable and once again i am filled with shame to think that people have read it, i can expect that one day ima feel that way about rest too - ohwell, thats why im rewriting it, i cant promote that other draft w/a straight face (i notice now that its just a draft, i hear you rick)
THURSDAY
so im thinking about doing some videowork, so im trolling youtube for interesting clips, so i
run up on stuff like this that discourage me, how long does it take to get these kind of chops
kinda psychedelic - you seizure folk need to be careful
one of the reasons i want to get video chops is because i have in mind to write a media version of rest
after im done with the print version, tried hypertext when it came out but that internet platform was problematic
also keeping up w/technical innovation but thats not point of moment, point is that e-pads have vitalized
the concept of a media based novel, grounded in text still but enhanced by music and media/graphics
and an interest i have in spatial narrative, how it lays out on the page, i got some ideas
or am i just talking about a kind of graphic novel as film, which doesnt sound that innovative, i hope not - well anyway
i was going to start working my videochops thru performances, dev a videoproject to display while i perform, but ive
gotten started on it last couple of days and i see that it will be both time consuming & a steep learning curve,
but unfortunately i have the creative fire on me, when i throw myself into learning some artform and cursing
the distraction it becomes (because im an obsessive type, cant be a novelist otherwise), but then when i look
back on them (harp, kalimba, hypertext, this blog, etc) turns out they contribute to the total literary entity that i am
o its a twisty web we weave - a luta continua
WEDNESDAY
provocative latimes article about some independent writer who sold 1 million self published books kindle direct publishing
i think its obligatory reading for writers trying to understand the explosiion of alternative publishing options
i knew nothing of kindle direct publishing, i realize now minister faust used it for his latest novel, alchemists of kush, priced it at $2.99, promoted it heavily (i scooped up a copy, a good deal for $2.99) - now i understand why
basically you get 70% of pricerange $2.99 - $9.99 vs i think it said 3% of mainstream publishing, this guy has sold a million by pricing his at 99 cents, the lowest they will allow, and cleared about $400,000 from it
but if he had sold a million thru mainstream he would have cleared about a million, the big hump with direct
publishing is that you have to do all the promotion and thats more than a notion, basically have to have a
book that has its own legs - ive been planning to rewrite mojo rising in interim between finishing rest and
starting on hoodoo book of flowers, plan to rewrite it (my memoir) every 10 years or so
and i have always thought to selfpublish that one - ive always wanted one book thats mine, all mine
novels you have to have a mainstream house backing you, novels are just too soft on the market,
ishmael set up the model of literary publising activism for my generation
you let the mainstream publish you, you publish other folk
and it behooves us literary folk to be as knowledgeable as possible about publishing options in 21st century
now im thnking how ebooks are riding the future and i should thnk of that delivery platform when i format rewrite of
mojo rising, got this rewrite in mind thats going to reflect how my blog has evolved, ima cut it to the bone
ima work the poetry, its going to be more elliptic - and i need to think ebook & ipad platform delivery
okay, im gone, this post has gotten longer than i like, free associating now, this can go on forever, im out
TUESDAY
awkward little article claiming the west/obama thing reflects tensions between nationalism & assimilation
its probably a little more complex than that, but its nice seeing issues of empowerment strategies in the
21st century being raised, problem is sayng cornel is nationalist and obama assimilationist is kinda reductive
and article makes no effort to understand you cant have one w/o the other, we have to work with both hands
also interesting time mag article on how conservative defund gov policies have lost touch with reality
this is a beef of mine, all the pain being inflicted on the body politic is a conscious strategy by repubs
to cripple american government to point, as tax activist norquist once said, where you can drown it in a bathtub
whats the difference between what defund gov repubs want and what al qaeda wants, both want to cripple america
MONDAY
well its gone, i recall when i was a young wannabe and the psychological blocks that keep folk from doing what
they got to do to win, and i recall one for me was when i realized i was good at this and would likely win
and i realized that everybody in the world would know my business, be all up in my psyche and judging me
and i almost turned away from the literary life, thats a little what im feeling now, all folk got to do is read
a couple pages of this novel and they will know all my business, ohwell, only have to endure it
for another 20 years or so and then i will be gone, then i wont care, whereas novel is forever
SUNDAY: 8:07pm:
im done, just sent it off, whats tripping me now is what am i trying to say w/this novel, ohwell, ima put it out
my mind, 1st week in july ima break it down & start rebuilding it, hopefully w/editorial input - im done
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