TUESDAY
mr doing it rick didnt do it yesterday, not a lick of work, struggled w/the page but didnt
have my discipline on - wandered about the internet etc instead of working,
want to be a writer got to worship discipline, every morning, everday, sametime
sameplace, clocking pages - i suspect its like that for anything worthwhile
when i do work im coming up with decent raw manuscript, point is can
i sustain it thru 91 movements, about 800 pages
wont know till i try will i . . .
hope i get some work done today, i seem to be spending this last week of freedom just chilling, watching tv, reading journey to the west, eating comfort food, looks like im taking R & R, scheduled or not
i believe that rest is part of a disciplined production schedule, so if thats what it is thats what it is
thing is you have to accept it instead of fight it, otherwise it aint rest, spinning your wheels
break you down quicker than getting work done
SUNDAY MIDNIGHT
wading thru the narrative mud, but wading, this narrative is actually working, its raw but its working, just
might be magical, i just got to slug thru the narrative mud, daily grind, doing it rick, stay on it till its done
just as schoolhouse starting up and woodshed gone,the gods of literature can be so cruel sometime
(so i guess it was the gods of lit caused you to blow off your woodshed teaching here there everywhere)
got to prepare for the long slog, got to organize my days so my mornings and weekends are
free, cant be frivolous with my hours, got to be steady i got to be so on it, and dear regulators, we
all know 2 a week is impossible, i suspect it will be cut to 1 a week but that is just too slow, i got to try 2
the key to success in this business is as it has always been
beyond reason, reasonable dont get it, reasonable dont
get no book done, you got to be unreasonably obsessed w/getting a book done amidst the clutter of lifes demands, its not being a writer, or expressing myself or anything else, its getting a book done
busting drafts and clocking pages
thats what i do, thats pretty much all i do
when you doing Works that aspire to be instruments of power and works of narrative wonder, you
think in 5 and 10 year increments, if you lucky, and very dligent, otherwise we talking 15, 20
a luta continua
SUNDAY
final production post for this crossroads: went into current HBOF to finish divination structure
and realized what i needed to do was make the riffs in it fictional, this traveler bit, then when
its done if i want to do a novel version i will have worked the narrative kinks out, because ive
dug in and its horrid, fucking horrid, but i know how this works, i cant judge these early drafts
once ive made decision to try someting i got to fail before i quit, which means if it takes 20 years
to make it work then it take 20 years, i hate putting mojo rising on hold, i wanted to have that done
but i sense i got to work this out before i put paid on that one, so im dug in, i have 81 movements
if i can get 4 a month i will be good, thats one a week, schoolhouse schedule, which means about
2 years before i get a decent first draft, let go for 9 a month rick, still a 9 month schedule but i can
live w/9 mos of delayed literary gratification, and if i go faster thats cool to, but the minimum is
9 a month, which means two a week, (while doing a schoolhouse load, merciful jesus, its final, im retiring
in 3 years, i want to be a fulltime writer again and i dont mind going back on starvation rations to do it
also, im going to transform rootwork.com into some kind of quasi magazine, ie minimum maintenance
i got to go, i got so much work to do . . .
THURS ADDENDUM
so im deep in the files looking for a pre divination draft and im back to about 2008
so ive actually given about 5 years to this version, but i dont know what im crying
about, thats been the pattern w/this text all along - biblic draft, didnt work, koranic draft, didnt
work, iching draft, didnt work, and now an ifa draft doesnt work either, kinda ironic that the
inspiration for this NEW draft, (which got to be THE draft, dont have the discretionary years any
more) is a novel - i believe though, after all those years, i got to finish that DIVINATION DRAFT,
just use what ever compacted version i get as a chapter in mojorising: sorry repeating myself, trying to
revise my production schedule for my remaining productive years and caughht up in a loop
im tripping, im out . .
THURSDAY
okay , this thing is starting to shape up, and i think i have only lost about 3 years
going down this divination road, 3 years i can live with, it was the 20 that was
hurting, what hurts is that it adds another 6 months to finishing mojo rising, if im lucky
okay, enough crying, start doing the rough draft of the conquerors pilgrimage,
looking for a Way, will consider doing mojo rising w/o divination section
am also considering finishing that off because ive done so much w/it
the other move is to go back to previous (before divinination) structure
and do a roughdraft of this pilgrimage thing, decided to give this to the conqueror
instead of brer rabbit, i need a pilgrimage sensibility the rabbit wont give me
im kinda excited about it, even though the 1st two drafts will be shit, by definition
its got potential of doing everything ive wanted a wouldbe holybook to be - numinous
gospel narrative
also it will give me some focus, apparently i need to be working on a big book,
shorts just dont do me, revisions of clean works dont do me
i need to be working on a viable draft of the hoodoo book of flowers, its been clear to me
for sometime now, though im just now facing it, that the divination structure doesnt have
the kind of divine kick a good gospel narrative give you, im going to have the mythic conqueror
going on a pilgrimage thru time and space, looking for an African American Way and i want
it in some mysterious way that has so far escaped me be a holybook, an
african american holybook that reaches beyond the tribal into the universal
the problem is that i have absolutely no idea of what this text will look like
i tell you what rick, why dont we just start it right now, be natural w/your flow
write it like you feel it and worry about making it presentable later:
i am flowers of the delta clan flowers and the line of o killens. ima hoodoo lord of the delta and power is what i do. attend me lord legba, in the name of the conqueror let this work be done
and so it came to pass that the universe was brought into being, the details of which i will not assay.
(already seeing i got to go strong lyrical, i have to use an afroam sacred language so intensely unique its outside the evolution of language and continues to stand on its own generations hence, (shakespeare, joyce) so i got to go purple these early draft, rickydoc stylee)
and out of this chaos came the mojo, form
the manifestation of power
and out of the mojo came the conqueror
de high hoodoo
okay, i know, its horrid, i refuse to do anymore of it in public, but im getting a feel for how im going to
play it - the conqueror will decide he needs enlightenment - to find a Way, an African American Way
and he will embark upon a quest thru time and space
all these crossroads moments in the history of the blackworld
and gradually become a voice of humanitys eternal
quest to be greater than it is, to evolve
a destiny player
and someway i have to work in my prophetic thematics
okay rick, time to go offline and clock some serious pages . .
i got to hold my nose on this one, corny quasi mythic raw
fucking manuscript, god i hate raw manuscript, holybook stylee
just do it, rick . . . .
once again we separate the writers from the dilettantes
do it . . . .
by god and all thats holy
do it . . .
WED ADDENDUM
okay, getting a grip on it, will condense what i have for mojo rising: that will add
another six months to that project dammit, and whatever you schedule for a
project usually end up doubling on you, and will do a more narrative version of
the divine history of the blackworld by a pilgrim searching for enlightenment
which will focus it towards the universal hopefully, kinda deep how after all these drafts
biblic, koranic, iching, ifa, i end up intertexting a novel for my holybook
the other question is do i keep brer rabbit, was going to have it be a companion pilgrimage
brer rabbit and mammy bammy big money accompanying the conqueror but if you have a
crew then you got to pay attention to the relationship dynamics and i dont think i want to be
bothered with that, i want him being a shapeshifter to be a major part of this trope, maybe
can use the rabbit there (and other mythical entities of the world
mythwork reality, potential but it might get messy, consider it)
i want to focus on his search for enlightenment thru all these experiences
he will be experiencing points of the human condition when things evolved, the crossroads moments
of human destiny, which means i have to do more fucking research, seem thats all i ever do is research
right now i know a divine history of the blackworld better i bet than anybody on the planet and i got a
rough idea of a divine history of the world but nothing i can write a holybook on and i got to research
all these gods of humanity and work them into the text and all the great teachers of humanity, i got to
work them into the text and got to give a read on them and hope i dont get fatwaed
god, the research is going to be brutal
so this will be the mythic conqueror, not the alter ego conqueror of rest for the weary
and play straight to the mythic, use your lyrical skilz, make it work
WEDNESDAY
back from china, big relief, also miss the daily challenge of it, go figure
did a lot of work on mojorising, seem to have written myself into a hole,
did all this work on how an african american way, what im trying to do
has to be universal, how all the universal ways reached from the tribal base
but my hoodoo book of flowers is totally addressed to the black generations rather than those
of all humanity, i think ima let mojo rising be my black text and the hoodoo book of flowers
be my attempt to go universal, still afroam based, an african american way
but more fully addressed to the evolution of humanity, my guide and guardian of
human destiny trope, im kinda confused just what it is i have to do w/this Text
my fear here is that 20 years and 800 pages of raw text just got counterfeited
if im lucky i can boil it down to the narrative bone and use it as
mojo risings' 7th movement: the book of divinations
sametime im trying to think what a new structure for the hoodoo book of flowers would be
im thinking right now maybe brer rabbit go on a pilgrimage w/the conqueror, i have for
sometime been concerned a divinic mythnarrative would be a more constructive structure
im getting this from another development in last couple of weeks, i started
reading journey to the west, the tale of the monkey king, i had run across the
monkeyking here and there but never read the text, asked in my lit class
about the chinese canon and they were all like journey to the west
as one of their formative works, so i dug in and im seeing all kinds of things
i want to play off brer rabbit, did that work for tara books that was a retelling
of the stories out there, now i think i want to stretch out and play with brer rabbit
seeking enlightenment, intertexting journey to the west, think first thing ima do
is have brer rabbit and mammy bammy big money (the witchrabbit) come ot his door
taking about we going with you, when he becomes the tree (long story) in rest for
the weary, then we gon . . . o i dont know what im gon do, school starts in about 2 weeks
and all of a sudden three projects that i had put closure on clamoring to be reconsidered
and me, i got to follow the power, i tell my students all the time, you start a book, you got an idea
what you want from it and it takes you places you could not have imagined, and you got to follow
it wherever it goes, thats where the magic comes from
all my love
rdoc
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