WED
new ark fire dept hung a huge flag across symphony space for amiris sendoff
had a neworleans 2nd line bring the casket in, bagpipers from fire dept took him out
next thing you know old boy gon be on a stamp
printasia asked me a do a blog entry on promiseland, i cant read it,
i know i will find typos & desperately needed revision
enjoying this phase of rest, forcemarching thru and cutting out the slack, ive cut out about 70 pages so far
for the last 3 years ive been treating this novel like a done deal and doing nip and tuck revisions
this time im treating it like a work in progress and doing a serious rebuild, been nice cutting out the slack
i find myself truely following a plotline instead of just leaving riffs for historical purposes
and often a passage being cut i will keep whats good in it, often say a paragraph of material
so im making the work tighter and more flashfiction beats, which i love, and had a revelation
the other day about how to make collagic narration flow, working those whitespace transitions
also just yesterday had a major 1st person breakthru, its like every passage im feeling crossroads significance
where i can hit the facile (default) note, or i can dig for emotional resonances, & im very conscious of going
for emotional resonances this time - instead of distant 3rd i was using, im now in a close 1st, its a different
emotional register - my schedule is 10 pages a day and so far im on schedule, glory be, im kinda surprised
myself that this is actually working, have not dug into those apps yet, read one, just one - right now all my
discretionary time is being given to this novel, thats not going to work, school is in gear and i got
to be disciplined, mornings are for novel, rest of the day for everything else - focus, rick
problem is woodshed over now and im still deeply into groove, i got to fight my way out
and i hate to do that before the phase is done, do it now and i will have to start over
intead of start working out the next phase in my head, the actual rebuild, do that over
the semester and i will be in prime position for a money draft over the summer, next
two weeks i got to ignore the wolves howling at my door, got to stay on my game
what w/schoolhouse & personals ima be overextended, what else is new, wanna be a
winner got to pay the freight
FRIDAY
going to newark for amiris wake/funeral, at this point would rather sit here and work
this has been a very humbling process, id say im cutting a 4th of the novel, maybe a 3rd
perhaps more, scenes that arent essential are gone, years and years of hard work gone
but its the novel authenticity thats driving this draft, im cutting to the bone
then im going to have to rebuild,, trying to get thru this recalibration phase before heading for delta feb 1
two three days roundtrip trainriding, be good to have butchered new manuscript ready for redpen
redpen is when you sit down w/manu and forcemarch longhand changes, extensive longhand changes
thats when an incoherent manuscript gets made coherent, longhand slows you down, lets you microfocus
,
problem is these days my writing hand shakes, sometime not so much, sometime pretty bad,
i got to forcemarch, make my adjustments and keep on pushing, if you got to limp, limp,
if anything it just makes me that much more desperate, the clock is ticking, focus my brother,
5 pages a day will get you to the promiseland, focus
push those crippling anxieties off to the side, focus
WEDNESDAY
dug in on novel, have woven the two, reoutlined it, forcemarching thru new manuscript fixing major glitches
deciding which passages to be turned into 1st person, which to be dumped, dumping some of my best stuff
but you got to be willing to kill your darlings -whats hard is how many folk i let read this past draft, both
personal and professional, its amazing what im cutting out as superfluous to a good story,
in particular passages and phrases, of which there are many, where i got heavyhanded
problem w/a 20 year effort, you accumulate a lot of narrative flotsam, i can only
hope that what im doing now is viable, 2 years from now it will embarrass me too
when old work stop embarrassing you is when youve stopped growing i guess
though unfortunately i do not see much evidence of startling growth
going to amiris funeral sat, i expect to be exalted, i expect a throw down, i recall my grandmothers
funeral and my parents, aunts and uncles were drunk and disorderly, my parents were uptight middle
class blacks who owuld not normally consider being drunk or disorderly in front of their children
so on one level it was like me and my cousins were being treated like fellow audults for the 1st time
but i was offended that they were having such a good time when i realized that what funerals
were about, to fortify the living by sending off the dead with good memories and fellowship,
sat gon be old comrades of lit & struggle celebrating amiri & his legacy, anointing his ancestorship, gon be words & music & love, gon be warm & toasty & wonderful, amiri wouldn't have it no other way
got to go, squeezing last minute now, would like to finish this recalibration phase before i put novel down for
schoolhouse obligations, classes have started but that 1st week is easy, intros and stuff, so im squeezing it
which means i will start next week behind but such lis life - the deal is if i finish this phase before i put it
down the mind will go on to the next phase while im taking care of business, if you dont finish the phase
you basically have to start it all over again when you pick the manuscript up again,
thats not how you move forward, thats called spinning your fucking wheels
the real key is to try with all my might to maintain a 3 hour a day novelwork schedule no matter how
stressed i get, and im already stressed, school just started and im swimming underwater already
starting (barely) to work thru those apps, and starting to get emails from folk introducing themselves, telling
me how much they like/love my work and how much they want to work with me, 90% of them just running
the odds - googled the faculty, choose a horse (or horses) and try to play to an inside straight
cool with me, i admire game, grit and determination in young wannabes, most of them run it on george
and a good percentage of them are sincerely applying here because of george (and that video)
everytime geo breaks bad on us our numbers rise by another hundred - i must admit, when folk
claim they want to work w/me i do give them a little extra attention, even when i know its game
the heartbreaking thing about this process is all the worthy folk you have to say no to, 6 out of
600+ is a thin cut, and you know this is like the 1st gate, make it thru this gate they got a shot
by the time you get to the top 50 or so they are all good and at that point it becomes very subjective, who
would i like to work with, how much am i willing to fight for this person when it comes to final selections
couple of years ago, we were working our way down the wait list and were late getting to it, afraid folk had made
decisions already, i called 3 or 4 folk w/no answers and left messages: 1st one to get back to me gets the slot
will not fo that again, that was a mistake
one guy who got back to me late (2 days) was unhappy, accused me of disrupting his life, said he made life
decisions based on my call, wrote accusatory litigious letters to deans, chancellors and administrators
tried most vigorously to get me into trouble - all he did was piss me off, when his name came up later i
was, lets say, not in his corner - and he had scared the rest of the faculty with that litigious nature of his
we felt like we had dodged a bullet
one time we chose this guy but in his teaching statement he had gotten all eloquent about how he didnt believe
in teaching - the writing dept, for whom they have to teach, said no fucking way, we actually fought for him
but were a little leery that he would come up in here and actually meant what he wrote
instead of just trying to make himself stand out in the crowd and show himself the artiste,
even the ones who are clearly not ready, im pulling for all of them to get in somewhere, there is a
part of me hates being a gatekeeper, mfa app process is 1st great winnowing, dont make it and
doors get shut, a very few chosen get thru - speaking of shut doors i got to go, i am so far behind now
swimming underwater yet again, its those last couple weeks of woodshed that you throw down
when the desperation comes down on you, wolves howling at the door
all my love
rdoc
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