I'm dithering a bit, pondering all the this-and-thats, and

all the hems-and-haws and shill-I-shall-I, that (for me at least) are conspiring to keep me hesitating to pull the trigger on an e-publication. Having said that, I don't know what-all is really holding me back. I have a wee collection of stories, more or less concocted precisely for the purpose of putting out as a "loss leader" - something to put on the shelf, more as a means of having a "real" tangibility to deal with in the toe-dipping trial phase of looking up the details of a new venture.

The whole notion of e-publication is exciting: I really want to participate in the "democratization" of publishing. I really would like to get my writing out for a taste of what the greater public's response (or not, which will be telling too) will be. And I've also pretty much convinced myself that at this stage of my life I don't have what it takes to pursue the "conventional" avenues of sending query letters to agents, or magazines (in the case of short stories) of any of that bullshit. If I'm going to do that, then I'm right back in the mode of "doing stuff I don't want to do for some purpose other than the joy of the actual work at hand." My "work at hand" needs to be writing, for the next (last) five, ten, fifteen, twenty or however many more lucid years I'm blessed with. All that other crap is diversionary bullshit - I'm not contemplating a joyful entry into the book publishing business. I don't need to make a living at writing, but it would be very nice to generate some attention, some buzz, and a few bucks here and there are a means of keeping score, I guess.

It appears to me that between them, B&N and Amazon are doing their damnedest to make it irresistible for an independent, unknown writer to publish his or her own works, and widely, and at no real risk or expense. I'm trying very hard to find a downside, and if I don't come up with one soon, I'm a goner, and will be a published ("e-published" I guess, I'm still antsy about "self-published") author.

"Somebody stop me!"

A propos of nothing in particular

In 1960 or ’61, I was in the eighth grade, stuck out in a little whitebread suburb of Boston, perfectly happy & content listening to Elvis and The Kingston Trio. Then Charley moved to town. Charley was from East Boston, but unlike most all of the other people from East Boston (or “East-a Bost”) who moved into town, he was not of Italian origin, but Greek though Charley had a bit of the wise guy (and “Wiseguy”) about him, and hadn’t shed his big city attitude. But he had a good sense of humor, and a pretty good heart, so he found his way into our small town junior high circle fairly painlessly. He brought some interesting expressions, and mannerisms, and a few dirty pictures that he’d copped from somewhere in his childhood and managed to secrete from his parents, but more importantly, he brought Ray Charles to us. It was the beginning of Ray Charles’s career, and he was news to us entirely, and “What’d I Say” was electrifying in the same way that “Tutti Frutti” and “Great Balls of Fire” had been a couple of years earlier. You sit up and say “What’s THIS then?” when you hear one of these guys for the first time – whether the Killer or Janis Joplin or Dylan – there’s usually a shudder of unrecognition when someone outside the box comes along. Charley had a party, early in the 8^th grade term, to sort of introduce himself around etc. At that party we heard Ray Charles, and a few of us WASPy types were puzzled and a few were too good to be bothered with it, but most of us ate it up.

A couple of years later (late ninth grade), I fell, for the first time, arse-over-teakettle in lust with an adorable little blonde named Susie (Susie M. if you must know more details). It was at a dance of some kind, in the parish hall of the Congo church. Susie and I danced a few times together, mostly slow tunes of course, not because I couldn’t dance fast but because for me the point of dancing was body contact with one’s partner. Then on came a brand new release – “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” Ray Charles first significant departure from the R&B/Soul stuff he’d mastered then reinvented. And now here he was reinventing Country, taking this old Don Gibson chestnut and breathing something into it that no country singer could. And Susie and I danced to that record, and when it was over we held onto each other for dear life, and we were in love, and ICSLY was our song, and it’s our song to this day, though I’ve no idea in the world where she might be or what she might be doing, but she’s forever in my arms, thirteen years old, smelling like a garden in paradise, and Ray Charles is singing … “I’ve made up my mind….”

The world turns in odd & interesting ways sometimes

So within a few days of each other, Roger Ebert and Maggie Thatcher clock out. I don't propose to put them on any kind of equal footing; I don't think they're at all comparable, it would be like comparing Dr. Johnson with Pitt (either one). I don't have a whole lot of thought or feeling one way or the other about The Baroness, I suspect one would really have to be a subject of HM Betty (or perhaps a citizen of one of the myriad erstwhile colonies other than our own) for Maggie to have impacted your life a whole lot, at least directly. I don't think I was paying a great deal of attention to UK politics twenty-odd years ago. I knew she was great pals with Ronnie Reagan, which all by itself erodes her esteem in my book, practically down to a nub.

Roger Ebert, on the other hand, I've admired for many years, since the Siskel & Ebert days of "Sneak Previews" and in more recent years for his continued writings about film, and his more general writings about life and culture. In the last few years I've come to think a great deal of his intellect (not to mention his verbal acuity) and his great taste (and luck) in women. I will miss Ebert's ongoing contribution to our times; Maggie, enh, not so much.

Looking at the squib below, it occurs to me that "I fell off the Rock of Gibraltar"

scans perfectly with "My Bonnie lies over the ocean."

A propos de rien.

Dream Journal 3/30/13

An odd snippet this, in the little piece of sleep grabbed occasionally between the 0400 dog-tending rise, and a more sensible (0500) time to engage with waking life. It involved a farm conveyance of some kind, with a flat bed and a steering wheel mounted ahead of the bed, with a hand throttle and brakes that made the front wheels turn hard left. We (a wife was present, and though I don't remember getting a good look at her, I'm pretty sure she was my real wife) were promised a gleaning opportunity in some farmer's cornfield. We started out in the whatever-kind-of-wagon-it-was, confident that we knew where the cornfield of interest was. In the first leg of the trip out, I rode on the flatbed and the wagon seemed to propel and guide itself. Then I discovered the controls, down and in front, so I mounted down there and drove. I turned it down a dirt road and realized I had no idea where we needed to be going. The road was through woods and we came upon a group of kids - adolescents and pre-adolescents, say between 10 and 14 - I don't know how many of them; mixed boys and girls, perhaps a dozen of them but again not sure because I don't remember actually seeing them in the dream, more overhearing their conversation. Then I saw a car, perhaps a 1950s or 60s station-wagon but not identifiable as to make or year, with a large treelimb on it, roof caved in, windshield broken. I'm driving this wagon/tractor conveyance and I hear one of the boys saying to one of the girls something about "I'm a full-grown adult male and I don't need..."

It was at this point that my dreaming self started getting a little lucid and realized that whatever was going on in this dream, it wasn't going to wind up pleasantly. Then the five o'clock alarm went off, and rather than hit the snooze, I was glad to be rescued from that particular dream.

How odd that I felt that way; nothing bad or threatening had happened, really, but the dreamed components of that particular setting and circumstances made my dreaming self uneasy, and I was glad to be out of there.

I'm told by Wikipedia today

that there's a cave on the Rock of Gibraltar that's named after a guy who discovered it after he "fell off the Rock." Fell off the Rock of Gibraltar.

Imagine...

I do, from time to time, get on genre kicks on my Netflix queue

     Recently I've watched "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (the original with Kevin McCarthy - terrific flick, really, if you can put yourself back into your 1950s self; that's true of all of these titles and no doubt explains tons). The other night I watched "It Came From Outer Space." Last night "It Came From Beneath The Sea" and tonight "Beast From 20,000 Fathoms."

     "Beast" and "Outer Space" share a Ray Bradbury connection, and I'm looking forward to savoring Ray Harryhausen's work in "Beast." I'm contemplating  the 1953 "Invaders From Mars" which scared the bejeezus out of me at about 7 years old (when it was new) and might even revisit "Them" just to see all the later-famous/now-dead TV stars (Fess Parker, Jim Arness, James Whitmore, and Leonard Nimoy is even rumored to have an uncredited role, but of course he's not dead yet, is he?)

     I saw these movies when they were new, and of course I've seen them on TV a zillion times since, and corny an crude and primitive as many of them are (I've only mentioned the cream of the crop, but I include all the really low-level stuff like "The Mole People" and maybe even "Plan 9 ... ") they never cease to entertain, probably because they never cease to return me to Saturday afternoon at the Bing Theater, anytime between 1952 or so, and 1955, my earliest memories that don't directly involve my parents, my earliest memories being "out & about" with pals (always with one or two older pals, my brother being five years older which is why we were allowed to walk up to Sumner Ave to the Bing, or to the Phillips at The X).

Since there's no meeting of my writing group tomorrow, I've been a little lax

in my writing this week. I'll have to stop that (then I'll be ex-lax, - rim shot). However, something has been rattling around in my head for the last couple of days. It is, I guess, a notional equivalent of an earworm.

A bit of background: while I've been working on the shed in my backyard this fall ("the bahn" as I've described it to John), one of the delights it has afforded is to have NPR blaring from my boombox all day long on Saturdays & Sundays. Two of my especial favorites (beside Car Talk & Prairie Home Companion) are "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" - the news quiz, and "Says You" which is a word-focused quiz-cum-folderol chance for people with big vocabularies to show off.

Back in September sometime, in connection with a series of puzzlers called collectively "You're so smart...", a question had to do with the "speed of dark." In fact I believe the question was "We all know the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (or thereabouts) - what is the speed of dark."

Well the official answer was a bit of a letdown, being something along the lines of "dark doesn't have a speed, it doesn't travel because it's the absence of light." Fair enough in terms of physics, I guess, but philosophically, this has put me over the edge. Here's what I've come up with, and don't be surprised if you read it coming out of Mortie's mouth soon - "Dark doesn't go anywhere, because it's always everywhere; you just can't see it when the light's on."

I am not happy with the notion that dark isn't something of its own accord. It ain't right - it goes against common sense. And besides, it also opens up a new vista on being afraid of the dark vs. nothing to be afraid of in the light, because... how to put this. Remember when we were scared of the dark as kids (I was anyway), and our Dads said "Don't worry, there's nothing there in the dark that isn't there in the light."

Well, that's true. But the point isn't that "nothing's there" - the point is that when the light's on, it's STILL THERE but you can't see it!!!

It's characteristic of "blogs" I suppose, that they are

"occasional" in the classic sense of the term, i.e. often specific to occasions. Today (the 28th of October 2012), is the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of my parents' wedding. October is a full month around here, with our own anniversary (29 this year), and Jake's birthday (26 this year), and George's birthday (101 this year) and MY birthday (66 the other day) and George &  Bunny's anniversary (73 as stated above), and #2-daughter-Kristin's birthday (40 this year).

And then of course, Halloween. As if I weren't scared enough.

Booga-booga!!!

Well damn, once again

Just found out Arlo Guthrie's wife died the other day, cancer of some ilk. I've always felt a kinship with Arlo for some reason, don't know exactly why, other than that we're roughly the same age (he's about 8 months younger) and I'm very fond of a lot of his music and I think he's got a terrific sense of humor. He also seems to have dealt with the specter of possible Huntington's Chorea rather intelligently, by refusing to live his life for the future but instead living it in the here & now, all the time, apparently. There's a note on his wife's passing on his website that stresses that philosophy. I feel sad for Arlo (it was a very long marriage), but I also admire the way he (seemingly) deals with the events of his life, one at a time, here & now, then move on. Much to admire in the guy, I think, and he has my sympathy for his loss.

It's raining again dammit, October has turned into what November used to be

weatherwise. I got a few hours work into the shed yesterday (cold but sunny) so got about 25% of the sheathing up on the roof. All the sheathing is up on the walls except for a couple dabs over & under the rough openings for the doors. The nastiness of the change in late-season weather around here lately is threatening to put an early kibosh on the shed project, but I should be able to get the sheathing up and a protective covering of 15# felt (tar paper) on it to hold off the winter. Then some improvised door coverings - not sure what to do about the stuff in the old shed: I don't think it'll hold up another winter.

The Fiction Writing Group is evolving well; sad to have lost two of our early mainstays though we hold out hope that they'll rejoin at some point (who knows) - I think the notion of writing occupies a different place in the life & priorities of each of us. The ACT of writing is a whole different proposition from the notion of writing of course and therein lies the explanation for the fact that many of us can manage to get it together for a few hours twice a month, but not for the hour or two (or more) a day to actually be as productive as we'd like to. I include myself in this "unable to be as disciplined as we'd like to be about actually writing" crowd, but I'm working on it.

Dream Journal - another odd dream involving a house and water. The house was, as is typical of these dreams, not actually my house - as if, in the dream, my house was being played by another house. And water was collecting on the floor around a ratty old toilet (not in the least resembling either of the toilets in my ACTUAL house). I vacuumed it up with the shop vac (handy thing that wet-dry shop vac). Then it got wet again. Then I woke up & checked the actual toilet and it was fine. Then the dogs had to go out (it was about 0400) so I fed 'em & let 'em out for a minute, then went back to bed and had another snippet of a (completely unrelated) dream the details of which escape me but it involved a car (not mine) crashed into a brick wall and a search for some fugitive or other who was discovered hiding in a recess in the brick wall above. Or something like that - it wasn't completely clear to me where the guy was actually hiding; someone got their hands on him & dragged him out. Then I woke up.

The other night, in the midst of our weekly nine-ball and whiskey symposium

A good friend of mine, I guess my "furthest-back" friend, in fact, mentioned that I appear to avoid socialization.

An anniversary and some Andy Rooneyisms

Why is "wordsmith" a verb? Since when? And WHY is "wordsmith" at all? What's wrong with "write?" Why (too) do we have to "craft" things instead of "writing" them? Is "crafting" a chunk of text somehow different from "writing" it? Is it a higher form of activity? Or lower? I don't understand this at all. And why can't we "contact" someone, or "call them" or "write to them" (or would we have to "craft" a note or email, or even "wordsmith" the note or email.... see what this does to us?). Instead of having to "Reach out" to them? Am I the only one who recalls that this whole "reach out" blather is Telco propaganda from the 70s? ("Reach out and touch someone") - and it was icky then, it's positively creepy in a business context.

Why does some narrator on The History Channel pronounce "armistice" with emphasis on the second syllable - ar MIS tiss. This is just plain wrong, isn't it? I heard someone on NPR say something really dumb the other day but I forgot what it was, and neglected to write it down, dammit.

Finally, forty-three years ago on this date (13 August 1969) Class number 70-01 of the Officers' Training School of the United States Air Force graduated, and unleashed a shitload of brown-barred second lieutenants, among whom was yours truly but you knew that otherwise why would I be writing (crafting/wordsmithing) about it, right? So as I often contemplate, even if I'd stayed in for the proverbial "twenty", I'd'a been out already over twenty years ago. Jeezus.

So we're back, and glad to be - a fun road trip indeed.

Bah Hahbah was delightful, if indistinguishable from Ogunquit, KBP, Rocky Neck and a bunch of other places. We caught an improv comedy show Saturday night, staffed by refusgees & wannabes from Second City - in fact it is apparently their Class A training team. Lots of fun. 

St. Andrews NB is home to Kingsbrae Garden, well worth a slight detour off the highway, and a couple of hours peruse.

Amherst NS is well worth stopping in on the way from someplace to someplace else if you've run out of energy and just need to pull in somewhere for the night. Windy as a bastid though, and home to windfarms.

Moncton was a mere sign on the highway.

Halifax is biggish, and urbanish (it's easy to get hooked on the "ish" like in Antigonish). Some interesting architecture, some history, buskers (girl about 13 with braces & uke, any number of fiddlers). Took the "Harbour Hopper" tour, the Haligonian version of Duck Tours - was fun. We lost in Halifax, ventured out without streetmap, got turned around & took 45 minutes on foot to find the car. But - it was fun (NOW it was fun).

Annapolis Royal was delightful - small, entirely manageable on foot, interesting (but not fascinating) late 18th & early to mid 19th C. architecture; terrific earthen fort (Fort Anne, French, 18th C).

Visited the historic Gardens in Annapolis Royal - absolutely lovely.

Visited the Fundy Tidal power facility & learned that as a prototype it has taught us that tidal power on the B of F is not practicable with turbine technology.

Visited Port Royal (Habitation) 1930s recreation of the buildings from 1605 that the French fur trappers built, and that the Brits destroyed when they sailed up from Jamestown and stole all the trappers stuff (they - the trappers) were not home at the time.

Drove down to Digby NS (scallop capital of Canada, perhaps the world) & caught the ferry to St. John. Digby is notable ONLY as a town you have to drive through to get to the ferry.

The ferry was a nice boat ride indeed. Good WX, windy as a bastid.

St. John is largeish, industrialish, gritty, not worth going to, but worth passing through.

Straight shot home from StJ - back down to Calais, across to Bangor on Rte 9, I95 down to 101, home again, home again, jiggety jog.

Ya gotta love this.

I had a tag line on my work email; lots of people do. We shift them and change them around. Lately I've had a quote from John Barth:

"In art, as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal, as does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity." - John Barth"

It's been there for a few months now. I was just told by my boss that HR complained (didn't say whether someone else had complained, but I suspect that's the case). So I've removed it, and put "this space intentionally left blank" - I suspect I'll be told to remove that too.

Well they (writing coaches, teachers, fellow writers, people who write books on writing like Stephen King, etc.)

Well they (writing coaches, teachers, fellow writers, people who write books on writing like Stephen King, etc.)
always threaten that it'll come - the "AHA!" moment, when you've been wrangling and wrestling with a plot point (or an entire story arc) or a character issue or some continuity glitch, whatever - you'll hassle with it and worry it to a nub, and walk away fuming, time after time, and then leave the WHOLE GODDAM MESS to just lie there and ferment - all the while promising you'll get bck to it (sincerely promising, I might add, this is not an exercise in procrastination but real, dedicated effort frustrated by "process"). So you walk away. Then you walk back, and you poke and you tinker and you bitch and you moan and you walk away again, and you mutter and you grumble, and then you sit down again and look at all the shit you've got, and you maybe start another "Yet Another Take on the Plot Issues of my Great American Yatta-Yatta" and if it's the right time of the right day, you type out "What if...." followed by something that screams back at you "YES!!! That's IT!!! And what took you so long, you DUMB SHIT???"


I got a great deal done today, between reading & critiquing on group members stuff, and working toward pulling the trigger on the "real" D2 of TWD. I had the "AHA" moment, and I know what the real macguffin is, now just sorting out which plotlines to tweak and which to ditch. I think I'm onto something, and it was obvious, and archetypal, and staring me in the face all along.

So I tried this other writing group

in addition to, not instead of, the local group. Meets in Barnes & Noble on Wednesday evenings (2nd & 4th Wed. of each month. What is this fascination with semi-monthly instead of biweekly?) so I've been to three meetings of this group now, and I'm puzzled. I'm often puzzled, but... So there are four other people in the group.

One of them is not a writer, but likes to come anyway. She's a chatter. Nice lady, but contribution is sketchy at best.

Another is apparently writing something - she's shared a couple of chapters - but doesn't share much regularly. She's also one who has yet to be prepared by actually having read anyone else's work in time for a meeting. To be fair, she does pass along commentary outside the meeting, but I sort of expect that when someone's taken the trouble to share something ahead of time for comment, the members would read the work & prepare some comment.

Another one is a guy who has apparently written (and I gather published) some stuff, but he's already shared his entire current novel-in-progress, so doesn't have anything to put on the table. He also hasn't yet had time to read anything & prepare comment in advance.

Then there's a lady who's writing stuff, and shares it, and reads whatever's put on the table and prepares comments. This is great, but offering commentary to her on her stuff is an adversarial battle (she's a defender), and getting commentary from her implies that she will NOT leave a topic until she feels you've acquiesced to her comments and will make the changes she suggested as soon as you get home.

So it's an interesting dynamic, this group, but it makes me wonder why people who don't have time or inclination to write, or read and prepare commentary, are bothering to be in a writers' group.? All sorts of speculation available of course, but it's fascinating, innit?  I"m undecided as to whether to continue in this group. Dragging my sorry old ass out on a Wednesday evening on a ten-mile hike to sit and listen to chat, and get (and offer) a little bit of commentary, and WRANGLE over some of it, in both directions, might not be in the cards as a profitable exercise for me.

The novel seems to be back on the rails,

since I've decided that "the new piece" is in fact "draft 2" of the original piece, and work on the new one is in fact work on the original piece - it has settled my mind considerably, and stopped me from wondering whether I should be focusing on the first one and whether I was procrastinating on the first one by starting the second one. So maybe it's all one big chunk of writing and everything fits in somewhere and I really shouldn't be worried about "what" I"m working on, I should be concentrating on working, and on making that "work" (writing, the act of, the care and feeding of the process, etc.) the most important thing in my day. This is the toughest part of picking up this passion after perhaps 50 years of deferring it. It's a shift of mindset from "where do I fit writing into my day" to focusing on getting some writing done. Then I've devoted some time & energy - at the top of the day - to what's really important to me; whatever else happens in the day after that can be good, bad, or indifferent, but I can look at the day and say "I've gotten some important work done."

It has just occurred to me that "The Willing Detective" - my novel-in-progress

that I thought was "stuck" transitioning from Draft 1 to Draft 2, may well be making the jump into an entirely different piece. That "TWD" is in fact chunks of text to be harvested into the new piece, which promises to be significantly better organized.