Not five oclock but close enough.. 5:41, had a thought last night before falling asleep of beating Kerouac at his speed, writing a novel faster than he did. AND, with the end of this semester is the end of many of my self defeating way when it comes to writing. One of those being blogging, to an extent, that’s why the teaching blog has to die. I will submit only pages to students, not tell them to go to some post. And with this novel I complete in TEN days, today being day one and I’ll use the 17 I have for the Massamen novel, I’ll shop it, traditionally, sending it to, yes, agents and publishers. I don’t want to but I want to play THEIR game and destroy them at it.
Fridge stopped humming, and when I push these keys it echoes in a way, the act of pushing them, you didn’t hear in the condo– got confused by the syntax of that sentence for some reason. Anyway, I’m up writing, and I think today is going to be rather magnanimous, and yes mostly with the writing but as well with meditation, just sitting and thinking (what I’ll do when back from Petaluma Campus). So quiet, and close to these other houses, or maybe it merely appears that way with all these windows. No dreams to write of, last night or this morning. I just find myself in a certain meditation, now. And what better than the first session of this kind in this new Autumn Walk house. Cleaning up this bloody laptop, using the Comp Book for novel writing, and then typing, have to plug in the printer after the internet guy comes. Want these pages printed, and no obsession over editing. I don’t have time to edit so monstrously. They get the manuscript they get. And that’s that.
Not so much wanting coffee. And I just noticed I indented in this paragraph, and I haven’t been doing that from my disgusting blog habits. The only way for me to be happy with myself as a living American writer is to print, to have books on shelves at bookstores across the country; to submit and have they say or write back or even email me a ‘yes’. Another instructor at the JC with me, Craig, a full-timer is now retiring. He’s the one who gave me a second chance and brought me back to the JC in Fall ’12, when Jackie wasn’t even a year old. Should write him a letter from the P-Campus, just let him know he’s appreciated from my corner of teaching or pedagogical efforts, of from this writing disposition, whatever I do and whatever whoever I am.
5:54AM– And that’s another thing I’ve had trouble with, or troubled myself with any idea of a novel.. that I have to have these time stamps and informational anchors as to where I am time-wise. So I’ll only do so in these worklogs or journals, and maybe sometimes in shorter pieces, but NOT in the novel. The reader needs to work hard and estimate for themselves where I am. And it saddens me, my blog, that I posted those pieces yesterday, had been thinking about doing so for DAYS prior, and now it’s done, and it’d be bloody forgotten if I weren’t such a devoted writer, that I wasn’t proud of it as I am. Going to print it, I think, and sell it of course, filling in those income gaps I mentioned in the haircut sketch. So quiet in this new house and I again think of Newness and doing things differently with the end of this semester, the end of any compromising way or habit connected with the writing. And that’s today. And that’s the novel. The long piece of quasi-fictive flexing I’m about to put out into the world and not just on some blog of mine. And my character, him wanting wine and teaching and writing and just to be himself and manytimes by himself. When watching his nephew, Jack, all the parents on his buddy’s new block appeared, their children as well, all playing while the adults socialized and chatted and tried to chat with him, but it was too much; too much activity and too much speech and too much aggression with them being “neighborly”. “I’d seen you here before with Jack but didn’t know you were Jim’s friend and Jack’s uncle…we’ve been waiting for you to join us,” one of the wives, Amanda said. It’s just not what he wants. He loves his nephew but doing that whole thing, sitting in one of those chairs on the driveway eating chips and guacamole like Amanda and that other lady did, isn’t him. He needs quiet, he needs his mind completely tethered to what he’s doing and or what he’s trying to do: LECTURE. WINE. BE the adjunct he wants to be, not the one They’d have him be.
And speaking of Jackie, I hear him coughing upstairs.. should go check on him and stop being so selfish with this sitting and how much I’m seeing and reviving myself as I’m doing with this new novel idea.
After 6, 6:04… This is when the morning starts; Jackie wakes wanting to play then Alice gets in the shower I get my coffee or try and the stress cakes itself to my mentality like that mold from the condo, disgusting.. what if I didn’t stress at all, this morning? What if I just let the Story carry me, and not me it? Light found its way to this room much faster than it did in the condo, much more a writing space for me with the wood floors, and the new bar stool Alice and I assembled last night, and that kitchen island which I decidedly adore. This is a writer’s house I know, so I need to write with more organization, less clutter and clots, more curb-appeal if you would, to use one of my aunt’s real estate terms. I’ll make it quick with the 1B meeting, then fly to the library and work on the novel.. I’ll shoot for 3 FULL pages, and not stop, stay caffeinated, and not look back, not edit obsessively or excessively.. purity like the unfind and unfiltered wines of Arista. Be the best novelist I can and show Them they have to publish my work, there’s not choice in that matter. That I will be read.
7:05 and J’s watching a cartoon, I’ve all but completely cleaned the desktop of this device, finding old writings that I’ve somewhat forgotten about. See? that’s horrible. I’ll post all of them to the blog and print a couple, TODAY, atop my noveling obligation. The morning quick, and I too quite quick. One cup down, another cued, take J to school then go straight to PC. Then start with the last word that I wrote in the Massamen piece.. and go from there. And exercise in my appreciation of singularity, this novel is, and all will boil down to–or be LCD’d to–WINE. A love for it, and an exploration of it. Not just drinking it! No.. wine is about observation and Art and growth, thought and freethinking and freedom. Not so much wine itself but the idea of wine and the atmospheric perpetuation of what wine tells– now I know, some somms will say “what the hell” or “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Well I merely consider the origin of such a remark, from a sommelier, and I stop. I approach wine as my character does, as a professor of Composition, Literature, Wring, and TRUE ideas.
