5800 words in novel.  My daily goal is under 2000 words, so I’m more than safe and comfortable with the pace expected, demanded.  Home from lunch and babies have a snack.  Emma not wanting anything at lunch but an ice water and some bites of the chips and salsa while Jackie ordered and devoured a quesadilla with rice and beans.  Then we played in the park, and they were out before we reached the River Road exit.  Now Emma has some yogurt, Jack finished his and rests on couch.

More wine writing for me.  Need something to study and survey tonight, but what.  Thinking target a bargain bottle from Bottle Barn, see what type of force I can acquire for less than $20.  One of those missions, you know?  Or, have the Kunde Rose that’s in the fridge.  I’ve never felt that Rose though could be anything so worth an avalanche of pages.  Maybe this one will be.  Tasted it the other weekend, last I believe, when visiting Dwight in the tasting room.  Actually he was outside on the patio by the water helping some tech group from the city, majority of which were hungover form a wedding the prior nuit.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Not as behind as I thought in the nano novel.  My mood is in the clouds, looking down at myself and watching as I write about this character who writes only wine, how wine is his story and the framing and dimension of wine, how it’s not at all what’s in the glass.  It’s morning’s like this when I’m finally able to spend time with your kids, enjoy time in the morning where it’s just you and them.

The novel is teaching me something about me and me at Sonic, me as a writer, this last semester at the JC.

Tomorrow at the winery, will be felt in my story, and the story of the character that I’m writing.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

project

9/8/19

No deadline of any kind.  Any possibly that’s the problem, Mike thinks.  He digs through his notes, nothing hits him, strikes him, flirts with him tickles him or prompts him or anything in his functional writing being-shifts.  He types too much, too easily he thinks carrying his laptop everywhere and just opening and hitting keys with such ire and volume.

                Still nothing.  He thinks of what so many have told him about wine and how much he knows about wine—which he hates.  He can’t stand when people voice something to the lean of, “With how much you know wine, you should write reviews on your blog.” He hates that.  True detest.  He’d rather stop writing and wine in tandem.

                More notes.  Cabernet…. Singing storm of confusions and caresses.  He said this about a winery’s current released, somewhere he used to work, somewhat recently.  The man on his tour said that’s what he needs to do.  Mike asked what.  Man said this, this, the way you talk about wines… “You don’t sound like the others.  I don’t even know how they get paid what they do, or why people follow them so much.” Mike remembers himself nodding with synchrony of idea, sight, seeing that, writing wine.  But something happened.  Mike still doesn’t know what, but he didn’t follow that wave and ride of complimentary shove, and here he is.  Thinking of what to write on a winery day.

                7:18am.  To be at the winery in a little less than two hours.  He received a text yesterday asking when was the earliest he could be on property.  Mike responded curtly, “10.” His scheduled time.  He tires of the tasting room, much material as it provides.  He wants more from wine and the writing he does from it.  What, he doesn’t know.  Starting his blogging life if ’09, he now orders more from his self.  Maybe he should dismiss it, altogether.  And, stop even sipping wine for a bit to have it all in his pseudo and metaphysical internal illustrative.  Seeing wine made, sipped, tasted, the people swarming into the tasting room like yesterday when he dropped by Truett-Hurst to visit an old friend with whom he used to work.  Yes, at a winery.  She was a wine club manager and Mike thinks she does more or less the same thing now at Truett.  But she was helping a group, a pretty sizeable one.  Mike thinks she said something like 50 people.  Mike spied them for a bit, before walking around the property, through a tree awning of some kind, and onto a lawn, and over to a barn area where there were chickens seemingly talking to the people passing.

                What deadline should Mike rile.  Mike tells himself, “20 days”.  For what.  Something.  Something about wine, finished.  He doesn’t believe in “writer’s block”, in fact he completely dismisses the excuse.  And that’s how he sees it.  An excuse.  An excuse to not write, an excuse to talk about not writing, and just a frivolous scream of anti-compose.  Twenty days, starting today.  Should he?  A wine book?  About what?  Wine.  Just that.  That one word.  Wine… not what people should drink or even drinking wine, but the story of wine, the definition and anti-definition of her.  As Duke and Gonzo looked for some dream, American or otherwise.

                The dream is in the wine paragraphs, painting her with some syllabic rush and road.  How.  He’ll find out.  When.  Today.  And till the 28th.

                Just take notes, he himself tells.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

…the tasting room, my vineyard walks.  Still hungry.  Need a piece of something back there, if there’s anything left.  And a glass of Pinot.  Any here in office?  I’m sure there is, somewhere.

Back from walk to get two more pieces.  Obviously hungry from run.  Set stopwatch, or not set it but started it.  Not getting up till, well, I absolutely have to.  Stay in the chair and write, like I tell students.  Got coffee to help.  Chewing gum now to substitute for brushing, not sure it is but it’s better than nothing at all.  In office, forcing self to work.  From this page then to something Sonic-associated.  Looking for IT and IW vendors, construction companies, building MY agency. Gum out, coffee in.  Thinking wine.  All wine.  At Lancaster this Sunday, what I’ll have tonight which is all I have in the house, just the remainder of that Merlot.  Wine… my story in it.  Want a vineyard, want to make wine from it, and not go to Davis or some program at the JC or wherever.  Start my label… write the whole thing.  My desk become a tasting room counter, right now, I see it, you should see it, it’s real.  Wine doesn’t want me to write anything else but HER.  In these last pulses in the office, I see and taste Cabernet.  I only want to be around wine.  No interest in anything, but those walks, the books I’ll write…

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Thinking of wine and everything I’ve seen from wine’s collective and individual narrative.

Want more.  More story.  More intersections and collective composing with wineries.  How to start…. Selling.  With wineries that speak my language, and I theirs.  And I if I’m not pervasively acute in their tongue, I learn it.  And I will.

While with the last glass of Lancaster red last night, there was declaration, and movement in my Now wine-speak.

Wine tells me to write more about her and get lost in the myriad of vortex and truth, the ontological lasso of every vineyard row and lot tasted from the bench.  Haven’t done that in a while, a blending trial.  It’s harvest now, so I can’t just reach out to one of my winemaker buddies and say something like “Hey, mind if I crash the bench?” Like I used to do with Blair and Zach at Kunde.

Just ideas, this morning… wine ideas that take me to a new letter and possible talk.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

30

…of the day.  Why am I working today, anyway.  For the writing.  I know.–  They talk of volcanoes, ones close by I think.  Ones dormant.  The man says that these volcanoes are not like Hawaiian ones.  The woman says how this area is extremely active, geologically.  Then starts talking about  book she read.  I could listen to them all day.  Why don’t I.  Why aren’t I.  Why aren’t I out writing today.  I’ll be in the tasting room and I’m not sure how much a mood I am to do that.  Today, anyway.  Embrace it, Mike, I tell self.  Write the entire day, even when you’re not.  The wine world is something like a puzzle and storm and some sort of eruption that comes and goes, and I study it and write it. I try to block the couple from my senses and anything that takes in, but I’m unable with the woman talking about the book.  The man leans in, eating a bit of taste, and listens to her summary.  Sounds like the wine world and industry especially with all the little clans and tribes …

mikemadiganLeave a comment

29

Saturday morning.  Kids and cartoons.  And beyond that what else do I narrate.  No coffee in house, already thinking about Tuesday, back in the office and charging at business and prospecting, prospective clients like some bull or lion or rhino with sharp vendetta swarms.  Saturday, get something done.  No spending, today.  At winery tomorrow, and Monday something with family.  Had the idea of having lunch somewhere, but would love a drive.  Shit, just remembered I need to take that despicable Prius in for an oil change.  Not in the mood to run, not just yet.

            Wine, in head, and on literary plate or plain, something.  Keep writing about wine I tell myself.  What I had last night, nothing impressive.  At a pizza parlor, so what do I expect, what did I expect.  Seeing all these videos and still captures of harvest, shoving me closer to the vineyard, my own, some story where I’m making wine.  Yes, making it.  And I don’t have time to go to Davis, or even some winemaking certificate program—think that would still be Davis.  More than excess, a heaping and formidable wave of thought and to-do lists in head.  Stay in the tasting room, with my writing.  All the people sharing what they know about wine, what they like to drink.  And, those that are so intimidated, for some reason.  Why…. Why … it’s just wine, I think to myself.  But I’m not them and I can’t relate to that coming from out of state sight and feeling walking through tasting room doors.

            Telling self, again, yes AGAIN…. Write about wine.  Even when you wake up in the morning and know you should have risen earlier but you had one more splash of the GSM blend.  I remember that happening one time, and maybe a few others. Not that I was hungover, at all.  I never drink enough to feel that.  But I do aim to rise at 5 or 4, and that second red pour puts a wall up in front of that stage.  What if I were a winemaker, or grower, vineyard manager and I had to meet a crew on a hillside block in Mendocino somewhere, and I had to wake just before 3am to get there on-time with all the swirling one-lane unpaved, hillside roads where you can’t see shit even with your headlights on.  Exactly.

            Tomorrow, pretending it’s harvest.  Waking at 4 or a touch before.  When up, write.  About wine.  What if before Day HUNDRED of this project I could finally have my wine manuscript DONE.  And have it be borderline narrative nonfiction, and novel.  Why not.  Why not, I again say seeing the fog over a Pinot vineyard in some shot a friend posted somewhere.  Walking a vineyard, my own, one day.  Watching the harvest, helping where I can but letting professionals handle.  I’m just a writer, and sipper, a sipper and scribbler.  Wine, so much past what’s sipped, or even what’s grown. It’s all this… work, projects, creative, aims, mornings like this with family where the only commitment is the room and ones you love. 

mikemadiganLeave a comment

Sipping some Pinot that has a weird name.  Poppy?  Something like that?  Reminding self over and over what I’m doing with this semester, and the hundred days project.  Have everything be absorbed by and connected to SONIC.  What that occurs, upon semester’s close, I’ll be doing both on my own clock and accord.  That is, writing about wine and blogging it, speaking about it, and the like with educating, teaching provisions.

Hungry but not sure I should eat, or at least anything substantial.  Maybe an app?  Like what.  Fuck I don’t know, what do they have?  Thinking about flatbread and veggies.  Blogging about wine… always mean to do that, but never do.  So what am I sipping now, a Pinot.  How is it… well, a Pinot.  That expected grassy wild berry that reminds me of licorice and being in a field, coy vanilla code that indicates oak but there’s no loss of personality.  I should start a wine club or tasting club at Sonic. Why don’t I? Why haven’t I?  What I sipped last night, some Cabernet that I may have had but can’t remember showing me that wine need be more present and promised in my prose.  I write about work, and I wish for wine to remain quite continental in my work body, but not on the industry’s T’s and C’s.  ‘T’s, C’s’.  Ashamed, but truthful when telling you I never knew what that meant till arriving in the Sonic world.  No worry, or shame really just the fact that I’m still very much a student of all this, of being a “professional”.  Anyway, my demand for wine in my life is that it not so much remain fun but continue to encourage me to write. I come here no what I’d lament often, but enough to know that the wine list does change its shape and collective communicate.  Wine should always be doing that, and the same for people writing about her.

Interacting with this Pinot quite slow, just as I encourage students to read.  Never speed-read, and never speed-sip.  Especially if writing about the puddle in glass.  When more sovereign, I’ll have this building, this corner tallboy table be my office.  Bag on left, on floor.  Just checked, still there.  Not that I was worried, but I had to check.

Just was messaged that I may have another signing about to happen.  Possibly tomorrow.  Want to be with family, and celebrate.  Tomorrow working on connecting with IT vendors, IW vendors, construction companies, insurance agencies, real estate brokers….  Someone that I had a meeting with recently told me to be more than an AE, but a resource.  Someone who has a name for a vast vortex of needs.  I’m learning, I’m learning, and further writing this story.  Immediately tired from run, rubbing eye.  Keep going I tell Self.  Don’t be like others, and don’t be like yourself, now or an hour ago. Write the moment, write the people, the waitresses and how they greet a group of tattooed guys in the corner opposite from me.  Where are you, and what are you doing, as I order students to use when seemingly blocked by their own self being a writer and attempting to write.

mikemadiganLeave a comment