They say that in your thirties people start dying and you
become obsessed about cancer. As Coach once said, from the show Coach, “You
work hard, you come home, you walk in...and everybody's dead.” Mortality calls
are warnings in disguises. I know that if this hour proved to be my last hour,
one of my regrets would be not distributing more books. There is a crucial
difference between writing books and getting read. My prose, I feel, is more or
less done. Not quite done, never quite done done, but more or less, at least short term.
It's more about poetry now.
Concise intervention rules the day. Less words, more meaning. I'm getting more books out there, gradually.
The process is underway. A writer in circulation is like a swimmer in water,
but as yet, in my case, I'm still holding onto the side doing a doggy paddle,
with inflatable armbands to boot, a gazillion miles from the deep end, giving
out freebies to people on the sidelines in the hope of garnering interest.
Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.
Life has been, well, let's say
challenging lately. That big old chestnut 'The Past' has bit me on the
backside. In Samsara you're just as likely, if not more so, to learn from your
failures. Still, it's nice to announce that the novel Escaping Hazel was
completed 3 years and 9 months after its conception. That's a long gestation
period. In the end it was a case of sprinting to the finish line then
collapsing over it. Aside from a reread and a second draft, all is done. No rush like - the longer the break in
between, the better, although there is a slight urgency creeping in to get it
in printed form asap. I'm praying it'll be weeks rather than months. The third
draft won't begin until it's in a three volume chapbook 1st edition.
Since seeing T.D
Edge's title, System, Dragon, Spirit, I'm giving thought to changing EH into
Hologram, Alien, Ghost. Might have to run it by him, first. It's growing on me,
and those are the central themes. EH is almost as old as the last world
cup. The original anticipated title was Muddy Angel, Dark Domain, a short story
testimony of 6000 words. Now it's become a classic, and I did it. Or rather, it
passed through me. Hallelujah. Looking forward to reworking it. Should I refer to the Pastor as the Pastor or Pastor Bruce Senior? Upper
or lowercase? There are two dozen similar notes and checks like that. Let's
crack on with 'em then...
(When I'm ready,
of course. Let's say over summer.)
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