Life has grabbed me intensely since the last blog. I am deeply involved in “marketing” Down to a Sunless Sea. I am concentrating, for those out there who are writers or want to live the writer’s life, whatever that is, on the “blogosphere.” Diligently, working with blog directories (see “litblog,” to wit)), I am discovering websites all over the world and apparently for those of us who want to market their self-published books, this is one significant way to explore. I have had almost 80 (!) requests for review copies. See the review of my new book by Kevin Eagen on Blogcritics.com as an example.
if you Google litblog directories, you get a plethora of sites, so mind-numbing is it, that I must scan, must wise-up, as there is just so much time, and life has to be lived.Combining blogs with ezines ( the bloglink on this site for “New-Pages,” is one of the best to get started), I go about my “merry” way. The traditional approaches are annoying to me, rigid, too scheduled, and all the rest, and my perverse characterological “insets” prevent me from doing so. I live my own life, as the world buzzes and mentates about me. I try to fight off the shoulds and musts, the mind-numbing conditioning of this decadent society — all societies are decadent, just by definition.
Back to writing. I recently met with a psychologist and his wife. He has worked on dreams all his life, and has been influenced by Jung. Of course, this was the dude who called psychoanalysis the Jew science. How sweet! My response is that it is such, for it is talmudic in nature. So I have read some Jung but stay away from this little Black Forest alchemist and his gnomic brews. I do not separate out the artist from his art, and my feelings about T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Shakespeare, Wagner, Orwell, the Western Canon, if you will, make me leery. As a secular Jew it is an endless source of self-learning to examine the projections made on Jewry. The species unconsciously knows full well that intelligence must be sacrificed in order to live safely in the crowd. In any case he is writing a book about dreams and he asked me questions about what to do as a beginner in this field. I have answered some of that here, but a little more.
The query is essential — later on I will put up mine to share with you. You have to write a query that in essence says in the very first line — “Call me Ishmael.” It can be done. I write in hyperbole, so adjust accordingly. In The i Tetralogy the opening line is: “I am rectum.” So lean your shoulder to the Sisyphean boulder and compose one. You can do only your best, but do you really know what is your best? Kazantzakis asks us to choose between two injunctions: “Reach what you can,” and “Reach what you cannot.” His favorite line for me is — “Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!” It is all in the exclamation mark.
Excellence in all things. This explains my discomfiture in this culture. My standards are harder than the ones you might impose on me and I have not broken as yet. So, writer friend, go for platinum, gold is not enough, in your writing; shove your balls against the wall — and world; think Mailer. In you is the world.
Many new and old writers are consumed by fear and this reflects in their lives and in their writings. In another month or so I will give a talk about acts of empathy and imagination, my own personal haunts, in a writer’s workshop. My task is to expend my passion, my wit, my sensibilities on individuals who may or may not get it (see “Juan Peron’s Hands” as a sample on this site). Do not write — passion-ate. I am running dry now, so I’ll stop and get more out to you all in a day or so.
I must say that I am very grateful that I can write, it is my lyre, my oil, my balletic step, my aria, and I feel blessed, for I hewed it out of granite. I made me.
