As usual I dated the first page (April 1,2013), an historical thing with me as I have always dated new work since I began writing more than four decades ago. I wrote in spurts with several days between new writing and this was not my usual way which is to pour it out in blasts and then go back and revise. It was also the first work I did directly onto the computer as opposed to my usual yellow pads and pen. So everything was different to begin with. Within one month I had written about 25,000 words, figuring I’d go to about 125 to 150 pages as a book.
The theme and content of the book was volatile for it dealt with a fsmily member, my estranged daughter, who l disguised as best as I could do so. This was a mistake, for as I look back now it bespoke of character assassination.Too much leaked out, too much was sniping and concealed venom or not so concealed venom; it was not a novel but really an interior inspection of what I felt about a whole host of things and althought the writing was good it gave off a bad odor, one of resentment and anger. I gave it to Jane to read and she felt it best be laid aside and not see the light of day. After a few days removing the thorn from my paw, I agreed it was too dark, too nasty and unfair to the parties concerned. It was a black valentine, and worse than that.
So I “saved” it to Documents and there it resides. I doubt I will ever go back to it, but never say never I have learned. I have other books completed that remain as kinds of archaelogical writing ruins, unable to be restored, some capable of reconstruction. I suppose every writer has works he just chucks into the dustbin because they just don’t work out. I realize now my new effort was not working on one level in that my creative juices seemed to jam up now and then, too much so. Often I just write full speed ahead after I sense what I have to write. It did not occur here as my feelings were stymied. Ironically the working title was “Opaque.”
Of course, at 72 other parallel feelings come to mind. Perhaps I am tapped out, that there is no more “there” there; that it is time to cash out; that I have said everything I have to say (I doubt that). I am not sure. I will have written four books by 2015 (one is at a publisher) but I am hoping to write five. Why five? I don’t know — the five books of Moses? I just feel five books would give a good sense of what I had struggled to say all these years, often unknown to me. Good or great writing is latent, not manifest; I think I have nibbled well into the latent cookie.
In a recent phone call with my son, Jordan, I shared with him that I want to write five books for him to put on his shelves after I am gone, a remembrance of things past, of a father he knew, or thought he knew; that it is a gift from me to him, scratching my name into the ground, Kilroy was here. Who knows how diligently he will reread them when I am gone? And what does it matter, after all. I think of Epicurus’ epitaph which I keep on a slip of yellow paper on my desk as a reminder: “I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.” And we call the ancients pagans!
For a few days I stopped writing this particular blog because I had come to a stand still. What is it I want to say to myself? And then to you, the reader? It just won’t come. Ideas seem to have ceased, just puddles after a rain. I cannot see what I have to say, although knowing that Mr. Bigmouth always has something to say. So I think about going back and working on manuscripts now decades old, like a necrophiliac. I associate to Dr. Frankenstein who screams in delight, “He lives…He lives.” I have a manuscript written by a younger self and that is reflected in the book as well. I am thinking of going back to it with what writerly astringent I can after having lived more than thirty years afterwards. I would bring a darker self. But is that fair? Thinking about it.
Again I think of poets who go back to short poetic works and reedit them decades later. I don’t want to waste my time: either create new efforts or go back to an older manuscript and resurrect it. Torn on that. I think the fear is that I have nothing more to say so that I return to what I know and what has been written. Writer as weak coward. I also have self-observed that I have historically written in heated spasms, over days and weeks, in white heat often. That is my method. Unfortunately I can’t get into that mode again and I weary of waiting for it to hit. This creates anxiety, and what would I be without my friend.
