Writing and the Sun: Pain vs. Pleasure

photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile

photo by Pixabay

To read a sad story takes awhile. To write a sad story takes…a long time. In spring, I can’t picture myself doing anything but looking at the sun.  I guess I’ll get back to my moaning and groaning in type in a few days when it rains, but I’m thinking of only writing happy stories from now on, because… it takes too much out of you.

Me and Roe are booking some vacations. They’ll be nice. Various natural scenarios. The woods and the sea.

And now back to books.

No Heaven for Good Boys is too upsetting, but I’ll keep reading it. It’s amazing the sway the marabouts have over poor kids in Senegal. They take them from their families and treat them horribly. No one does a thing. The kids are beaten if they don’t raise enough coinage begging in the street. Or worse. Now I’m invested in the characters, I seem in for a horrible time, unless I throw the book out the window which I never do, although it might be for the better. Keisha Bush really places you there if there is where you really want to be. I feel torn between the sway of good writing and  the sway of heading for the hills.

My own depressing work of art isn’t good writing yet and won’t be until a lot more drafts. At least as good as it’s gonna get. I’m going to have to figure out a way to enjoy myself through it or not do it, because now it’s just pain.

Before I Hit The Bed

I’m writing this too late at night because I realized I needed a new post. I haven’t written anything for a bit and wanted to amend that before I hit the bed.

 Thus I sacrifice coherence for a word  count.

 When I’m tired I tend to get fancier as my meaning becomes more obscure.

 I hope I can still entertain you.

Finished Hamnet today which floored me. Unfortunately. I want to just think about it a couple of days before talking more, so that messes up this post. Sometimes when a book's so good, I feel immobile and shy to describe it. Like who am I? I think I may have read one of the best books in my life, suffice to say. 

We will be circling around Hamnet for awhile and even getting to it someday.

Meanwhile, I read my first Beowulf translation by Maria Dahvana Headley and it worked. Setting it in modern day bar lingo seems like a gimmick until you start reading the thing and see what passion and beauty and excitement is put into it. She did a really nice job and it was quite an adventure with some thoughtful things to say about morality and mortality thrown into the mix.

I first learned about Beowulf in fourth-grade where I read a little excerpt and Mrs. Gilbert introduced it as the first book written in english. I’ve been wanting to read it since, so it’s cool I did. A little triumph. You got to take ‘em where they come from.

I will try to do a more involved post next time. I notice spring is here where I live, so I might go outside instead.

After a series of flash fictions, I’m writing a longer story now. Wish me luck and I will wish you luck and we can be the lucky club together.

Zzzzzzzzz.

Good night.

Blue Skies and Books

photo by Elia Clerici

Blue skies and days like spring. Great, but a little disorienting after all that winter.

 I’ve read enough of Hamnet to realize I’m going to finish it. I feel like I’m there with  Shakespeare and family and Agnes, his wife, especially. The book has this really nice flow that involves me and hypnotizes me without drawing too much writer-word attention to itself. Beautiful.

Starting No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush about badly taken care of impoverished kids in Senegal. I thought it might just be a downer, but its written in a bitter-sweet humorous sad way and my feeling towards it are more complex. Although I’d love to have billions of dollars to just swoop in and put an end to the misery of the children the books based on, I’ll probably wind up sending twenty dollars to an African charity and think I’m doing something.

Finished Later by Stephen King which I enjoyed. The other characters were more vivid then the supernatural villain who kind of seemed grafted on  and a vaguer part of the story, thus making for a weaker ending. I’d definitely recommend it, however, superb fun and the characterization was generally top-notch three-dimensional which you don’t always find in adventure stories. 

Anubis

Photo by Egor Myznik

Yes, I usually get eight and a half hours sleep no matter what, but the sun was so bright and inviting and my dream was so annoying: driving a helicopter looking for home, trying to compute my destination into its GPS and failing again and again.

I just woke up after six hours and called it morning.

I read my twitter first thing, even though I should have meditated or something, but I don’t feel too guilty. I mean, what the hell? My life, my rules.

Reading Hamnet and a book on writing and publishing, ordered Stephen King’s Later and Keisha Bush’s No Heaven for Good Boys, but they got delayed by Amazon. So I wait.

Wish management treated the Amazon workers better, but its the cheapest place I can get books. A quandary I often run into, like factory farming or fruit from unfairly treated migrant workers.

The best I can say is I cut out plastic cups for home use. I’m donating money to an organization that cleans up a ton of plastic from the ocean for every twenty dollars. My plastic cups gave them another ton of garbage to clean up, thus erasing any impact.

I don’t know if that’s enough for Anubis when he weighs my heart and feather, but it will have to do.

As the monster devours me, at least I helped the sea.

The Forest for the Trees and other Branches

 

photo by Valentin Salja

Finished The Forest for the Trees--a lot of fun, I don’t mean like a comic book. It was sophisticated and full of good advice, but it had a nice flowing writing style--inviting, like a knowledgeable friend talking about the publishing world.

Right after, I started another book, a more formal book about writing and publishing which more befits the dignity and magnificence of a serious author. In other words, boring. It looks like I’m going to be reading this one just for info not joy.

It starts out saying writing is the deepest, most important, most spiritual thing in the universe which for me is a yes or no depending on my mood and objectively probably somewhere in the middle. If zero is eating frozen pizza and ten reaching nirvana plus cosmic oneness with the universe, writing would probably hold a steady five along with other stuff like acting, singing, painting, raising a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition, etc, etc, etc.

Agnes has married Shakespeare. Judith has the plague.

In trashy horror novel news, 6 men killed, five woman, two 9-year old’s, and various dogs.

Reading, Writing, and Stuff

 

photo by Enzo Muno

Writing my latest. There’s a story there somewhere as opposed to dramatic unrelated actions, but I’ll have to eliminate some blabber to get there, wish I could send it to Maxwell Perkins or someone and have them fix it.

I’m reading my junky horror novel quickly.

I’m reading Hamnet slowly.

And I’m also  enjoying the second edition of Forest for the Trees. Not much seems to have really changed since the first. I think the 2nd edition for the 21 century is just a gimmick to get people to buy it again, but it's been long enough since I last read that every statement seems newish. It's all over the place like a distracted fascinating conversationalist (or this blog). Some of it I relate to, some of it I don’t, but the book is good as well as more fun then I remember.

My junky horror novel is… junky. But exciting. I know how hard it is to write exciting, so I appreciate it.

photo by neonbrand

Hamnet I’m savoring like a fine wine if I drank. I feel like a hypocrite talking about fine wine, because when I did drink, cheap sangria was about as sophisticated as I got. That and alcohol mixed with chocolate. I thought of it all as candy. I gave that up and began a two gallon a day diet coke habit which I dropped and now I just drinking water and my strange cayenne pepper, lemon, and maple syrup tonic.

Spaghetti and More

Photo by Cottonbro

I really want to read now but I set an intention to write a blog post and feel I must fulfil it. 

It’s toward night now. Whatever the time my blog says I wrote this, don’t believe it. The man  is trying to screw with your brain or rather Blogger has me on Australian time and I live far away from Australia. This is the second time I’ve mentioned this and you figure I’d have it fixed by now, but it would ruin the conversation piece.

Made whole wheat spaghetti with a homemade sauce and me and Roe actually enjoyed it. I know people say no carbs, wheat belly, radiation has wiped out the soil or something; the last good crop of wheat was in the sixteen hundreds, but the spaghetti was very satisfying and what satisfies the soul satisfies the body so the stuff  I cooked tonight was practicality a health food.

 I really want to read, but I’m writing this damn post and the tragedy is after I’ve finished it’s my turn to do the dishes. I might hold them off until one in the morning. Then I can read, do a meditation, walk around the room. Everything.

I read the first edition and rather liked it. I'm starting the second edition of The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner tonight. It's about writing and writers from a mass market editors perspective, now "updated for the 21st century", curious about what she's changed.