MarkC presided over the first RC meeting of his term; he did just fine. It was a little strange to be seated among the members but I’m ok with this. I think it is important to let things happen as they will, IOW I’m not volunteering for anything.
We are getting organized here. The visiting nurse is on a schedule, the physical therapist likewise, now we are arranging a professional service to give Carola and me some time away. It is Elder Care Professionals and she will be here in an hour to explain the deal. With this and the rest we will be/feel less overburdened.
At this moment, mom and I are sitting on the upper deck in a nice breeze; the shade, and an almost clear blue sky. Her feet are a little swollen so she had a fluid pill this AM. I can’t read her very well. She seems to have given up the battle but she responds well to feeding and movements. She seems tired/not necessarily sleepy but fatigued. If not pressed for a response she makes none. Only when she feels discomfort from being in one position for too long or from needing to use the potty, does she say anything. Then it is a moan and it’s up to us to find out what’s the problem.
The rotation of the Earth is evident as I watch the shade/sun line close in on us. We tend to ignore this rotation but it continues both day and night as it has for 4.5 billion years around the sun. There was at least one major disruption and this was the collision with planet X that remade Earth and formed the Moon out of the combination. I suppose the Earth-Moon rotates in an orbit slightly different from the original Earth-only orbit. I remember entering the Hampton Roads Tunnel as the sun was on the Western horizon and upon exiting the sun was gone below it. It was a dramatic example of the rotation.
We have now quit the deck because it was getting too warm even though mom complained about being too cool; I think it was the breeze. At any rate we are now waiting inside for the social worker to get here.
I think writing requires a great deal of patience. I tend to tell the story a bit too clinically, a complaint I registered before. But the writer/novelist, as opposed to the play writer, has to delve into the whole scenario and paint a vivid picture for his reader. It still seems incredible that James Joyce could write nearly 800 pages to describe the activities of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom.
One can get the feel for my scatter shot from reading my notes and this one is a good example. I start on one subject, get distracted into another, and sometimes come back; other times, no. It would be a good exercise for me to write 10,000 words on a single subject. Incredibly that would be a treatise or sample of about 15 typed pages of manuscript; a far cry from the 220 of a book or Joyce’s 800 pages. Eight hundred pages is approximately a half a million words. The writing alone would take 500 hours plus editing; re writing; solving problems of tense, grammar, voice, and style. I mean wow! I am in awe of Joyce’s work. Then he wrote Finnegan’s Wake, which took 19 years. I don’t have that much lifetime left.
Writing is a job; a craft. It is s.t. one does much as I do but with a lot more discipline. Take these pages as an e.g. I started with Mark Church, mom, our situation, the earth, then writing, and I’m not even at the end of side 3. It may be a lack of depth, patience, perseverance, or discipline and I suspect it is a combination of all these and more.
When I wrote THW6C and TBH, I thought I was too long; and I was. As I attempted to lengthen them, the contrived lengthening became evident, too many words for the story being told. Same was true for my play. It would only last 30 minutes tops instead of an expected 90.
I remember reading James Michener’s first published book about a bridge in Hungary used to escape to the west, and found it to be amateurish. It was about 200 pages. His later books were riveting for more than 500 pages. He was a master at the historical novel.
Leon Uris was also but he ran out of steam and his last book was crap. I think he wrote it to fulfill an obligation. I suppose my point is that writers, especially good ones, are human and take time to develop and need inspiration, i.e. more than just do a job. There are plenty of hacks, who are light years ahead of me, filling shelves with drivel. Some books are sold because there are people who like to read and are easily impressed by a cover design.
Then there are serious non-fiction writers, who appear on talk shows, that turn out book after book of thought provoking material. These have an audience of intellectuals who read and probably debate the ideas put forth. The key is they have an audience. The question is how this, or any audience, formed? Some writers are discovered by an audience; others have an audience from other sources like Bill O’Reilly and Dick Morris, et al who follow them from the TV to the bookstore. These authors use their reputation in the public sphere to drive sales of their books, which have merit or they wouldn’t sell repeatedly.
Perhaps what we are seeing, even in this one of a 1000 sample, is the difference between breadth and depth. I touched on a variety of issues in these pages but made/came to no conclusions in writing. I do/have often come to conclusions mentally and take them away to be implemented. So it goes.
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