Nobody has guessed the location of the photo in the last post. I guess that saves me having to award a prize. It’s the California Aqueduct, somewhere north of Patterson, CA.

Have you ever picked wild blackberries at dusk? I have now. That was fun. And a good hike, on a steep trail above the American River. Thanks to my loved ones for that.

Among the inventories recently done of my life, character, prospects, interview suits, etc., is included a substantial inventory I’ve taken of my creative affairs. I find general disarray. My poems and short fiction are showing hope of harvest. I’ve recently compiled a collection of poems and I’m putting the finishing polish on it. I’m trying to choose the title, sending out email feelers in hopes of finding a publisher, etc. But my story – novel, novella, or long exhalation of emotional havoc – has simply gone awry. It has devolved by turns to 31 chapters of sentimental saltmarsh or many dead leaves floating in a bottomless flooded quarry of woe. This cannot stand.

* Feeling suddenly thirsty, nonplussed on the brink of a pit of creative failure, he stands and leaves the room without excusing himself.*

I like crystal light, don’t you? It’s better than heavy carbonated sodas, especially late at night. No caffeine.

Where was I? Oh yes. Scrap it? Toss the poor thing into a drawer? (By which I mean drag the files onto a CD-R, and toss that into a drawer.)

I’ve seriously considered simply clicking on the folder on my hard drive, holding down Shift to bypass the recycle bin and hitting Delete. But I think there’s a ritual involved with doing that, after so much work, that I’m not ordained to perform. I seem to remember something about doing the hokey pokey while chanting “I’m wasting my life” until dizzy and nauseous, but I’m not sure which way one is supposed to spin. Does anyone know? Probably clockwise.

Well. I was cruising the San Joaquin in my rented car, a very red Chevy with a thoughtful hook-up for my iPod, and I was listening to a podcast on philosophy from Australia. One of the speakers paraphrased a quote by Oscar Wilde, to the effect that a sentimentalist is someone who doesn’t know that emotion has to be paid for. Which gave me an idea.

(Note: If you go looking for the garbage dump in Placerville, you’ll find it on Throwita Way.)

Either throw the damn project away or start over. Clean slate. Enough cluckin around. Rewrite the whole farkin thing in my own voice, first person. Tell the truth. Screw sentiment. Lose the cute. I have to do it this way, because I don’t know how to plot.

…I gave my love a chicken
That had no bone
I told my love a story
That had no end…

Yep, that’s exactly what I’ve got here, in countless drafts in MS Word: a boneless chicken.

So how does one pay for emotions? By telling the truth. Life is at the same time beautiful and terrible. Death is always in front of us, so go ride your bike along the beach.

I have thumbed through some previous pieces I published, seeking inspiration. I came across a line from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which I used as an epigraph in Finding Oakland:

“Because here we were dealing with the pit and prune juice of poor beat life itself, in the god-awful streets of man.”

That’s beautiful, don’t you think? It was very kind of Mrs. Kerouac – or her legal representatives – to let a humble poet use it. And that’s where my little novel/novella is going. Into the streets, or at least to be a little prune juice on a country road. I cant bear to see my characters die of willful neglect.

I have a new title, to inspire a new direction. I’ve written a new first chapter, and heavily rewritten the second. I’m using my previous work as source material mostly, but not pasting anything in to the new manuscript unless it’s really great. I’m completely changing the POV and the voice. Every line in the book that’s remotely derivative of The Waltons is being hauled out against the barn and summarily shot. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. But I’m shooting for something between this and this.