Thursday 11/21/24
Here is where some writing matters stand. Yesterday I finished the new eleven stories that I did more or less simultaneously--a turn down another avenue of creativity in the journey. These are those eleven stories:
"Big Inning"
"The Scratcher"
"Grateful Mantis"
"The Thrust"
"The Smoked Grasshopper"
"Personal Plane"
"Everything Is Shrapnel"
"The Life Irreducible"
"Thumb Drive"
"The Generator"
"Wisp Kisses"
There's nothing like them and I don't think anyone could do anything like them. There was a time I couldn't have done them. "Wisp Kisses" is perhaps the darkest and saddest work of writing--or anything, for that matter--that I've ever seen. It is concerning to me that someone would have that in their mind--that I had it in mine--which is a separate matter from its quality as a work of literature and art. I am haunted by it, haunted by knowing I wrote it, and I feel like I will have to write something else to rinse it out of me.
I finally completed "Go and Come Back," which will go into There Is No Doubt: Story Girls, only I don't know where it will fall as of yet in that book. I'd like to say it's my book of books, because it is special, matchless, but I can't really say that on account of everything else. That doesn't change, though, how special I know it to be as it takes its final shape. Even as I'm aware of the controversy that would follow from this book, that it was written by a man.
With talk of "Your body, my choice," there are people who would say this is an invasion of female spaces, who would hate the idea--the very possibility--that the best book ever written about women and girls was written by a man. They wouldn't be able to argue against its quality or truths, though. Which would create greater levels of anger for some people. (I've noticed this and lived it; when people want to say, "You're not all that" or "That's not all that," and they find out that you're more than all that, and that that is more than all that, they don't mea culpa, they don't say, "My bad"; they get angrier, they rage harder, the more legit that you, and that thing, are.) Then you think about this industry, and who would have the courage to put this book out. What a system: Who would have the courage to put out the best book there is? Because that's what this is. The best book there is. And it's for a greater good.
Continuing with There Is No Doubt: Story Girls: I then worked on "Dot," through ten or twelve more passes. This is all yesterday morning. The story was written in 2021, I believe. It was revised last year. I work things so hard now--I work them and work them and work them. I go back and make sure I don't need to keep working them, work anything else in them, change anything. I check in and make sure. I'm doing that with a lot of works and need to continue and there are things I must change a lot of to get them where I want them to be. Where they should be.
I'll return to "Dot" today. It's really a story about three women, and one in particular. The other day I had referred to it as pure delight. It's stunning and it stuns me and I wrote it. Knocks me over each time I read it. I don't think anything could be more pleasurable or make a person feel better than reading "Dot." This story, I know, is the second story of There Is No Doubt. I the order of the first three is set: "Fitty"-"Dot"-"Dead Thomas."
Someone might say, "What? Thomas! That's a boy's name!" Yes. The story is told by a girl and it's about her and her friend. It's about something that happened to her, and something her friend is trying to do and something she's trying to do for her friend. Dead Thomas is a character. He's this dead kid who is at school with these girls. For a time.
I don't know when this was first written--back in 2022, perhaps. Norberg, whom I mentioned yesterday, proclaimed it as this best thing he'd seen. At the time, I would say it was 2300 words long. I could check, but that's ballpark. You'd think someone would be done at that point, if that's what the takeaway was--which was echoed by others--but as I said, I return. I answer to myself and what I know I can do and what I believe something can be. And when I did, I saw there was much to do with "Dead Thomas." The story is now over 5000 words long and the work is ongoing, but hopefully a final version will be completed in the next few days.
I wrote an op-ed about Nick Drake, which I'm not going to be able to move. I may be able to repurpose some of it and move that, but that's also doubtful. I also wrote a Nick Drake feature, which I'll finish here this morning, but again, that probably won't be seen because no one is going to put it out. It's fantastic, though. It takes the premise that I was once what I call a Nick Drake fraud, and is largely about what I consider the most misunderstood album there is, that being Pink Moon.
What this means is that I worked on thirteen separate works of fiction and a nonfiction feature--the op-ed was written the day before--yesterday morning over those eight plus hours I cited in the last entry, before heading outside and having the experience did inside of a minute while minding my business and trying to continue on through this worse-than-hell whatever this is.
Then there's this journal. I keep it in its own category. I don't count it as work, but it is a lot of work, and it's important for a host of reasons, including in terms of my quest, and as its own work. But if I wrote 3000 words in here of a morning--as I will have done this morning, when I'm finished with this entry--I don't think, and I can't think, "Well, you did 3000 words' worth of work," because that's not how this is. I did see the other day--so I'm not sure where it's at now--that the word count of these pages for November alone was over 50,000 words. I should have a tally for the whole thing soon, which would mean updating the home page of the site.
Okay. Back to it.
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