Friday 6/10/22
I can work harder than I did this week, but that's about as hard as I've worked. There's no competing with what I'm doing if you just give me a week and put that week against the whole of anyone's else life so far as so-called writers go. Not in terms of quality, production, range. It's not possible. Let's go through this week, then get ready to go harder next week.
Starting on Saturday--weeks beginning on that day for me--I wrote a short story. I added on to my essay about James Joyce's Ulysses. I created a second version of the Judy Garland op-ed, which won't be used, as I sold the first last night. Then I wrote the prefaces to Glue God: Essays (and Tips) for Repairing a Broken Self and Longer on the Inside: Very Short Fictions of Infinitely Human Lives. Those totaled 4000 words. I worked in my head on sci-fi story and a ghost story. I came up with a new book on a long walk, called The Year of Doing Nothing and Everything. I wrote a 3200 word piece on rhythm and blues singer Arthur Alexander, which I went through and fixed this morning. I talked for a half hour on the radio about F. Scott Fitzgerald's early writings. Yesterday I wrote another short story, and then a feature on Judy Garland. I wrote another short story today. Came up with a (loose) cover idea for Just Like Them: A Piece by Piece Guide to Becoming the Ultimate Thinking Person's Beatles Fan. The idea, that is, rather than the idea and the hardcore specifics, like I have for There Is No Doubt and Longer on the Inside. Did some work on a piece about the 1942 film Moontide, and began head work on one about Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box. Then there are the ten entries in this journal.
That's while writing pitches, sending out books, stories, and pieces. Preparing other entries for these pages in the Everything Wrong with Publishing series.
Not nearly enough exercise this week, but I'll make it up next week. Got a hot chocolate at Starbucks and just made the latest to-do list of many, many things to get done. I would like to get to the Brattle this weekend for their screenings of various film noirs, including The Great Gatsby from 1949 tomorrow at mid-day.
Here's twenty-one-and-a-half minutes of some of the best music there has been: merely a medley of the Stone Roses playing "I Am the Resurrection" and "Fools Gold" at the Ally Pally in November 1989. And as always: Total focus. Matchless art. No mercy when we get there.