What You Talking About, Poe?

So I’m researching epitaphs. Why? Because it beats the hell out of writing. Some of course are amusing:

Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.

Heather tells me, by the way, that NPR told her that the bananas we eat will disappear in 30 years due to Panama disease. I miss them already. She further tells me that bananas are sterile and so are essentially clones of one another. We are all eating one banana. I have to quit talking bananas with Heather because she is blowing my mind.

But getting to the famous epitaphs I find Poe’s: “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Why does that make me so sad? Am I the only one who had a morbid teacher who made us play the come up with your obiturary? I can swear the same teacher made us draw a tombstone and write our own epitaph, but you know the betrayer memory…tricky bastard. I was both frightened out of my mind my these exercises in mortality and offended that I could (at some insanely young age) sum up my life in a sentence.

And that’s Poe’s: Quoth the Raven, Nevermore. It’s perfect, some would say. Fitting. But my problem is that it’s cliché. I know you can’t judge that time then from the standards of now. But I can only react now and that’s like Gary Coleman’s epitaph being “What you talking about, God?” Wait, is that his epitaph? No, that’s right, he didn’t die recently…he got married—totally different. Unless you were in a Poe story where death and marriage might be something akin.

For Mel

My friend Melody Clayton sent me this evocative picture. She's been a great friend since the grad school days. The couch daze. And her husband Alex--encyclopedia of all things cool. They introduced and continue to introduce me to all the good stuff in life.

She's working also on a novel which will be much better than THE NOVEL I've been pecking at. But you should know she's already an atmospheric master short story writer as witnessed here.

An Erotic Stanza

So I’m working on THE NOVEL, and I decided that I was tired of coming up with the words and that it would be much easier to steal them from someone else. But that would be wrong, I thought. I tried desperately to kill my superego but only rendered it quiet with the compromise that I would find something the character could quote to another character. And then, I remembered the Limerick book. I had until the Limerick book thought that limericks were light entertainment except for The man from Nantucket, which I never knew the rest of but guessed that it had to end in fuck it. Now I know that they are a dirty, dirty art form, and I love them for it. Anyway here’s a limerick from the Limerick book for your reading pleasure:

There was a young fellow named Dave
Who kept a dead whore in a cave.
He said, "I admit
I'm a bit of a shit,
But think of the money I save!"

Ha, ha. See the reason that's funny is that most people wouldn't have intercourse with another person who is deceased, regardless the discount.

Introducing...Heather

So I’ve mentioned my girlfriend Heather, but I haven’t blogged at length about her. And as she’s sitting serenely across from me at the coffee shop believing that I am diligently working away on THE NOVEL, I feel the urge to riff on her. She is not a constant reader of the blog, so I think I can get away with this for a few days at least. But I'm not suicidal—thus, the close-up pic instead of a picture that would make her make my life unspeakably uncomfortable. Doesn’t she have pretty eyes? Aside from her eye color, here are a few things you should know about her:

1. She’s a poet. I try not to hold this against her. Though I have published some poetry (a whole chapbook even), I would self-identify as a fiction writer. As such, I find we get along splendidly having common interests, but not too common. She loves those words, and I love those characters. To learn more, go to your local library or read this essay about poet/fiction writer couples.
2. She’s younger than I am. Which has caused me much consternation. Both in terms of the age gap (she doesn’t remember The Electric Company!) and in that I am living the cliché. But love can’t help love. I dated the cougars in my youth. I dated and dated but just couldn’t relax in a relationship until her.
3. She is type A. She is proud of this. To an extent. She stopped ironing her jeans after I kept making fun of her, for example.
4. She randomly makes cute noises.
5. She does a spot-on imitation of Louis Armstrong.
   
6. We just had an extended conversation on three points from Strunk & White.
7. She is a sterling person all the way around who you should get to know (I know sappy, sappy). And there’s more, but frankly that’s none of your business.
8. Also, I need to wrap this up because she’s giving me suspicious looks…

Ishtar…or what the hell is wrong with me?

So I’m working on THE NOVEL. God I hate this thing. And I’m beginning to hate the person I was in grad school. Today, I revised a section where one character compares another character to Ishtar. Not the much maligned but magnificent ‘80s movie starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman—all right I’ve never actually seen that film because of all that much maligning but now I feel honor bound to. No, not that Ishtar, but rather the Babylonian goddess of sex and war. I had one character in dialogue tell another character she was just like Ishtar…at length, as in pages. What was wrong with me? Most of my grad school buddies were writing hardcore sex scenes and the older Southern lady novelists were crying over it and I was writing about Ishtar. Okay, I probably just imagined all the sex writing. But Ishtar…really?

No Readings...Only Writing

So I'm pissed at myself. Normally, I can rely on my coping mechanism of transference and blame my problems on others, like Blockbuster, for instance---I hate those bastards and you should too---more on that later no doubt. But it's hard to hate someone else when you're angry about your writing. Unless you use a ghostwriter and then you can yell at that person and fire that person or possibly kill that person, because hey, they're a ghostwriter after all. So what I'm saying is: anyone interested in being my ghostwriter please contact me.

To assuage this feeling of guilt, I'm working again on THE NOVEL. The novel I wrote in grad school between D&D marathons with Brad Land and Derek Nikitas. It was my thesis. I wrote two novels after that, but who's counting (here's a hint...it's me). So as of right now since yesterday I've written 959 words. That's a lot for revision. I'm basically gutting it and rewriting from the inside. Keep some of the frame. Over here's where I'll put the walk-in closet.

Let me back up and say that 959 words is a lot for me. For many of my writerly friends, they could have that knocked out in an hour, and that's the ones that have to stare at the keyboard and use the hunt-n-peck typing method. I am mind numbingly slow at writing. I fear other writers spill words down a page as easily as I spill my drink at parties. I belabor each word. Except for here, though I'm sure you can't tell. With me dropping any ole word here or there. Turnip

The novel.