No Beach To Walk On

This was the title of my aborted fourth book, stolen from a line in a Star Trek episode, which was going to be about a really bad hurricane that hits Palm Beach County directly--before and then the aftermath. Today it becomes part of a reason I aborted the beach walk--the surf was too high, there was all this trash all over the place, there were storms north and south of me, and finally I just didn't feel like doing it. The beach goes downhill every year around this time, so it was no surprise.
I walked for a few hours at the mall, but this got to be a drag also so now I'm home. I'm almost half way done with the sequel so that's coming along nicely as well.
The reason I never finished this book is because after the third one didn't get picked up, I became so dispirited about the whole thing, I lost interest in it. Plus I finally had found a decent job and I was learning about financial markets and all this so it kind of just went away. I knew the third book needed a rewrite but how to do it eluded me until I got the idea for the subplot and then it hit me--what had been missing in the book.
One day after I had gotten fired from my last job, I was sitting around and feeling sorry for myself so I decided that I needed a break. So I went on YouTube to look at some music videos that some other people had done that amused me. Then in one, I saw some original artwork that I didn't recognize, so I wrote down that website. From that website, I found a link to another website that had some fan fiction posted. I read two of them and they were O.K.--nothing to write home about--but then there was one story that seemed promising and it just stops, right in the middle of it, as if whoever was doing it simply lost interest in it or died. There was one chapter that I felt really needed a rewrite, so I decided to see what I could do with it. I played with it for a few days until I felt like I had gotten it into shape.
But then I realized I had made a mistake and it still wasn't right. So I started again and this time it came out pretty well. Then I tried to write to the people most closely associated with all this and no dice--the e-mail was either returned or wasn't answered. Then I was walking at the mall one day and it hit me--this was perfect for the third book. So I started work on it the next day and the rest is history.
I guess it just goes to show that you never know what you're going to find when you start looking around on the Internet--and that ideas germinate in devious ways. This I've stolen also--it's from Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers book--something else I heartily recommend. Stealing can be very habit forming, it appears.
But the most difficult part of this transition has been the self-esteem issues associated with not having a regular job where I show up every day. All these years, for good bad or indifferent, I was able to support myself in the manner to which I have become accustomed. Now, I'm working at home and I'm happy--instead of working somewhere else and being miserable. But part of me was tied up with what I was doing and that's been what's hardest to get away from.
Were there honeys at the mall today? No, that's not a rhetorical question and I'm glad I asked me that. There were--but this is a subject for another post.

The Island Fortress

Publishing has always seemed to me most like an armed camp--where everyone on the inside has a vested interest in keeping everyone else out on the outside. In other words, it's not that there are barbarians at the gate--we are the barbarians, whom the caretakers of Literature seek to protect themselves from inside their walled off medieval castle.
Because it's not Literature until they say it's Literature. You're not a writer until they say you're a writer--and not before. Even all the watchtowers of heaven were ablaze after Lucifer's ill-thought-out and poorly-timed assault on Almighty God, so also are the gates of publishing becoming more and more inaccessible to outsiders.
Allow me a crude illustration. If Paris Hilton had written my book, everyone would want to read it, if for no other reason than to see if Paris Hilton could write a novel and if so, how well it was done. They're acting as if no one cares if I can write a novel or how well it's done because I'm a nobody and who would want to read a nobody's book? Certainly not the book-buying public. This is their attitude, anyway.
The last book I actually bought was Seamus Heaney's new translation of Beowulf, back in 2000. I stand corrected--I did purchase some years after Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, "Rabbit Remembered" by John Updike which was published in the same year but did not come to my attention until much later. So people such as me would not sustain publishing as a business--it's only the people who constantly need something new.
Speaking of something new, I was going to the mall yesterday but I became so engrossed in the second book that I completely lost track of time. The local newspaper, that I subscribed to since I moved in here almost nineteen years ago, has call me twice now, to get me to renew my subscription. As I've patiently explained to both young ladies, I'm too busy now to even consider reading the newspaper, which I used to read religiously. But ever since I've gotten everybody to the island in my book, I feel as though I'm there as well, removed from the world and all its comings and goings. Maybe if I get someone interested in the first book, that'll pull me back to the real world. In the meantime, they have a crisis on the island, as their monopoly of the aliens' technology is threatened for the first time, so their attention is focused--as is mine.

The Struggle Continues

The eternal battle for the domination of the world goes on, as it has since the dawn of man. Today, I am not winning, for the beach has been rained out. Again.
Ah well--there's always the mall. But I hate the mall--for a variety of reasons. For one thing, when you go, for some strange reason they expect you to spend money there. The merchants and the salespeople that work there expect you to actually shop in the stores and make purchases. They have all these sales and have all these salespeople around and spend all this money on advertising and wonder what's going on when the crowds don't show up. Sad but true--I can see it on all the employees' faces in practically every store in the mall--the vacant and empty look of no customers and nothing to do, just standing around and watching the clock until finally it's your time to leave. I worked in retail for over twelve years so I know the score.
During this time, I was working on the first book, which is and always has been a mess. It needs a rewrite the same as Jimmy Carter needed pills, and trust me--he needed a lot of pills. But I couldn't see it at the time, which shows you how much I knew then.
But meanwhile, while I was waiting on responses to my queries for the first book, I started the second. Here the plot thickens, because if I hadn't started the second book, there never would have been a third. I got a better response to the second book than I did to the first, but at 40,000 words everyone kept telling me the second book was too short--that I needed at least 70,000 words for a first novel or nobody was even going to look at it.
This I did not understand at the time but I do now. At the time, though, it seemed to me they were trying to dictate a certain style--which is antithetical to my own, that being minimalism. Now I see that wasn't it at all. By imposing a minimum word length, they were eliminating the vast majority of bad or mediocre manuscripts that are circulating around out there, clogging the system, which hinders good manuscripts from being read. When I say bad or mediocre, the standard that I'm using is anyone with an agenda, such as a cause, religion or belief system that they are seeking to foster or impose on others, as opposed to the agenda of Literature, which I think should be the primary reason why you're writing--that you think you can make a contribution, that you can do a better job than the people that are doing it now. Why can I see that now when I couldn't see it then? Today I'm nine years older than I was then--so I guess my judgment is better now than it was then. Older and wiser, as the saying goes. Everyone except my agent was telling me the third book needed to be book doctored, but I disagreed. I thought everybody else was wrong and I was right. Now I see with chagrin the opposite was true. So now I've done in six months what it took me more than two years to do previously--the rewrite that the book needed all along.
What it has now that it didn't have then is the subplot and more backstory, along with some new characters. I think it looks good now--but I thought the first draft looked good when I finished with that, so I don't know if I can trust my judgment now. That's why I'm trying to solicit a reading--to see the reaction to it.
I noticed when I went to the library to see the current marketplace, that there's been an enormous amount of consolidation within literary agents. It seems as if all the one and two man shops are gone now, leaving only the strong that survive.
There's daylight outside now and my laundry is done, but there's also a canopy of cumulus clouds where blue sky ought to be, and the radar scan at the National Hurricane Center website (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) shows more rain is on the way. Good news for the lawn and the trees but bad for me. Why can't it simply rain and storm at night? This and other eternal questions remain. The search for answers continues.

The Weather

Well, the weather is here and I wish it were beautiful, but sadly today it's not--all overcast out. This is strange--usually this time of the year the day starts out great--beautiful blue skies and beach-worthy in all repects and then the clouds appear--because of the heat.
Now if the breeze is from the east and coming off the ocean, this will keep the clouds back away from the coast--just long enough for me to get my sun and my exercise and my socializing done before the traditional afternoon showers come rolling in from the west, where it's hottest. If it rains, then this will cool things down. But if it doesn't, the heat remains.
As we are now done with August, we are off the anvil, so to speak. But the temperature really won't come down until after All's Hallow Eve--still some time away. In the meantime, everyone relies on air conditioners.
I mention the heat because this is what spawns hurricanes. There's more to it than that but that's the long and short of it. And hurricanes are unfortunately a big deal in Florida.
Why this is so necessitates more trivia--Editor's note: long boring explanation ahead. Get ready to skip to next paragraph. O.K., so I'll spare you the minutia. Long story short--hurricanes may well spell the end of the great Florida boom.
I take myself as an example. If I have to sell my place and move, I will. But I don't want to. This is my home--I've lived in my small two-bedroom condo for almost nineteen years and I like it here. I can't stand my neighbors but it's quiet and safe. This is a very good neighborhood, compared to some very bad neighborhoods around here where I wouldn't live if you paid me.
But back to the heat--it is oppressive. As bad as the cold up north that all the snowbirds run away from every winter. This is why so many people head up to the Great Smokey Mountains this time of the year. If I didn't enjoy the beach as much as I do, that's where my thoughts would be heading.
But the heat is different at the beach. For one thing, you're dressed for it. And you can always cool off in the water or under a shower if you so desire. This is what Klara used to do--get to the beach early and leave before the really hot part of the day. Not my cup of tea, so to speak, but it worked for her.
She went to the beach to swim and chill out. After she would swim, she'd sit on the beach and soak up some sun and take in the beauty and majesty of the sky and the ocean. I tried what she did and it worked for us as a couple, but I would never do it by myself.
She tried my routine of walking and she liked it about as much as I liked her deal. She may even incorporate parts of my walking for exercise into her beach routine when she gets back, but I'll probaby never know. She's supposed to return the end of October. In the meantime, she told me she was headed to the Ukraine after she returned to Prague where her mother and older sister live. I've e-mailed her twice but she's giving me the Kentuky Fried Freeze-out routine, so I don't know.
As much as I could tell, she wasn't being straight with the immigration people as to what she was doing here, because at one point she asked me if she could use me as a reference when she came back, to say that I was family or a friend she was visiting. Apparently, if she had told them she was here to dance aka strip, the immigration people would want a cut of her money, which she didn't want to give them. She told me she doesn't like to dance in the Czech Republic or Sweden because of the prostitution issue--which is why she wants to dance aka strip here. She told me she needs money. I advised her that most people do.
I also told her about the Miami Book Fair that's going to be in November and she said she wanted to go with me--of course, that was before we broke up. I liked being seen with her. I liked driving her around. I thought she and I fit, but I haven't had a girlfriend in person in over fifteen years, so maybe my assessments in that regard are off. We did have that one nice day together. Maybe that was all we needed.
The sun is now out, but it's far too late for me to go to the beach today. I am headed to the mall, to walk up and down what few stairs remain there, and purchase some underwear that I need.
I hope I can remember to set my alarm for tomorrow morning--the ravages of old age unfortunately are real--you do begin to lose your mind and your memory. I'm only 47 and it's already starting with me.
Things are going better with the book--I'm at page 202 out of 327 and the last fine tuning adjustment I made was page 175, so maybe I've cleared the hard part.
Must go now, not that I want to, but the mall beckons. TTYL.