My Writing Process

You don’t want to go out, you surely do not want to go swimming, when the greenies arrive for their two week-long festival on the north shore of Massachusetts. I know. I’ve been there, I’ve lived there and there’s many a time – considering all these years – when I’ve taking the plunge into the Atlantic in hopes of escaping the early summer heat only to experience the thrill of having a piece of my flesh bitten and ripped off by those jaded-flying vacationers. It lasts two weeks and then they are either off to (other) greener pastures of maybe they croak, which could be a big old bowl of cosmic justice. Either way here today and gone tomorrow but man oh man, those two weeks are deadly if’n you forget and take the plunge. Or sit on a blanket working on the tan, Stan, don’t matter, you live in a beach town and the greenies are about, stay in Flynn. Trust me.

Which has not a thing to do with the Dighton hill where cousins had a farm – what degree of cousin-ness I couldn’t tell you, ring my sister Nancy, she’s the one with all the family history scrolled into her remembering mind, I can’t get back to grandparents without drawing a blank, but I do have these summer hazy recollections of being up at this farm and it was up above sea level and I remember a barn with open stalls and cows and it is perhaps possible this is where I find myself developing a life-long love affair with the bovine species, like – dig this Brah, I love cows. I wish we had a pet cow now, I wish oh how many times have I wished that I had spent a year or three living on a farm and there would be animals all over the place, chickens for sure and farm dogs and cats and maybe geese and maybe goats but assuredly cows. I love cows. I believe some of my better late-life artist efforts and devotions have cows as their subject and this is a ditto for charcoal drawings and honestly rarely a day comes and goes without me wishing I was engaged in another cow drawing, like it is 8:30 in the morning here Friday and already, maybe twice, I have daydreamed about drawing a new cow, both holding up a my-own-photo or borrowing someone else’s pic or then again drawing a cow from memory and if this was a year ago that would work out pretty well because I was drawing a lot, mostly daily, and painting a lot and a lot of that was of the cow portraits but now it may look like some alien thing what with me dropping all art work this last year and re-focused on my writings which have included poetry and getting a non-fiction storybook ready and published and the ever-devotion and commitment to the Blog and what I can put on it and how I fill that space,

Which now I find myself rolling into a subject I have plans to write up as another Blog post, in fact it should be today’s because I want to talk about the somewhat weird three stories I have posted in succession this week and the how of their creation and the why of my posting and here I will get into this need to set a timer and vow to type – pretty much non-stop and without self-editing – for whatever the timer is set for and for a fairly long while I was doing like 15 or 17 minutes or so and as has been my life’s pattern I’d be all into it many days running then drop off the map and have to amp up and start all over again – like I say, see me feel me touch me still waiting for the heal me deal – but anyway maybe a few weeks ago or two I set the timer for 30:30 and filled in all those moments with non-stop work, and in fact I’ve done it a number of times lately and what with influences including Philip K Dick and Bob Dylan and maybe the rock group Spirit and likely other reading and listening’s and viewings I have become a tad more ethereal, maybe, cosmic, hopefully, in my writing and have surprised myself with some pretty cool once upon a time’s, enough that I’ve felt the strongest inclination to “post that shit”

Which I have gone ahead and done and has been rewarding, and to the point – having re-read those last three posts last night – I even flashed in the recliner this earliest a.m. to gather materials if they keep coming – and the hits just keep on coming – and putting them in a book, which would not only be a fiction book – big yay – but would in fact be on the line of flash fiction which I generally feel unable to write, but now most of the half hour mind and finger excursions are ending up with a word count of between 1000 and 1400 words (flash-approved length), depending if there is at least a thread I’m drunkenly trying to follow or just typing on you rascal, more like this one even if a thread has developed which is the Blog and here I refer to the Austin Kleon admonition (advice) to buy yourself a piece of the Ethernet (world wide web baby) and since you own it and short of yelling “fire” you have those freedoms we hear so much about, you just go ahead and post that shit, Holmes, it’s your little patch of electric ground (See Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work, p67)

And so this is what I want to post as today’s Blog kind of an explaining that since I own it and as I’m a writer I’m writing with these time schedules – it helps versus sitting here like a dunce (where’s the pointy hat?) and hoping something shows up – Inspiration? One of my Muses? – nah, setting the timer and howling “Go” seems to be working and by working I mean the words fall out and lately I have been taken enough and possibly even woo’d you can say by my own ramblings that they have felt share-able to me and my game my rules I have copied and pasted with little re-write, you know even if I say this is stream-of-conscious writing, lookie lookie how cool is this tapping into the deepest mind Bro it’s okay to correct spelling and wicked piss-poor grammar and here and there substitute a word for another if it moves the ‘piece’ closer to what my writing mentor John Gardner labels the “vivid and continuous” dream, which in part means you have to write words interesting enough for someone to be willing to invest their time – got’s to be worthy as a writer Slick –

So yes I will trade a red for a rouge or a grackle for a bird and that is quite savvy and permissible and cool even, thinking in the way I do that if I’m fortunate enough to haul my weary achy bones and muscles from the warm bed yet one more time then in fact I am obligated to try and save the planet and I’m a writer – I’m a writer – which translates to what can I best do within my own miniscule powers to help the planet along, share a little joke, make someone chuckle, offer even the tiniest slice of hope, and that for me after meditating and coffee and strolling the grounds before the attendants cast their hooks into me (ha-ha just kidding Honey) is to come right down here into the cellar right here at the keyboard and do this – This!! –

And all of which has morphed into my “Process” to be posted later. Make it right now.