This morning was perfect. Up early, a short drive to Sellwood to buy our week's supply of Harry Higgins Boiled Bagels, to Safeway for baked goods, home to make breakfast, which was a scrapple omelette. Coffee and TV news, and then here.
A mellow routine. Slow, lots of brooding time, and I am very big on brooding. Brooding about the human condition never ends. I also am brooding about a related new story, which may or may not get developed and later published. It doesn't matter.
In fact, my writing career has come curiously full circle. In the beginning I wrote despite having no sense whatever of having an audience. However, I did have a sense of belonging to a wider community of literary artists, some known, some invisible, all chasing a personal vision hoping to clarify the human experience. After a year, behold!, I began getting published in literary journals, an audience of sorts, enough certainly, and along the way three stories made the Roll of Honor in Best American Short Stories, and agents wrote to ask if I had a novel. I didn't. In fact, I was abandoning fiction to write for the stage. First in a series of untimely changes of focus. Following my desires, not the marketplace.
Today, again, I find myself writing without a sense of an audience, despite my list of achievements. What audience I do have seems to be overseas. All this is fine, though it took me time to embrace it. There is a certain freedom in invisibility because there are no expectations about what I am up to.
My current story fascinates me. The premise, an old man can't stop weeping. Such a medical condition actually exists, I was surprised to learn. The story is about his children and grandchildren and what they make of his situation. There's a hint of this theme in my first CJ novel, when CJ goes to the shrink and talks about the most sensitive and moral among us being locked up in loony bins.
My day began well. May it continue so.
A mellow routine. Slow, lots of brooding time, and I am very big on brooding. Brooding about the human condition never ends. I also am brooding about a related new story, which may or may not get developed and later published. It doesn't matter.
In fact, my writing career has come curiously full circle. In the beginning I wrote despite having no sense whatever of having an audience. However, I did have a sense of belonging to a wider community of literary artists, some known, some invisible, all chasing a personal vision hoping to clarify the human experience. After a year, behold!, I began getting published in literary journals, an audience of sorts, enough certainly, and along the way three stories made the Roll of Honor in Best American Short Stories, and agents wrote to ask if I had a novel. I didn't. In fact, I was abandoning fiction to write for the stage. First in a series of untimely changes of focus. Following my desires, not the marketplace.
Today, again, I find myself writing without a sense of an audience, despite my list of achievements. What audience I do have seems to be overseas. All this is fine, though it took me time to embrace it. There is a certain freedom in invisibility because there are no expectations about what I am up to.
My current story fascinates me. The premise, an old man can't stop weeping. Such a medical condition actually exists, I was surprised to learn. The story is about his children and grandchildren and what they make of his situation. There's a hint of this theme in my first CJ novel, when CJ goes to the shrink and talks about the most sensitive and moral among us being locked up in loony bins.
My day began well. May it continue so.
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