Burning and Books

Barack Back Mountain

Groggy. That's a fun word to say, groggy. It's funny to look at too, groggy. I slept so well last night I still feel groggy this morning. Groggy in the morning, groggy in the evening, groggy at suppertime. La la la la lala, I'm groggy all the time. Okay, that's enough of that.

The last couple of days while RTGFKAR was building his stairway to somewhere I've been burning coffee goddamn bushes and stumps. It's windy here in Palo Alto (Tall Stick) so the fire has to be watched and tended. While I do that, watch and tend, I also read a book. I've been alternating between R.O. Butler's tome on writing from your unconscious and a slow moving thriller by P.D. James entitled, Innocent Blood. Yesterday, I learned from Butler how to write a novel from short sensory perceptions obtained by sitting in front of a writing pad or computer for weeks without actually writing a sentence. You just jot down the sensory perceptions that arise. Later, you put them all on 3 by 5 cards and arrange them in some order that seems to make sense, though not too much sense because you don't want to bring your intellectual self into the process. Yikes was the first perception that came to me when I gave the thing a go. Yikes, because that's really hard and yikes that fire needs another stump. Of course I don't really see myself as a novel writer, most especially of the "literary" variety Butler is talking about, but also of course, I will someday give it a try if only to prove I'm right. I'm learning a lot from Butler that is applicable to what I do though, and I'm anxious to learn more. My question is, where was he when I first considered putting pen to paper? (Probably still unborn.) P.D. James is a writer of mysteries that unfold at a leisurely pace. Her characters are fully developed and seem so believable that at book's end the reader seems unsure he was reading something completely imaginary and not culled from reality. P.D., I think, straddles the line between literary fiction and genre fiction quite well. Tough to just put her in the "mystery" category.

Well it's tooooo windy to burn today, so I think I'll just go finish one of those books or both. Then I'll sit and access my dreamspace for awhile before starting the novel in which I will reveal all the secrets of the universe. I'm thinking it will be a tell all book because I'm privy to all the universe's dirty little secrets. For instance, did you know that the universe once had a sexual thing with... nah, I'm gonna save it for the book.