I’m printing a 12-page short story today, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and I anticipate sending it out in the afternoon mail, if not today then Monday. As described before, it’s science fiction, a genre I’ve never written in before but (as previous posts point out) one that I feel has some potential should this and a few other stories work out. I’m anxious to enter this sort of exclusive group of writers who are able to make fiction, but feel that tamping myself into the literary hole right away isn’t the most adventageous. I’m no fool — literary is boutique, a publisher’s luxury. Yesterday at Guapo comics on Foster there were kids reading comic books and high adventure. There is still a lot of interest there and my hope is that The Beautiful Room toggles me a foothold there.

My novel ideas however are not science fiction. I won’t spill words describing what they are (not pertinent to this post) but it’s becoming clear that, once again, I’m working in one medium to feed another. For ten years I wrote screenplays under the delusion that getting noteriety there would translate to being a fiction writer. As I stand looking back, that logic is like saying going to church gets you your cows milked and your pigs washed for free. It simply doesn’t translate. I must mention another feeling that doesn’t quite apply: anger. Writers at 24 direct themselves the wrong ways all the time — I’m no different. They do, however, have to get themselves re-tracked or risk losing precious time. I’m 34 and have little to show for my last decade as a writer other than a lot of record reviews, a few published poems and near misses galore.

What in the world do we do now?

I still think of that interaction in the gym locker room: father, 40, reading his book and sons playing and talking about video games. Wisdom would be to find a way to grab both of their attentions: write a novel for my aging contemporaries while feeding the young on whatever those stories are. Their tales are strident, splashy, they like “Avatar” and “LOTR” the same way we liked “Star Wars” and “Flash Gordon” only now the candy is sweeter. Novelists when that 40-year old father was a baby bemoaned the television and it’s pull but he would have given it all up to advertise cigarettes if he’d seen the internet, 3-D ca. 2010 and felt how easy it is to download, watch and dispose of art today. Still there are writers. There are Kindles. No one is “giving up” per se as they are modifying expectations in light of reality.

How do we write for father and son?

In the interest of spilling too many words on an old topic, I’ll simply mention one factor: time. Dad is forty. His reading years are dwindling while his sons have the full crest and fall in front of them. Any business man would tell you to write to the younger part of the market. In 10 years, Dad will have more time (perhaps) but in 20 he’ll likely lose his eye sight right about when his sons are at the peak of their buying power. They might rifle through the antique section and get Dad some audio books but on the way to his care facility, I imagine their conversation:

“Dean Koontz?”

“Never heard of him.”

Then they’ll be back to their devices. Those boys take in 6.5 hours of digital media each day — 8.5 if you consider multi-browsing/tasking. Our youthful attention is fractured and what in the world indicates they’ll want to pick up even a 250-page novel and read it (roughly 6 static, undivided hours) when they can simply stream something that if they don’t like it, it’s deleted, art and narrative no more than wasted hard drive space.

My wife says I’m too attuned to where things are going. I look at the newspaper and wonder if its my last. I hold books and feel like an ancient. She sees it all coming but is characteristically optimistic: there will always be a niche. Just like with theater? I wonder when all of what I’ve conserved my energy to create — books, short stories, poems, plays and films — is thrown to the margins, who will be the audience? Simple question, neither negative nor doe-eyed. Who is the audience?

Next time I’m in the gym, I’m going to encourage that 40-year old man to push it an extra 10 minutes on the exercise bike. I need him sharp for a while.

Paw Prints On Tundra

Random thoughts from the end of the week/weekend:

• Cat paw prints appeared on the stove top overnight. At 3:30 I was awoken by a cat between my knees, rendering me unable to move from side to side. Iggy. I rolled over and he simply went with me — then I lifted him off and dropped him on the floor. He came back hours later but I wonder if in between, he walked across the black, glass top in search of heat.
• Finished reading Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner yesterday while agonizing over an empty desk at work. In summary I thought it was a good book, the first and last parts were a real narrative revelation (here is where Stegner works on the Doppler and title affect). However, the middle passage, those 475 pages of epistolary work left something to be desired. Ultimately, Stegner’s narrator has to draw his conclusions anyway. All told, I’d rather read Crossing To Safety once again.
• Last week I got a letter from the Oregon Secretary of State: my LLC license needs to be renewed to the tune of $50.00. Why does this feel notable to me? Longbranch Productions has once again provided an identity for my ambition but no work to show for it. Perhaps I’m thinking too much about this.
• Next books on the list: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (full disclosure: third attempt), Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (“really smart Dan Brown”) and likely the long anticipated Sot Weed Factor by John Barth. I’m open to suggestions however. More James Ellroy and Wu Ming seem similarly compelling.
• First night of Hanukkah last night. Candles lit. A Chai goes around Lisa’s neck (only to be returned soon after).
• Another winter storm. Frozen temperatures rising only long enough to lower again and carry in moisture from down south. Batten down the hatches. The dog and I may walk just far enough today to get coke for the bonanza of rum in our liquor drawer.
• Musical rabbit holes abound these days as the weather freezes in and the light begins to fade. Just when I was beginning to submerge into Antony and The Johnsons (a shallow pool, few albums to explore) someone turned me onto Atlas Sound, and by proxy, Deerhunter and the expansive Micromix Project by band helmsman Bradford Cox. Spartan stuff. It reminds me of the first few days I discovered Guided By Voices.
• Hard scrabble three months have passed since I wrote out submissions but I have seven on my desk as I write this. As the screenplay pen goes down, the poet’s pencil emerges. I’ve enthralled in a new personal writing theory: “Poetic Omission(s)” and feel like I could run with in the reworking of old things. When I struck that line, my stomach turned.
• Today is one of those days. I may not go very far. I’ll look out the window for snow.