Doesn't matter

 

I could be the worst writer on earth, shunned for cause. Aches and pains might multiply with brain atrophy and sleeplessness. It doesn't matter, right wrong or blue, I have to start Steam Punk, a major literary novel, whether stillborn, poisoned, abandoned, too high a mountain to climb, bleeding and breathless, risking a terrible fall. I've fallen plenty of times before. Not that big a deal when you're young. High mileage elderhood is different. No shock absorbers, tire easily, lazy as a dog.

 

I'm close to grasping a theme. Standby.

 

UPDATE — Got it. Life is an open road. Four pages of story notes, beats to hit in the first 300 pages. Long list of villains and opponents. Solid sense of the first act. Next job, following Buster Keaton's advice, is to get a good finish. Not to be triangulated or rushed. An original statement. Good luck, pilgrim.

 

A COUPLE DAYS LATER ... intensely sad, how difficult this is.

 

WEDNESDAY, extremely cold outside, an inch of ice and frozen rain, snow coming. I was minding my own business sitting on a toilet seat. The first scene in the book played easily in my creative circuits and then I had an attack of fast loud sneezes, 1234567 nonstop. Seriously loud. Took forever to get control, blew my nose twice. Am I suddenly allergic to writing? ... This is what happens when you nail a scene, especially an opener to establish the main character and see him in full focus, a dinner date at a girl's apartment. He can't stay overnight (she asks) because there's a new chick singing with the house band at midnight and he needs to see what the showroom dinner guests think. If you saw hard, handsome Larko and beautiful Christine together, you'd sneeze, too. She loves him with all the freedom of youth. He wants to love her and can't remember how to do it. Very nice, but I have to work on the finish.

 

SUNDAY, a little warmer, some ice melting on the road. I'm being bombarded and mesmerized by vivid scenes and sharp dialogue in the first act. Swell. You need a THIRD act, dumbshit.

 

I looked at my folder list of Publications, too big to fit on one screen, sent Scripts & Stuff to another directory. Publications is two dozen books at Amazon or Lulu, 2/3 of them novels, at least two of which are excellent, not including Chris and Peachy. I lived with Chris and Peachy and loved them a long time. Still do. I do not want the world to end with my backlist, and it's debilitating to consider it. There is no path to peace in Ukraine. I think I understand Vladimir Putin's perspective. Three months ago, while he was mobilizing troops to the border, hundreds of American special forces were training the Ukrainian Army how to use shoulder fired Javelin tank busting rockets and antiaircraft Stingers.

 

NATO has been resupplying the Ukrainians steadily across the Polish border. Worse, G-7 banking and payment systems cut all ties to Russia, crushing the Russian economy — tantamount to a blockade, an overt act of war. Putin warned he would use nuclear weapons. How am I supposed to write anything under these circumstances? Immensely odd to consider that publication is a done deal, a closed door, about to strike a final hour for all of us. What Biden sees on teleprompter is trivial at this point.

 

'Life is an open road' is my theme for Steam Punk. Good theme. How much sense does it make in mass destruction? Plenty for survivors to do, of which there will be many around the world, mostly in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and South America. Maybe the Ozarks. We're pretty remote. Depends on wind direction. Whatever is possible to men and women anywhere at any time is an open road. Think of civilian militiamen in Ukraine facing tanks. I don't do heroic feats any more. I do little chores, walk half a mile to the country store, try to lay eyes on my wife and daughter every week or so. Nothing changes in a nuclear war. There will be chores to do. I'll cheer and comfort my women, suggest that it's a good time to be vigilant and remember Jesus in the salt (a slice of seismic we laughed at 15 years ago). Girls embraced and armed, I'll walk to the country store and see how Betty is getting along, stay to defend her if necessary. Life is an open road.

 

Nukeproof theme. Nice.

 

FOX BULLETIN — Biden's DHS expelled a Russian U.N. diplomat and eleven staff, an extremely stupid move, poisoning bilateral diplomatic relations. Biden's puppet masters are pushing Putin into a nuclear corner, a suicidal hubris that Lunch Bucket Joe probably shares. Jesse Kelly thinks that Joe is physically handicapped and will be succeeded by Kamala Harris, an ugly twist of fate that beggars belief.

 

During the hurry up debacle of surrendering Afghanistan, I concluded that China owns Biden. Putin met with Xi and got a green light to invade Ukraine, a bloodthirsty Chinese trick. Nuclear war between Russia and USA would leave China more or less unscathed, the sole surviving superpower and global overlord of a radioactive world. Watch Obama. If he moves his family to Hawaii, duck and cover.

 

THURSDAY, a warm, sunny spring day. I feel distinctly like an idiot, but not as idiotic as the BBC asking exhausted refugees who suffered endless delays at an insanely crowded border: "How do you feel?" My idiocy won't attract any emotional vampires. I have no idea what to do with Steam Punk, specifically the engine of story highballing on track to an original finish. It will have to be reverse engineered.

 

Bob Seeger on the radio. "Beautiful Loser" describes me to a tee. Life is a frogmarch of radio dayparts and little chores like trimming the dog again (!) and a long amble to the country store. I washed my hair. Made a sandwich. Russian conscripts are stuck in a 40-mile-long armor convoy that ran out of fuel and food, probably being pounded every night by rocket fire. Russians don't have night vision gear. Life isn't fair. Drive halfway across Russia, bounce around in Belarus two weeks, then get trapped in a traffic jam that no one can escape by leaving the road because Ukrainian farmland is a sea of mud. No fun sleeping in a tank or in the cab of a supply wagon loaded with explosives. Gets cold at night.

 

I'd like this to be over as quickly as possible. I'm tired of feeling idiotic. I played Solitaire. I monitored news bulletins, a nuclear power station on fire in southern Ukraine. I have to let the story ending strike me unexpectedly and shoot a convincing bolt of lightning up my spine. Standby.

 

One of the philosophy professors at UW wrote a paper on action, puzzling about what happens when he raises his arm. Is it a physical event or a mental event? — confronting dualism and trying to distinguish himself as an original thinker in a big department. It's a good clue, the moral meaning of action.

 

"A third rate Romanticist has nothing." (Ayn Rand)

 

Shut up! I'm trying to think! ... Stupid sexpot, who does she think she is? Dead as a doornail. I was on a San Francisco cable car when Rand died and Bill Buckley celebrated her death in a syndicated op-ed. It changed me. I no longer thought in terms of debating ideas, fair and square, trusting others to listen. My job became simple and warlike, no expectation of agreement. Postmodern admirers of Ayn Rand were fussy gossips who attacked like flying monkeys in defense of a new LGBT compliant cottage industry that idolized airhead gossip queen Barbara Branden. Sometimes the world is weirder than it should be.

 

"It's earlier than we think." (Rand)

 

Stop it! Shut the hell up and go bug someone else.