Writing 2

 “Jesus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.” — Ernest Hemingway when asked if he drank when he wrote.

2020

A SNIPPET: Now I know why the call them the blues — plural. There are so many of them. I am not an interior decorator or painter so I don't know the names for all the hues but here's an attempt using only a couple I know. This afternoon sitting on the porch in the sun I noticed the different colors in the sky. The blues progressed in shades from a pale pastel over by Denali darkening at each altitude eventually to a deep cobalt overhead. If I had a guitar and even better knew how to play it, I could hear myself plunking out one of those John Lee Hooker riffs, maybe a little up tempo to mirror the happier mood I found with my discovery of the blues.


2019

Rim of Red Water


I started a book in the late 1980s paralleling the life and importance of sea otters with the growth and history of Alaska. I had completed a good deal of research and wrote first drafts of nine chapters and outlined two more with the understanding in my head that this would eventually become a generational novel. Then life intervened. First came the Exxon Valdez oil spill, then an unexpected pregnancy which led to a hasty wedding and eventually a complete change in life style from living the romantic life of a boat captain and in the off-season a writer working at his craft in the Alaska wilds into a husband, father and responsible (somewhat) career person attempting to provide for his family. I came across it a week or so ago and thought somebody might like to read it even if it is unfinished and please understand this is a hastily edited first draft and if it ever sees the light of day beyond this blog it will take some serious rewriting, including the development of that generational narrative. I have posted 18 chapters on a separate page titled 

Rim of Red Water


2018


Patience, my dear, patience

 
 Nov. 21, 2018
This meme showed up on facebook a day or so ago. For anybody who writes it certainly rings true. It reminded me of an event in my own life.
     Some years ago I was walking with a woman friend in downtown Anchorage. This was in the days of the Book Cache of Fifth Avenue, I believe. We passed the book store's window and stopped for a moment. It was dedicated to a single book and I recall saying in a low under-confident voice, "someday I am going to have that window."
    Her response was less than enthusiastic. I don't recall her saying anything, just giving me a "yeah-sure" glance.
     Four years later I walked past that same window, alone this time. And guess what: the only book in that window was one I wrote.
     A few years later I was walking by the same window: same book, different woman. As we
stopped to look at it a fellow we knew walked up. He asked what we were looking at. "Tim's book," she said.
In a challenging tone he demanded to know what I had to do with that book. "He wrote it," she said. The surprised expression on his face looked more like an insult than an compliment, but …
… sometimes the medicine does work.



Stories I've written, always meaning to send


  November 20, 2018
  Let this be a lesson to some young person out there. If you have an idea, about anything, carry it through as far as you can. You will often stop at some point when you realize it's not going to work, but everyone has at least one good idea and it's a goddamned shame when you look up one day and find out someone else had the same idea and carried it through.
     Case in point. Tonight while watching television and ad come up for a new show scheduled to begin in January. It's called "Found Innocent." It gave me a cold chill.
    You see, I had this idea years ago, even wrote what's called a treatment for it. I have searched for that treatment but so far no luck. In it the main protagonist each episode took on the case of a person imprisoned and maintaining his innocence. Each prisoner would provide a different story, some of them actually innocent and others who were just where they were supposed to be.
     I found it. It's dated May 5, 2014, but it may have been updated on that date. I probably had been thinking about it long before that, Anyway, just because I can, this is what I had prepared: ( And for the sake of truth I am not going to make any corrections or changes at all. This is the way I left it in 2014)

INNOCENCE
BAsed in the cliche that everyone in prison says he's innocent and loosely based on the Innocence Project
 Main character former prosecuting attorney who learns he send a man to the chair who was innocent.  Now in private practice, he volunteers pro bono at a prison advising people in prison.  Nrried, young old girl friend  what?
He has a buddy in the police department.  They meet when the detetective forces his way into the office (most police don't like the lawyer)  and makes him very nervous.  Turns out the lawyer ahd been instrumental in proving the policeman's convicted brother was actually innocent and so he says a faver is owed. Lawyer takes liberal advantage of access to police files.
He has to have a secretary gatekeeper helper but this is cliche.  He could have a law grad student helpling with all the hyoung innocence'
Private detective.   This is going to be a woman, tough and capable who does investigations for the lawyer. There can be sexual tension here, but she over the long run pushes off any hint of  connection.
Detective's boss and colleagues don't like his connection with the lawyer and at times try to subvert him.
Head of  the firm:  Silver haired white guy who doesn't like all the pro bono work. )A thought here some civil case he forces on the lawyer turns out to be connected to one of his innocence cases.
Maybe need a nemisis prosecutor.
FIRST CASE
 ANOTHER MORE TIMELY STIMULUS:   A kid in jail for 20 years for having a pocketfull of pot.
 First case: Hard looking goth girl comes into his office.  Says her boy friend is innocent and he told her the lawuyers name becasue he heard it from someone in prison.  She explains the case but says they have no money and says her boyfriend told her to fuck the lawyer if she had to.  Looks:  a teardrop tattoo under one eye and that one with heavy goth makeup....  the other eye just shadowed like sunken zombie like. Nose ring, short straight dark hair.  fingerless gloves and sexy. And makes no bones about fucking the guy.
Prisoner, hard case biker gangster who is guilty of a lot but not the crime he was convicted of. not very likable  but that's part of the deal of the innocence project, if the person is not guilty he is not guilty no matter what kind of person he is.

The guy's crime: Seeing a biker gang fight.  Gun shots. A guy goes down.  Just then someone attempts to drive a pickup truck through the center of the fight scattering combatants in all directions. The prisoner sees a guy layng in the street and grabs the shoulders of his lether jacket and pulls him to safety, only in turning the guy over to learn he is not only dead,  he is wearing the jacket of the other gang. Our biker pulls th body into the bushes and hightails it not realizing he has dropped his knife by the body and picked up some blood on his own clothing.  By a circuitous route he makes it to his bike as he hears sirens. He atempts to get out of there but the street he heads down has cops coming at him.  He makes a quick turn into an alley. but his rear wheel hits a spot of oil and he skids out of control into the side of a building right in front of the comps and knocks himself out.  He wakes up in jail. The bllood on his coat, his knife by the body, and a witness who saw him dragging the bodyh away  are enoujgh to convict him. He gets 15-30 for second degree murder largel becasue of the prior arrests and convictions. mostly for assault but a couple of minor possession drug busts. His gang is supected of drug trafficking.
During the fight: whole bar erupts.  Spills out into the street. As it does a big guy grabs the girlfriend and drags her kicking out a side door into an alley.  There he slams her against a dumptster then throws her to the ground, holds her down and starts to tear off her jeans.  from her pocket she pulls a knife and stabs him in the stomach. and while he is still shocked she cuts him across his neck.  Then she is abel  to squirm out from under him and head away from the meless int he street down toward to opposite end of the alley.
In the street sirens and then police and the boyfriend runs and turns into thee ame alley to escape. when he is about halfway down the alley a car roars into the alley heading toward him.  He sees the victim laying there and runs, pulling him out of the way just as the car passes.  But, right behind the car comes a police car.  The police see the guy with the victim, come to a stop and jummp out to subdue the guy and put him under arrest.  
Meanwhile the gril has left the alley just before the first car, hides agains a wall is it also emerges and turns away from where she is hiding.  Once free of any observation, she makes her way down the street and into the darkness whil her boyfirend  is hauled off to the jail.
CHANGE THIS SLIGHTLY TO AVOID IDENTIFYING THE REAL KILLER.  During the fight a big tough guy drags the girl out of the bar by a back door opening into the alley.  Minutes later the boyfriend/convicted runs into the alley to escape police. He sees another figure farther donw the alley running away. He starts to follow mostly for his own escape but trips over  the guy. A car screetches into the alley chased by police. The figure disappears at the end of the alley in the same shot where the biker is pulling the victim out of the ay of the car. The car roars past followed by a police care which sotps when they see the biker with the body.
Now how do they prove him innocent.             
1  did they check his knife for blood
2. attack the witness...  did he actually see the guy stab the victim   no  only dragging him away
3. forensices:  blood on his jackt is it the kind of spatter that would come frtom stabbing someone?  No only dragging and turning over. Knife found by body, too bloody from neck wound, no prints, blood washed away.   Might somewhere find an odd print of partial finger but cut off evenly.  Like made from fingerless gloves like got girl was wearing.  Looking at one print taken.middle and lower sections of finger but no tip print.
4.  Depth of stab wounds,    neck wound is shallow but evidence knife was twisted while in the wound.
5. Investigation centers on identification of the mystery person in the alley.  Interview people in the fight. Did anyone see anyone go out the back door?  Identifiable. Bartender might have seen (a man and a woman leaving) Later admits, man was forcing woman out the door.
SOULUTION
Turns out she did it. WEaker knife wouldnds plus a gun shot from a small weapon.
 WRITING PROMPTS
What are protagonist's top five monthly expenses


 So that's it. Obviously not a finished, polished treatment, but you get the idea. So, now as I anticipate a television show coming up in January all I can say is godammit!  At least I can hope I will be at the East Pole and unable to watch it. And I can hope some young writer will be encouraged to believe in his work and follow it through. At times like this I recall something overheard near a harbor one day. A woman owned a restaurant one step up from a food truck. By herself she was digging a trench to run a water line from a nearby building to her restaurant. As she worked several men stopped to watch for a minute or two. When one of them shouted a wise crack she hollered back: "You can pick up a shovel, you know. Nothing's stopping you but fear."
Nothing stopping any of us but fear. Go for it.

Preparing for winter
October 25, 2018
 "I read late into the night and go north for the winter," with apologies to T.S. Elliot

     With snow getting closer I just placed my winter book order. Thanks to a friend who alerted me to the PBS Great American Read program I will be taking some good books instead of a bunch of cheap detective novels. Most of my favorite authors are included in the list and though they included "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, they left off Mark Twain's seminal work and generally agreed to be the first modern American novel, "HuckleBerry Finn." James Patterson has a book on the list, I have to say, not a fan. I read one book of his and started another and all I could think was this guy needs an editor. I did like his appearance on Castle though, especially when he chided Castle for putting out only one book a year. Some TV writer had a good time with that one.
      Back in the days before Amazon, book day would always be a big one, when in anticipation of a winter in the woods I would head for my favorite book store and spend a couple of hundred dollars on reading material for the season. These days it's a survey of Amazon some late night, still fun but not the same.
     In recent years I have been having some measure of trouble. My curiosity about new books kind of faded with a few exceptions around the heyday of the generation that brought us Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Hmmm, Mailer wasn't on that list either. Anyway I have not kept up and therefore didn't really know what to look for in new fiction and true to the adage, you can't tell a book by its cover.
    I am fortunate enough to have a long-standing friend who is a voracious reader and who last year recommended several books to me and I liked them all. She is the one who informed me about the PBS book list and program and voting. She was quite excited when her favorite was named the top book of the 100 — "To Kill a Mockingbird."
    Going down the list she told me about on PBS there were several I had never heard of, mostly written after Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. Each of the book covers on the main page opens to a synopsis of the book and something about the author plus some quotes from the text, all very helpful when looking at works you've never been aware of. I chose four off the list for now, plus another book she had suggested knowing our interest in Native American history.   
     I am not recommending these books because I haven't read them, but they are the ones that interested me enough to buy them:
"The Book Thief," by Markus Zusak
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime." by Mark Haddon
"A Separate Peace," by John Knowles and, yes, I know this is older than Mailer.
"Looking for Alaska," by John Green  and, again, yes I know it is not about the state Alaska, but about a woman named Alaska. Still, Alaska on the cover is a natural draw.
Those are the four I picked off the list. The Native American history book is:
"Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI," by David Grann.

     Maybe to many readers, five books don't seem to be a lot for a winter in the woods, but I do have some cheap mystery novels I bought earlier, plus I plan to spend much of this winter working on my own potential addition to the next list. I would say wish me luck, but it's easier than that, simply, hard work or as H.L. Mencken wrote, "It's easy you just sit at the keyboard until beads of blood form on your forehead."
     Oh, one other thing. Thanks to Amazon and my excessive use of my credit card late at night under the influence of some adult beverage, I had enough points accumulated to get all those books for a total of $4.46 including shipping. As always I hope the authors get the full royalty despite what I paid for their works.
     Now, just add snow.

Here's  link to the PBS list: The Great American Read

And here's an extra special treat. The entire finale. 





Appreciation
June 14, 2018
That's a picture of me with Tom Walker and his daughter Mary Anne. He made all the photos in our Wild Critters books.  Mary Anne came from Outside for a visit before starting a new job and we met for a lunch in Talkeetna. Our conversation rambled all over the place as you might imagine among three people who hadn't seen each other for years. I had brought along a bunch of books for Tom to sign, so when I give them to people they will have both signatures. Mary Anne mentioned she only had one signed book left. She said with her friends getting married and having babies she is always giving Wild Critters as gifts. This is something I have thought about and I mumbled something I hoped they wouldn't hear, which was, nobody in my family has ever done that. It is one of the things that has stuck in my mind for years and it is an abrasion between me and my family. I have a son and a daughter and two nieces and two nephews. Not one of them has ever asked me to sign a book for them to give to someone as a gift. Sometimes when I run a conversation with my kids through my mind I bring it up, like, you must have friends who are having babies. Has it ever crossed you mind to give them a Wild Critters book as a gift. Maybe you have, but for sure you have never asked me to sign one, so I am assuming you never did. Is that too much to ask from family? Frankly it bothers me that it bothers me, but so it goes as one of the least fun parts of the writing life. Over the years I have signed several books for friends who gave them to their friends who have had children. Not one of them was in any way related to me. I just realized the irony of thinking of this and posting it the day before Father's Day. One more holiday I have to ignore.

Isn't it ironic?

May 28, 2018

Being a copy editor can be even worse than a teacher when it comes to correcting other people's grammar and spelling. Having been one on and off for fifty years, the compulsion might be stronger in me than in most, but over the years I've learned even the best of friends  don't appreciate your efforts to improve their use of the language. After a while I've even been able to read facebook posts without editing, except once in a while being outraged at what someone says it's easy to flash on some flagrant misuse of the language just to add to the ridicule such people so richly deserve.
Along with spelling and grammar and just as important is the over use of words and phrases including clichés. Often such usage will insinuate its way into a whole  country of writers especially since the advent of the Internet. One day at a newspaper where I worked a reporter used the word "roughly" when referring to an inexact measure, as in "the car weighed roughly 1,200 pounds." Within weeks every reporter at the paper was using "roughly." A couple that are particularly bothersome are "meet up" and "back in," both of which add an unnecessary word, as in " they had planned to meet up back in 1998.  First of all the verb is "meet,” not "meet up." Secondly "back in" is superfluous and redundant: "in 1998" means the same thing without sounding like a hillbilly; But all that is background,
A week or so ago I went to a memorial for a friend of mine who also was a copy editor for most of his adult life. He had quite an effect on my life because he was the fellow who would hire me back at the newspaper when I came in off the water or out of the woods so broke I had no idea where I would live or how I would eat. He did that four times.
I hadn't intended to speak at the memorial; I had never done it before and I am quite uncomfortable talking with two people at once, let alone a roomful. But an idea had been floating around in my head and when the microphone was passed close to me I took a deep breath and grabbed it. I opened with something like this: "As I look around this room, I see several people Jim hired over the years. Well, I hold the record; he hired me four times." There is a fine line between lightening the atmosphere in a mostly serious situation  and bad taste but when people laughed comfortably, it felt like I was on solid ground. I went through a brief recollection of my interactions with him, emphasizing all that he had done for me over the years. Then I asked how many people in the room were writers; and how many were editors. A few hands raised to each. I pointed out that each of us had probably lost someone over the years and that memories of those people tended to pop into mind at odd times. 
Then I said something like this. I am going to give you something to remember Jim by. From now on, every time you go to write or encounter in something you are editing, the word "iconic," stop and reflect for a moment and ask yourself "what would Jim do?" Then leave it out.
Again it got a comfortable laugh and his wife even smiled at me, so I assumed I hadn't stepped over that line and sat down.
Since then two people who were there brought up "iconic" when we were talking, and I am guessing most of them will feel a twinge when they see the word and maybe in memorializing my friend I have managed in a small way to begin the process to take an overused and misused word out of the national syntax.
And, what's the irony? That  isn't a typo in the headline. Perhaps in making my friend a reminder to people every time they see the word "iconic," I may have established an iconic relationship between Jim and the word.

2017

Influence, a double-edged sword


September 17, 2017
This came up as a conversation on facebook today. A peek into the past. Seems like half the influences in life are the ones you have to overcome rather than ones that help you along.
Originally published by The Adult Side of Tumbler

Tim Jones In both my junior and senior years I was told I could not join the creative writing class.


Jan Williams Simone Don't you wish you could go back in time and bring one of your books to class? Or articles? Or your blog? Or your newspaper work? Etc.


Tim Jones As far as I know I am the only one from that class who has had anything published, except for one fellow who may have published some music.


Lara Simone Bhasin The American public school system is not a monolith. It is quite diverse and will function better if it is allowed to stay that way, rather than being overly controlled by the federal government.


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Jan Williams Simone I agree but this is about BAD TEACHERS. Not sure what the solution is...


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Lara Simone Bhasin Okay well I was responding to the last line of the post


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Tim Jones My complaint is more with guidance counselors. I showed something I had written to the teacher of that creative writing class and he said I should be in there. No one ever did anything about it, though.


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Jan Williams Simone You saw what I wrote about my brother after he skipped a grade? That was a problem with the teacher. The only solution I can think of is for parents to intervene on their kids' behalf.


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Tim Jones The problem there was bigger than one writing class and neither I nor my parents realized what was wrong until almost graduation. I had changed schools between freshman and sophomore years and never got very high grades. As a result I was put into a put into a program one level short of vocational. Late in my senior year when the national test scores started coming in, the guidance counselor called me into his office and essentially blamed me for not telling him I was intelligent.




Tim Jones Part of the problem in the 50s was when the Russians put up Sputnik it scared the hell out of people and all the emphasis was put on science and math for a few years.
Jan Williams Simone Just because science and math were being emphasized doesn't explain why YOU could not be in creative writing. Seems like pure incompetence to me.


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Tim Jones Overall the humanities were discouraged


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Jan Williams Simone That reversed when I was in high school. In fact, I was in my high school's first humanities class, which was for only a select group of us, chosen by the teaching team (English and social studies).


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Tim Jones That was the era of the only student revolution in American history and you had them scared lol.


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Jan Williams Simone The previous class fought for it but they didn't get to participate. Other people always did the fighting for me, LOL. Including my brother....


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Tim Jones I can only hope his experience with me taught that guidance counselor a lesson and took more time with other kids who came along.


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Jan Williams Simone That is a sad story.


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Tim Jones Well, you can't let the past rule your life and I am sure I'm not the only one who faced discouragement for seeking an artistic life. I was able to overcome it for the most part.


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This whole exchange may seem a little self-serving, like oh poor me, but I guess all experience leads you where you eventually arrive or at least pass through. I can't blame my lack of production on this for sure, except in this sense. This kind of discouraging influence from several directions, including the school, my family and almost everyone else in my life, stalled me for a while and I never really got going writing until several years later, losing what for many writers are the most productive years, if not for actual publications, for learning the craft and, too, experiencing what you want to write about. I finally got to the experiencing and eventually writing but I always thought I came to it late. So it goes.

More about the writing life

2010


OK, I lied

Pelicans? Really?

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When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

Thoughts on Mother’s Day, I’m just sayin’

Originality

May 14, 2010
 All right. It is or should be the goal of every artist to be original. How many actually succeed? The word derivative probably wouldn't exist, at least in that context, if many did. For a writer to be original, well if you think you are, don't read Shakespeare, because just about everything written about since, was written by him first.

My father once told me there were only 39 basic plots. A few years later I figured that one out: That's how many shows there were in a television season at the time. Does that mean now there are only 20 plots? If it is indeed finite, I would say it is the number of plays Shakespeare wrote, whatever that number is. But, of course it is infinite, not challenged much these days, but infinite nonetheless. I recall once saying something original. We had had a volcano eruption. I was staying with friend and for a reason I cannot recall at the moment I had my huge Weber barbecue grill with me. I looked out the window and said to my friend, " Maybe I had better go out there and clear the volcano ash off my grill." Thinking about it, I doubt anybody else in the world had ever said that. Original, I believe.

With that in mind, now I am wondering if this is original. In many, many sitcoms, the main guy has a sidekick who is a little off, maybe a slob, maybe stupid, maybe conniving. Think Maynard G. Krebs, think Joey, there are many. So in the slob sort of sidekick format, tonight I was talking with my niece on line about my daughter's wedding plans and having some frozen fried chicken that I managed to overcook so the breading was crispy. It was the Banquet variety which my son and I call mystery chicken because many of the pieces don't look like they came from any chicken we have ever seen.

So here I am alone in my little bachelor house, chatting online, nibbling on mystery chicken and watching a "Bones" rerun on TV. What I wasn't watching was where all the little crispy crumbs of chicken were falling. Now most people would probably use a napkin to clean them up, right? I DID have a napkin in my lap but it didn't do much good. What does the slobby sidekick do? Not sure. What I did was reach for my Dyson industrial grade hand vacuum cleaner. End of problem, though I probably could have used a different accessory that wouldn't have sucked my shirt in several times. This might be original. I am pretty sure Shakespeare didn't write about it, although I will bet that some king or Roman in his writing did something unusual to rid himself of food residue. It does seem an effective way to deal with the problem though I am pretty sure I will not be taking the Dyson to my daughter's wedding dinner. (Although the slob sidekick in the sitcom might... it would be the kicker at the end at the main guy's wedding, the last thing you see before the fadeout is him pulling out his trusty Dyson to pick up a spill on the floor, or table favors, or the groom's tie, or picking the wallet out of a rich uncle's pocket, or...)

So, for now, at the very least I am claiming originality. Now the work begins to expand it into an entirely new plot. Believe me, this is not a breath-holding situation.

Addendum: This is embarrassing. For fun I looked it up. Shakespeare wrote 38 plays that survive. Could my father have been right? Just one number off? I am sticking with the number of shows in a TV season. Or, and this might be intriguing, is there one plot out there Shakespeare didn't write? Like maybe that thirtieth song of Robert Johnson's?

Conversations with Patricia: Part Deux

October 8, 2010
Settling back down to write. Trip was good until the weather turned dreadful and I caught a cold. Expensive way to watch TV: pay for a hotel in another country. But drugs are good...xx PM
That's good to know there are good drugs in Ireland, I will keep that in mind.--tj
The drugs came with us. Codeine. Stops the coughing, and most thought. Also makes everything glitter prettily.
I could use a glitter view of life... the view was tempered some when the lady of my dreams started wearing meat.
Yes, the meat dress was...interesting. It looked better than I expected it to, though, I must confess. I'm struggling to get back into writing after weeks away. You know, writing is hard....
Hard, really? I heard you artists lived on inspiration and literature just flows from your fingers when the mood strikes
Hahahahahahahaha It takes me days to get into writing when I've been away. I feel all squirrelly. Have been reading PalinGates for inspiration. Have changed a few words here and there but feel like I don't remember how to write. Y'know??
OH btw speaking of struggling with writing, I have been invited into a writing project and I am having a crisis of confidence wondering if I can actually do it. Some Iditarod people want to do a coffee table book of the first 10 years. One nice thing about it is that two of the musher from that era demanded that I be included and several others agreed. Honestly I just don't know if I have it any more to write for publication. (AND, honest, that was not a cheap hint for you to tell me how great I am) I really am very insecure about it.
I won't take up your cheap hint....I'll answer seriously. Writing really is hard, and self-exposing even when we don't seem to be writing about ourselves. That's what people don't really realize, the level of skinlessness it takes to write about anything at all. Once upon a time, I thought it got easier. Now I think it gets harder. I have taken to saying that I don't like writing, I like having written. And I do like having written. But man, the writing part is so darned painful...The only thing worse than writing is not writing, though. You'll feel bad either way, so I'd say, write the book and feel bad that way, rather than feeling bad about NOT writing it., Pretty morbid, huh.
For comments about not remembering how to write, see previous message. Over years of writing, I recall maybe an hour of pure inspiration. I also remember a morning where I took seven showers rather than let my mind get cluttered with life stuff and interfere with what I was unable to write
Seven showers. Now that is some record. I, for one, prefer cleaning house as a way of avoiding writing. I have even painted walls rather than writing. My house is always very clean when I am avoiding writing. Is there something about cleanliness and writing-avoidance here?????
Ha ha I don't think it is cleanliness as much as mindlessness. Remember Mary Tyler Moore always rearranged her cupboards when she was upset? So in the area of avoidance your have a clean house, I have a clean white raisin of a body.
You know what, Patricia, that is some of the best advice about writing I think I have ever seen anyone give. Although I am not totally enamored with what I have written. I have always felt I never cracked through my own mental barrier to that lucid insightful masterpiece I feel is lurking in there somewhere. It is like that blog comment some time ago about when did I start to "used to be a writer." And, I do recall moments of inspiration that were absolutely wonderful. I can think of only one other experience when I felt more alive and fulfilled. The self exposing got to me recently and I turned off my blog. When it got to 1,000 hits (I am sure you have more than that on your web page), I suddenly felt overexposed. I had just started that blog as an outlet for what little writing I have been doing lately, never intending for it to be widely read. I never even told many people about it. Mostly it was just for me. But, my view of the world isn't everybody's and when people started making judgments about me based on some spouting off on the blog I kind of panicked. The final thing was about the meat dress when my sister posted on facebook "I thought he just bought a new suit." Oh dear. I don't want some people reading what I think., On your words I will give the Iditarod book a try.
I'm glad I can help a bit. Only another writer friend can understand. I have SO MUCH trouble with the blog stuff and the FB stuff and all. Having the secret FB page helped; I feel I can be a bit honest there, not thinking about the writer-persona. (Personna? Perssona? How the @#$#$ do you spell that?) 

I don't have a counter on my web page at all...I don't want to know. I have occasionally googled myself, looking for something I know is out there--and found weird reviews of my work and gotten freaked out beyond words. (Did I ever tell you there was a brief right-wing campaign against me for working at a Catholic school but writing about goddesses?) 

I am sure one reason I hate Sarah Palin so much is that she WANTS exposure, and I hate it.
Some days I think I need a serious psychiatrist. But I have never gone because I think the psychoses are what I draw from to write.
Who was it who said he didn't want to see a therapist because, if his demons went away, his angels might go to? Was that Rilke? For me, I someday hope to be OUT of therapy....xx PM



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Best headlines ever

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel

Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel