Who Wants Pie? The Author Writes About What he is Writing

Is Ana De Armas (above) taking over Rihanna?

Haven’t the foggiest what I’m about to write. This is meant to be a blog post. Maybe it’ll all come to nothing. Perhaps I’ll peck away for a few minutes and realize it’s not happening today. I hope not. I like it when I can create something out of nothing. I’ve done it before. Good days/bad days. It’s like with push-ups. I worked out today. My most recent workout had been on Friday which featured new records in push-ups. In my first set I did 63, followed by 48 in my second and 41 in the third for a combined total of 152. All records. Today I didn’t have it. Managed only 52 in my first set and went downhill from there. I totaled 110. That’s a whopping 42 less than three days prior. Just never know. Next time I might struggle again or I could eclipse Friday’s records. Mystery to me. Same as with writing. At least in terms of creating something new. Working on a novel I can always add, edit, subtract, whatever I need. But starting with the proverbial blank page is a different story entirely. So far I seem to be doing okay. Just passed two hundred words. Would love to write a thousand though seven hundred would be fine. 

The novel is going great. I’m delighted with the first eight chapters and don’t feel they need a lot of work. Obviously not the finished article but pretty close. That just leaves the remaining thirty nine (!!!) chapters. Yeah, it’s a long book. Ultimately it may be considerably shorter. Or for that matter, longer. Or perhaps the same length with various sections excised and others added with many others altered. It’s a process. One I love.

I like this too. Creating off the top of the proverbial head. It would be nice if I had readers. I pretend that I do. I always imagine legions of people all over the world anxiously awaiting my next post, worried to tears when I haven’t written for awhile. I have had readers in the past. Back when I strictly wrote about films I had a fair amount who would regularly comment and others who popped in from time-to-time. Some of my posts were linked in the Internet Movie Database back when they did that sort of thing. The only problem was that I’d occasionally get nasty comments. People would get upset because of my opinion on a movie, or genre. I once posted a list of movies I’d show if I taught a film class. I found it amazing how angry a few people got, swearing they’d never take a class from me. It seems I left off some of their favorites. Same thing happened when I wrote about my favorite Westerns. People get really upset if you don’t include all of theirs. Weird. 

Eventually I stopped writing so much about films. I found that I was getting repetitive, especially with certain adjectives. Plus I wanted to explore other topics. Readership plummeted. I’m not in it for the money so I didn’t care. Don’t care. I have a Twitter account with 255 followers virtually none of whom ever like, comment on or retweet anything I say. I have some pretty good tweets and retweets, but not being a celebrity of any sort it's merely sagebrush blowing by when I tweet. Oh well. I do get likes on my Instagram posts. I don’t think ever more than fifty, but still…..

There may have been literally about five or six people who read my first book. Three I know of for sure. My second has done considerably better and I’ll be discussing it in person at the Finnish Hall in Berkeley in March and will be doing a zoom talk on it with the Finlandia Foundation in the coming months. That’ll sell more copies. I’m guessing somewhere around thirty to forty people have read it. I’ve gotten great feedback. It’s enormously gratifying to hear from a stranger that they liked your book. I’m hoping my current project goes through the roof. I’m desperately hoping not to have to self-publish this one. I think it’ll be good enough. No. I know that it’ll be good enough. 

It’s hard not to think of yourself a lot when you spend so much time immersed in writing. I wish I could teach again and direct more of my focus outwards.

I’m afraid I’ve been a selfish person all my life (as are many people who suffer from addiction). Enormous ego and all the rest. I recognize it in other people too. I can spot a self-absorbed person in a couple of minutes — if that. Takes one to know one. 

You see that Rihanna is pregnant? (The child is not necessarily mine.) I guess that ends it between us. I wish her well. That just opens the door for Ana De Armas. Lucky girl. (Don’t tell the wife.)

Look at this, over eight hundred words. I could make a thousand with ease. 

I wish this had been more interesting to the general reader (of which — again — there are none). I’ve got a few things planned for this blog but the big obstacle is always time. I get wrapped up in the novel. Then there’s work-outs, walks, chores, reading the paper, podcasts, reading books, films, chillin’ with the missus (or Ana De Armas), sleeping and my new hobby: deep sea diving, which I do in a nearby creek. I also enjoy sky diving, alighting from a sturdy box. Then there are whaling trips, fox hunts, seances, voodoo rituals, being a cult leader, translating the dictionary into pig latin and space travel. I’ve got my fingers in a lot of pies, though boysenberry is my favorite.

Say, who wants pie?