Dangerous Balance
Starting to send few things out. All got rejected. Like 2.
I have been working on novels in chapter to send out. So far its getting rejected site unseen. I decided to stop caring, doesn’t always work. I know what is weak or strong in it.
Reading little book picked up on Fitzgerald that are cuts from his notes and journals and some short stories on drinking. They are mostly vignettes. Reread notes on Aqua Vive by Clarice Lispector. My favorite book of hers. Reading a history of Philology book, about finding history itself, as occurs in language.
At moments the novel now am working on, captures and moves, it is animated. Even though action is minimal.
Narrator is unnamed. Book is partially about zero, negative numbers, and beauty in the unnamable. Beauty shows up as a character with freedom to create and destroy.
Novel engages at moments with the academic, as well as primary books, in the rhetoric here and there over details.
Come to think of it, first pass was to some extent created alongside academic. Had incorporated that into the free writing along with constantly breaking out into ludicrous nonsense rhyme.
Exploiting Nonsense
As I am editing, dig through what remains of the nonsense rhyme — for language in its mythic or image, and keep at it till catches on an animation that am finding occurs at points where jumped into nonsense —
Finding that nonsense rhymes point to conundrum as well as discovery of theatre and the absurd. Approach everything as mythic to some extent. Math and the absurd too.
I start having nightmares when send out to book publishers, it effects me physically, and I have collapse days. Then work all night.
Stiffs
What I pulled out to send, am finding — starts to stiffen toward the end, details start to read academic.
Editing I weed across chapters to get follow through with connections and line up my switches, I chart in my head how and where jumps, whether in movement or voice, across sections. Got that out of poetry. And across logic too.
The other novel uses mythic figures as char, and they pick up a lot of slack for animating thoughts, as happening to somebody.
Something changed when I pulled the beginning out from the 76+ chapters into a separate file, in order to finalize and send. Detaching from the other 76+ chapters changed my process and so changed the ending!
Shit. It finishes with a famed quote out of Shakespeare that I have lightly mutated.
DECISION: need to bring section I pulled from the chapters to send out, back into the chapter file, so I can see what I am doing, to integrate across chapters where goes too stiff.
Animate movement and integrate the language.
Journey Novels
They both are. Why not.
There is in the fiction, stuff beginning to emerge that comes from theatre. Animation and theatre seem to be linking up in the novel as a way to tell it.
It occurs in novel as directly, as opposed to indirectly, coming up out of “the darkness” in which it is entangled.
Darkness of the bug boys: Kafka and Clarice.
And also Wittgenstein something about how he builds logic. That clips along and parses. And is built on connections and switches?
HMMMMMM.
Its all played out stuff? No — its just a way in, to get in at it. So the novel can take over.