Commentary

January 13: My friend & favorite watercolorist

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My favorite watercolorist is also my friend, Alba Escayo. She and I go way back. I think we found each other on Elance which is now Upwork. Yup, a classic internet mogul move; change a good name to a lousy one. Alba lives and works in Spain. She created the cover on my first novel and I wanted her to create the cover on Cottonwood as well. I’m always grateful she’s younger than I am because it means she’ll be around to create the cover artwork for every book I write, if she’s willing and I am able.

I had an idea that involved a Cottonwood tree and a figure carrying a golf bag and walking away from the viewer. From underneath the tree, the figure reaches up and touches the low-hanging leaves. The idea of the walking away is that the figure is walking into the future, like all of us. The figure is faceless. It could be anyone. It could be one of the characters in the book but then again maybe not. No matter who it is, he reaches up to touch the tree, to touch a growing life.

I sent Alba an example of my idea but I did a bad job of explaining my vision to her. Probably I was in a hurry or maybe I thought we had discussed it more completely last time we emailed about it, over a year ago. She sent me this a couple days ago:

Now I have a problem, not a bad problem mind you, more like a decision. This is not at all what I had in mind, but I love it. It’s not a golf book so I had no intention of having an image of someone swinging a golf club on the cover, but there it is. And, now that it’s there, it has me doubting my concept. I’ve been reminding myself of some of my best non-advice advice:

It doesn’t really matter.

Of course it does, but maybe not. I wanted Alba to create the cover because I love her work, and this is her work. Now I find myself hesitant to continue to foist my vision on her, especially after she’s blessed me with this beautiful creation. My concept is not the idea of a visual artist but rather of a lowly writer. Part of me is screaming at myself to leave the artwork to the artist, and that is definitely Alba and definitely not me.

But we are talking about me. So, in the end I couldn’t help myself and I emailed Alba with my thoughts. As I said, I love the cover she’s done, and I want it, and I’ll pay her for it gladly. It will hang proudly over my desk and I will smile each time I see it. It may not end up being the artwork I use on the cover and then again it might be.

The decisions made in writing a book, especially a self-published book, go on and on. I’m very happy that no matter what decision I make about the cover art, the work will be Alba’s and it will be fantastic because it is hers.

Today’s writing soundtrack is an elegant 1974 record by Bills Evans called, Symbiosis. It is some of the best of jazz and classical (read: orchestral) music I have ever heard. It is melodically and rhythmically evocative of both times and places I’d like to be. I know a pianist who doesn’t think much of Bill Evans’ work from this era, but I think it is wonderful. Maybe you will, too, so take a listen.

Thanks for dropping by.

January 13: My friend & favorite watercolorist

January 12: A fresh air

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I’m writing early today for two reasons. One’s not so pleasant. I woke up with a bit of stomach upset. This has kept me indoors and forced me to move my hike to the late afternoon, or more likely tomorrow.

Annoying.

The other reason is a bittersweet one. I have brought a new computer into my small livery of Macs. It took me a while to decide on another MacBook Air. Part of the delay was caused by me not quite being able to face reality. You see, my previous MacBook Air, or what I have been calling my new computer is now 11 years old. The nice folks at Apple must have heard it was still running strong so they decided to force my hand by disallowing further upgrades of the Safari browser. That, among other things, made it difficult to access and use the WordPress UI and dodgy sites like Wikipedia.

Well, that’s a pisser.

My old new MacBook Air; not quite ready for retirement.

No, I don’t have any micro brewery stickers on my new Mac…yet. It’s Space Gray, fast, silent and seems just dandy so far. It and my other (can’t quite say old) MacBook Air have helped solidify an evolution of sorts when it comes to how I use computers. There was a time when I stuffed my Macs full of everything; photos, files, music. In fact, in my office is an even older MacMini with a 1TB SSD. It’s full of music and photos and pretty much everything you can imagine. But lately, really since I bought my old-new MacBook Air, I’ve reversed that process. I have a paid subscription to Flickr so most of my photos live there. The Word docs of my books exist on various computers and GoogleDrive and in a host of email accounts. Word files are neat since they’re so small. Storing them is really no problem.

Music presents the biggest challenge and you know I’m not done figuring it out. Every CD I own has been uploaded to the MacMini but how long will I have access to them? The Mini’s ancient OS is getting more hampered by the passage of time every day. It’s only a matter of time, but that’s a worry for another day. For now, it makes it impossible to bring myself to selling off my CDs, which I would really like to do.

So, I have no plans to activate and authorize my iTunes account on my new computer, let alone store any music on it. My iPhone is right here and so is much of my music and everything on the MacMini via Home Sharing is available so long as I’m on my home WiFi.

No, no access to my LPs but that, too, is a subject for another time.

If things follow the plan, there really won’t be much stored locally on my new MacBook Air but I still intend to get a lot of use out it, as I have all of my Macs going back so many years. Most have been great computers, though there were exceptions like a Graphite iMac that liked to power down whenever it wanted and its replacement, a G4 tower that decided powering up wasn’t all that important.

The Macs I’ve owned since have been universally good, but they, like their owner, get old, do less and eventually get put out to pasture. My worst Apple disappointment had to be my iPhone 8. What a great phone, until it unceremoniously failed to work one morning. It sits, still, on my CD shelf; now a very expensive paperweight, but let’s not focus on the negative.

My other MacBook Air is now renamed the Bedtime Surfer, since I anticipate it will spend most of the rest of its days under my bed, waiting for me to use it in those minutes before I put out the lights.

I only wish it had room for a few more beer stickers.

Oh yeah, today’s writing soundtrack is Sometimes Just the Sky by Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’ve heard her name spoken for years but never really listened to her music until recently.

This record makes me realize I’ve been missing something special.

January 12: A fresh air

January 11: HBO’s Luck

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I cannot tell you why I found myself thinking about HBO’s doomed series, Luck, while I was out on my morning hike. Wait a minute, I do remember why. I was listening to a song that was used in the last episode. For some reason, Luck must have been cursed from the outset. Much of it was filmed at nearby Santa Anita Park. And, sadly, the horrible race horse deaths that plagued production of the series have continued in the years since. I don’t believe anyone knows precisely why. It was not a perfect series, but it had some very interesting elements, all of which were coalescing as the series reached its untimely end.

As I was making my way down the hill, listening to the song, I thought about writing a letter to Dustin Hoffman. I mean, what the hell is he so busy doing lately? I thought he might be interested in doing a movie version of Luck (that I, of course, would write), since I believe he was one of the main producers of the series. He’s likely had a lot riding on its success. I thought that pretty much everyone involved with the series were still alive and working. But, then I thought of the character of Gus Demitriou who was played beautifully by Dennis Farina and I remembered he died way back in 2013 at the age of 69.

That really slammed the door on my idea because I felt Gus was the heart and soul of the series. I actually met Dennis Farina once on the golf course. Man, that was a long time ago. I was playing golf with my brother John and my father, that shows that it was at least 14 years ago and obviously more. We were playing at a now defunct golf course out in west Simi Valley called, holy shit, I can’t remember the name! Well, I guess it doesn’t matter but in a way the make up of the course influences the story. Oh, I remember! The name of the course was Lost Canyons. A better name might have been Lost Ball Canyons. I would guess the average player, across handicaps, lost between 6-10 balls over an honest 18 holes. It was bad enough if the air was calm and if it was windy, forget it. We were playing the 18th hole and getting close to the green when suddenly a golf ball bounced up and smacked into my golf bag which was standing on the fringe between the fairway and the rough. I looked back up the fairway to see a man riding in the golf cart alone, waving at me.

“Man, I am so sorry,” said the man as he came to a halt. “Are you Ok? This is my first time here and this place kicked my ass. I’ve lost a ton of balls today. I had to buy a fuckin’ dozen at the turn.”

“No problem,” I said. “Your ball didn’t even come close to me. Anyway, I have you beat on lost ball stories.”

“What do you mean,” asked Farina.

I shook my head and said, “You know that par-3 17th? Well, I lost my birdie putt on that hole.”

Clearly incredulous, Farina said, “What the hell do you mean you lost your birdie putt? How the hell do you lose a putt?

“Easy,” I said. “I had a 20 footer up the hill, should have broken about two feet left. But I got all excited about it being for birdie and I smashed it right off the back of the green down into the canyon. Never saw it again. Unless you want to climb down after it I say it’s lost.”

Farina gave me a good belly laugh and said, “Damn, I wish I had caught up with you guys earlier!”

He seemed like a genuinely good guy and I really enjoyed him in that role.

Even I could magically convince David Milch, Dustin Hoffman and the gods at HBO to make the movie, I wouldn’t want to see it without Gus. I would say don’t bother, boys.

By the way, the song I was listening to was Otis Taylor’s Nasty Letter from his 2003 record, Truth Is Not Fiction.

Just buy it, it’s fantastic.

January 11: HBO’s Luck

January 10: The reward for writing a novel

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Oh sure, you might get rich. You may be another Stephen King or J.K. Rowling but before you are you will to do some of the most hateful work imaginable, and I don’t mean you’ll write your novel.

No, you will edit and proof your novel and you will hate the process, as we all do.

Today I excised 49 scene headings. While I did I made sure their removal didn’t make the overall line flow get screwy. It did in many instances but overall the process was less onerous than I anticipated. And, less onerous is always a big win when it comes to this kind of thing.

My next task was to create the front matter. This was relatively painless since I have decided not to have a foreword and a dedication in Cottonwood…just more stuff to write and edit, don’t you know. Really, though, I simply don’t have anyone in mind for the dedications beyond myself for being silly enough to launch into this book so soon after my first novel was up for sale. Those 49 scene heading were used to help me stay aware of where I was in the book relative to its sequencing and also when it came to editing and being aware of my proximity to other elements of the plot. They were replaced by four sections entitled I Spring, II Summer, III Fall & IV Winter. I can’t really tell you why other than the nature of the story causes it to move through the four seasons almost exactly. That was not by design, but it works or at least I think it does.

The only lesson here is to plan as much as possible and then be willing to abandon your plans as your book demands. The moment you worship the what you plan to do it over what the story and your characters need all of you are doomed. Plan away, by all means. Figure out systems that make your project make sense and seem manageable. Just be ready to be flexible because you surely will have to be if your loyalty remains where it belongs.

Today and tonight’s writing soundtrack is Olivia Chaney’s The Longest River from 2015. You’ll note the last two evenings have found me listening to two vocalists, last night Tim Curry and Chaney tonight. I can explain it like this. I wasn’t really writing yesterday or today. I was editing and that process seems to shift my brain’s gears in a way that makes it possible to divide my attention to the words Chaney sings in Loose Change without losing my sense of what I’m trying to accomplish. Also, vocals do their part to keep me company while I’me doing something that’s even more lonely than writing creatively. Anyway, Chaney has a lovely voice and the arrangements are very elegant. Some of the tracks on The Longest River are among the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

January 10: The reward for writing a novel

January 9: Booing the tenor

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I read an interview of Pavarotti many years ago. In it, he told stories of his youth in Modena. One of the best was about the joy he got from sitting in the back row of the opera house just for the opportunity to boo the tenor. He said it didn’t matter whether the tenor was any good or not he and his friends simply liked booing him.

It’s a little strange but not all that unexpected. The tenor is the hero of every opera so how could a budding star like Pavarotti resist the urge to take the guy down a notch? Apparently, he couldn’t. Me? I try to resist the temptation to take anyone down just for the warped joy of doing it. I keep the words of one of my own heroes taped to the side of my monitor.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “It’s not the critic who counts…”

So, I do try to refrain from criticism for the sake of criticism. When I do criticize I hope I do it in the process of learning from what I regard as the mistakes of another. The Power of the Dog was an interesting movie to watch so I admit to a discomfiture at what is fundamentally a western being directed by a Kiwi. Worse, while the story was set in Montana the movie didn’t appear to be shot there. If it was, the director made it appear that it was shot somewhere else.

Hmmm.

What got me about the movie, and even later when I read the book by Thomas Savage, was how I was left feeling a little bit empty. There is simply too little of the malevolent brother Phil Burbank for the audience (and the reader) to chew on. You sat there hoping, yearning almost, to learn why he was the way he was but you never have the chance to find out.

In The Lost Daughter we are again left to bathe in tepid waters of ambiguity. Why is Leda such a bad mother? What is the foundation of her self-professed selfishness? Why, in the end, does she make the ostensibly bad family seem not so bad especially compared to her? What drove her to become who she was? Of course, some might thinks that ambiguity is a kind of freedom that’s bestowed on a thoughtful and imaginative audience, but I’m not so sure. If I have the time I may be moved to read the novel by Elena Ferrante. It’s hard to imagine writing such a potentially interesting character in a way that ends up blanching away the intrigue the character could bring to an audience. That’s why I want to read the book. Quite simply, novelists have time to make their case at their leisure. That’s a luxury few directors enjoy. Still, I’m left with the feeling Maggie Gyllenhaal could have gone on shooting and cutting forever and still never gotten to the essence of the story or its characters. If she failed where the author of the book succeeded another director should have been entrusted to the task of bringing the book to the screen. Too bad you can only watch the movies they made rather than the ones they didn’t.

It is, again, 11:48 and I still suck at getting my journal done during the day.

You’re forgiven for having never heard of tonight’s writing soundtrack. It’s Tim Curry’s 1978 Read My Lips. I gave up on finding a decent replacement LP since I tend to recall it was a lousy pressing anyway. The record finally got remastered and reissued and Amazon has it (like they have everything else). Let’s just say that it’s stylistically diverse and that Curry has a very interesting way with a song. I liked it in 1978 and I still like it today. I believe it was the last LP I ever bought from the long-gone but not forgotten Adam’s Apple in downtown Van Nuys.

January 9: Booing the tenor

January 6: Recovering from Angst Day #1 of 2022

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My recovery from angst day #1 of 2022 is complete and I’m relieved there appears to have been no obvious follow-up to the attempted insurrection of 2021. Thank God for small and large favors. Things were better today. I took delivery of a new-to-me watch and I also took a hike and I also took a slice of pizza and an excellent blood orange IPA.

How can you go wrong with any, let alone all, of those?

The weather was doing an excellent impression of summer and the trails were empty save for a few hikers and even fewer mountain bike guys. Anyway, part of what made today better was the self-reminder that changes and transitions are inevitable whether or not they are known or anticipated. Come 2023, I will be doing something different than what I’m doing today. But, really, that has been true of every year of my life since I’ve been a substantively different person each new year, even though my finger prints have stayed the same. What is really at issue is the question of one’s response to the unknown.

Mine is Ok so far. I see a lot of ways for things to be just fine a year from now even though all of the typical existential question marks are right where they always are. In the end, I have just enough ego to like my odds and just enough appreciation for the world around me to enjoy the ride, whether it’s smooth or bumpy. I’ve done some bumpy before as I may or may not write about in a future installment.

A quick story. Right before I learned that our firm was moving toward closing I was busy surfing used watches on the web. My finger was poised over a message making a solid offer on a Sinn UX, one of the only quartz watches I’ve ever lusted after (the other is the Omega X-33 Skywalker).

So I’m sitting there, ready to make my deal when one of my bosses comes into my office and asks me to join him and my other boss for a closed-door chat. The mood in the room was heavy. I knew they’d both been taking at length but I didn’t know what was up. That was when I found out one of my bosses had a nasty case of prostate cancer. At that point, no one new how well he would respond to treatment or how soon, if ever, he would be able to come back to work. The decision was made to let our lease expire and gradually close things out. I was pretty damn surprised. I knew something was up but it’s rare news that combines someone’s health with the cessation of a business that provides your employment. It was a lot to take in. The three of us talked for about an hour before I was back in my office, the message about the UX still staring me in the face. I closed the window without sending it. It was a hard time to think about a watch, no matter how desirable it was. That was way back in the summer of 2015.

And another thing: Don’t read any Charles Dickens while you’re getting ready to publish your own book. It’s not good for the writer’s psyche and ego, I can assure you. For some reason, I’ve been reading A Christmas Carol. It’s a very conventional story and the sequences are readily imagined, nearly predictable. But, the descriptions are so rich and creative that it’s a continual amazement. I cannot imagine creating anything like it. I would have to spend an unimaginable amount of time on a myriad of simple descriptions of routine things and places and people. And, even if I did I don’t think I could match Dickens’ mastery any more than about 5% of the time. It would take me decades to write what I’ve done in a couple years. Talk about sobering. Then again, maybe the experience should be telling me something I can’t yet grasp. I can read contemporary novels, even ones that sell well and have attained a degree of critical acceptance, and not be so taken with the fundamental art of what’s been accomplished.

Geez, this got more than a little long and meandering.

Sorry about that but be sure to check back tomorrow for more of the same.

Thanks for reading.

January 6: Recovering from Angst Day #1 of 2022

January 5: A brief detour

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I know most of you had your hearts set on three or four hundred more words about the future of my music collection but I need to make a brief detour. Today I woke up thinking about what’s next. My promise to myself was to milk every one of 2022’s days to the fullest, and I’m still about that. The problem with thinking about what’s next is that it takes one out of the present and the present is all any of us have. No matter, what’s next is what I was thinking about.

I’ve been a paralegal who moonlights doing marketing and ad copy writing for a long time. I’m Ok with both but supporting myself on the marketing gig alone strikes me as a dubious proposition. Sure, I like macaroni and cheese but not for all three meals. The problem with the paralegal game is twofold. First, I’m old. It’s hard to imagine a bunch of firms being into hiring a 61 plus year old with a boatload of experience. Of course, I’m only in need of one job so a bunch of firms is unnecessary. The other problem is me. I’m only willing to do certain kinds of legal work (read: plaintiff) and I have no interest in ever, ever having another long commute that relies on public transportation or sitting in traffic while the second or third best years of my life slip quietly away.

Then there’s the internet and the idea of a being a freelancer. I’m at least somewhat comfortable with that idea having worked with freelancers quite a bit over the years and even getting some of my writing gigs through elance (now Upwork). That would be workable except for the 800 pound gorilla; medical insurance. Over the last fifteen years my insurance (which has been mercifully and graciously paid for by my employers) has gone from a shade over $200 a month to well over $1000.

We all know that there’s something fundamentally wrong with that kind of increase and we all know there’s not a thing we can do about it. Car insurance? Relatively steady over the same period. Medical? How about double the cost, then triple then $1000, then more. Well, I did get a prescription for my dermatitis. Thank God for the Affordable Care Act. I cannot imagine the slaughter we would all be facing without it.

So, those are the thoughts I had when my sleepy eyes opened this morning. I’d rather have woken up worrying about what to do with my damn LPs.

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

By the way, I can write a little about music today: While I’m writing this I’m listening to one of my earlier iTunes purchases from way back in 2006, Björn Olsson’s The Lobster. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to this and it’s cool to be reminded by just how clever and musical it is. It sounds like an otherworldly and unheard soundtrack to an unreleased Sergio Leone film, almost as if Ennio Morricone was born in Gotebörg, Sweden rather than Rome. There’s no flash and dazzle to Olsson’s style though his guitar playing is elemental and beautiful. He’s confident to let his songs bring the message, just the way I like it.

The source, you ask? My iPhone 11 streaming to my Skullcandy Crusher Evo. Damn nice and, yes, I do think I’ll write about these headphones someday soon.

Björn Olsson The Lobster

January 5: A brief detour

January 2: Quality, music & nostalgia

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2020 was a year that I started to try to get a handle on my music collection. Years ago I lost over 2,000 treasured LPs in a flood. The insurance company first offered me $1 per record and ended up paying me $3 each. Still, that pretty much took out my collection save for the few hundred that escaped the hot, ravaging waters of the broken pipe.

A few of the survivors and my beloved Per Madsen Rack.

I would include a photo of my CDs, but they’re just so boring looking. Yesterday I wrote about Paul Simon’s disdain for contemporary music and I alluded to my music collection. I find that the more I write the more music I listen to. The listening is different, for the most part, than when I worked in and wrote about the high end audio industry. It is more of an accompaniment or a soundtrack. I no longer have a system, though I can still play LPs and CDs and hear them in free space. When the music or my brain demands it I listen on headphones, either wired or bluetooth. This is all heading toward how I intend to manage and grow my collection without as much physical mass to manage. The idea of using FLAC and dumping what’s left of my LPs onto a bunch of really big (an well backed up) hard drive is appealing. So is buying most (but not all of my music digitally through either iTunes or Bandcamp. I can’t quite wrest myself from the appeal of the physical so when I bought Deep Sea Diver’s new record I bought the LP from Bandcamp and it arrived signed by Jessica Dobson herself. Plus, Bandcamp tends to pay musicians a high percentage than iTunes.

C’mon, Jessica sent me Xs and Os…How do you pass that up?

It’s cool, but it’s also pretty damn physical. There may come a day where my enjoyment of buying and listening to records goes away altogether but I am not quite there yet. Digital and digital storage is just so convenient and it usually sounds fairly good. There’s a good chance one of the few benefits of aging will be the fact that my ability to discern good sound from bad sound will continue to decline. If I end up being happy to listen to a portable radio that’ll be just fine. My hearing already rolls off above 14kHz so I’m on my way!

Enough preamble. The word of the day is nostalgia. And my question is this: If you like something that happens to be old is your appreciation inherently possessed with nostalgia? What do we say when what’s old is really good let alone possible better than what’s new? Say we’re talking about Van Halen’s 1978 eponymously titled record or Steely Dan’s Katy Lied from 1975. Yup, I grew up with both. Still, each record is still fantastic by any measure. Do I have to admit that some of my appreciation for either work is dripping in nostalgia? Think about it and let me know. More tomorrow. I’m trying to keep the daily posts between 300-400 words. Wish me luck…

January 2: Quality, music & nostalgia

January 1, 2022

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Seriously, I have to write more already?

Overnight I realized that this whole one year journal idea meant writing on something like a schedule, like other writers do. I read that Shelby Foote started each day writing 500 words, using a quill pen no less. I think I realized this in the back of my mind. As some of you might know, I finished my second novel, Cottonwood, a month or so back. I’m now waiting for my faithful formatter and cover artist to be available so I can get the book up on Amazon where it’s sure to make big bucks. I have a handful of ideas for my next book and I figured that writing everyday would keep me sharp in case any of those ideas suddenly grew from acorn to seedling. That fit in nicely with the one-year countdown to the end of my job at the law firm. Anyway, here I am on the first day of the year. To paraphrase Joe Friday, it’s breezy and cool in Los Angeles today. The high is supposed to hit 57…a tad chilly for me.

A while back I heard an interview with Paul Simon. In it, he was asked what music he was listening to these days. He mentioned that he’d been listening to the Elvis station (disappointed), along with B.B. King and Sinatra. He went on to say that he didn’t really listen to any contemporary music. I thought to myself, what the hell and I’m not totally surprised. Paul Simon’s a somewhat prickly old guy but I would emphasize old more the prickly. It struck me that he had either lost the energy he once had to sift through the crap that is most of everything to find the contemporary music that had worth or that he was simply more comfortable with music that was contemporaneous with his early life and what came before it. That gets me to the word nostalgic. I’ve been thinking about the word off and on and I’ll have more to say about it later. Anyway, I’m glad I haven’t thrown in the towel when it comes to contemporary music. There is some very good new music out there. Is it harder to find than it was in days gone by? I suppose that’s possible, but so what? If you love music you have to take the time to seek it out.

Drop by tomorrow if you’d like to hear more about my efforts to simultaneously organize, preserve and grow my music collection.

January 1, 2022

Time enough, but none to waste: A journal of transition

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December 31, 2021

Until I finished my first novel I didn’t think of myself as the kind of writer who would or could write a novel. But, after I finished the first book I started in on the second without even thinking about it, or enduring a moment’s uncertainty about whether I could pull it off. The same may go for memoirs and journals. Outside of a less than half-hearted attempt to keep a journal back in high school this is the first time I’ve tried to write one. I enjoy autobiographies. But the truth is I enjoy autobiographies because I enjoy learning about noteworthy people. Bobby Jones wrote about himself when he was still in his 30s, or maybe even younger. Then again, he was Bobby Jones. I’m 60 now, heading for 61 in April. Things have changed, and a definitive change is coming at the end of 2022. My longtime employers will be closing their law firm. It’s time. Their decision is understandable. One of them is 66 and I think the other is pushing 70. One just lost his wife to cancer and the other’s daughter is battling a form of lymphoma. When the end of the firm finally comes I will only have one emotion…gratitude. Both of my bosses have been more than employers to me. They’ve been friends and will remain friends until that other end. I’ll have more to say about both of them later on, I think. The point is that this journal is about a particular transition, from one job to another, at the time in life where I now find myself. The determinate nature of the transition period allows me to focus and plan for the future but also to experience the days of the coming year in an unusual way. Most big changes hit without notice but this one has announced its impending arrival quite conveniently.

I don’t anticipate this to be a traditional journal. Then again, I don’t know what a traditional journal is like, having never knowingly read one. My anticipation is that it will include more than a few ideas about things I’d like to write. I’m also thinking that it will look back more than I want it to but I’m going to try hard to keep my eyes looking forward. They say a writer has to know the beginning and ending of a novel before sitting down to write it. I agree with that. A journal is a different proposition. No one knows how anyone’s journal will end, even and perhaps especially, their own. There’s a kind of freedom to writing without knowing the ending.

It should be interesting anyway. The year, I mean. No promises about the journal.

Time enough, but none to waste: A journal of transition