Grandfathers and Second Drafts

See that guy in the red tie in the middle of that mural?

Dead ringer for my grandfather, the courtly and otherworldly Alfred Lord Tennyson Vogel, a man who drifted like a boat moored just outside the harbor.

The resemblance is so pronounced that I flip out every time I walk past it in one of the Times Square subway tunnels:



Grandpa! What the hell are you doing there?

Like that last scene in The Shining when Jack Torrance somehow gets inside that New Years Eve photograph on the Overlook wall.

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Else?

It's back to blitzkrieging for me. Spent too much last weekend; must recoup. Gotta deal with the car; gotta save up some cash reserves for the California trip and organize that. (Write to Eleanor, Barbara, John, Jean-Luc, Booter.)

Also have to think of some way to get back inside my own writing again. Obviously, I’m not gonna finish the novel in 2019. I can blame that one on X-husbands who have the audacity to die and get you all involved even though by all rights, you really shouldn’t have had to be involved.

I’m thinking I’ll use this space for chapter drafts.

I’m thinking those chapter drafts will not be very good, which of course, will be mortifying to me. God forbid I should ever write a sentence that’s not perfectly balanced, right? That’s pedestrian and mundane!

But, of course, even though I know good writing is all about the editing—in fact, I preach this so relentlessly at all my writerly friends that they absolutely avoid me when they’re experiencing any kind of writers block—I don’t honestly believe that myself when I’m writing.

For months now, I’ve been stalled on a scene that’s not even a very important scene.

What has to happen is that June has to meet Rita La Roy. June’s second husband eventually leaves June for Rita La Roy, so you know: foreshadowing! And first, I had them meeting at Lasky’s Famous Players in Queens where June goes for a screen test, and when that didn’t work, I had Rita La Roy, down on her luck, try out for a job at the Orpheum Dance Palace.

The point is, I guess, who fucking cares how they meet?

Just fill in the blanks for the rough draft and finesse it in the second (and final!) draft where I’ll have more information about the characters because I will have finished the damn book!

Anyway, I’m going to start working on the novel again.

It’s going to be bad, and I’m going to give myself permission to let it be bad.

Because in the second draft, I can make it good.