Today I Will Write

Yesterday I spent in mourning for our political process. I was unable to function online, more than minimally. It was a lost day in every sense. This morning I waded through dozens of yesterday's posts, deleting both good and bad. I am about resigned that things are not going to get better, because too many voters no longer know what "better" means. I am clearing out as much negativity from my PC as I can this morning, so that I can write once again. At 76 I am too old to waste my remaining time feeding my mind with daily disappointment. You younger people must bear the burden older generations have created for you. It is up to you to formulate some truths upon which to build new politics. The future is yours - or not - depending on your own actions. You will get no help from we the PERPETRATORS.  

Five Angry Guns

Newest title. Sooner or later I will get it right.

Skeezix

Anybody who grew up reading the comic strip, Gasoline Alley, will remember that Walt, the original main character, found an abandoned baby on his doorstep, in 1921. He named the boy Skeezix, which is cowboy slang for a motherless calf. I didn't know it meant that, until today. As an aside, this is the year the strip turns 100.

Regarding my last post

It wasn't Hemingway or Zane Gray, or even William McGonagall, but I got the tug o' war scene done. On to the shooting contest.

Difficulties

So the plot calls for a man with near superhuman strength to engage a tug o' war against increasing numbers of men, until a gang manages to drag him into a mud pit. Simple enough, you say. But I have written it a few times and have failed to convey the spirit of the event. This is why I can't have nice things. It sometimes takes me days to overcome this kind of a block.

Revisions

I've spent the last days reading over and smoothing a number of passages. Should be ready to move on later in the day.

My original plotline centered on Tim Medina, but has evolved to include three additional characters, each of whom may or may not be able to take one or more of the others. My ms. is nearing the midway point.  

range war's a brewing

I started to write of barbed wire, when a character prepared to string his land with some. Fortunately I had the smarts to check it out first and call it bob wire, instead.

Title

I am tinkering with titles. So far, all I've got is FOUR FOR GLORY. Keeping it in mind, but exploring further.

How long is the typical western novel?

Researching book lengths, I read that the typical western can be 45,000 - 75,000 words. Also, I noted that there is a bit of a resurgence in readership, after a steep decline a while back. I suppose I should have learned this before I started but it doesn't really change what I am doing.

The Reverberating Past

When I began to contemplate a western novel, which notion began to germinate many years ago, I felt my ignorance would derail the project before it got started. I thought my knowledge of the old west came solely from novels, history lessons, films and radio programs. But now I am in the thick of it and I realize that my age is on my side in this. I recall a life without electricity or running water, and at times no home to live in, even. Growing food, picking cotton, often surrounded by animals. But even greater than that, the notions and ways of the past were reverberating still. I was born in the 1940's and there were persons alive who were born in the 1840's. So it's not so far fetched that I could complete my story.

Biography as it appears on another site:

Undiagnosed Asperger's robbed him of life experiences for over fifty years. His love of music and books kept him centered. Unwavering love of living kept him from going bad, despite the rejection he felt on all fronts. He blamed an abusive step father for his life failures. Then he pursued and won the hand of a good woman and had an anchor holding him in place while he fought his battles. Their marriage resulted in a fragile bond that lasted through his remaining days on Earth. His writing a biographical novelette opened his eyes to Asperger's. He could release his step father, but only partially, from the blame he had placed on him. Additionally his condition had been assuaged somewhat by conditions of a job he worked in the final twenty three years of active employment. Desperation for money made him show up each day and there engage strangers face to face every working day. He experienced the art of conversation, expanding incrementally from job based commentary to personal exchanges. His conversation was repetitious and boring, mostly. Aware of his shortcomings, he developed strategies that helped him skirt problems that arose. By the time he left his job, he was honored by one and all. He retained friendships and visited many from retirement. Not knowing how to sell a novelette length semi autobiographical work, he turned to a novel of a man's odyssey from a life of debauchery to a more conventional way of living. A work he has completed and is now looking to get published..