Memphis Blues Again: March 2011

31 March 2011

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

Central High School, Little Rock. . . .Helena. . . .Clarksdale. . . .Robert Johnson's grave. . . .Where the Southern Crosses the Yellow Dog. . . .Vicksburg. . . .

30 March 2011

I am streamlining; I am cutting unnecessary material wherever I can; I am deciding how to nest flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks; I am laboring on keeping as sharp a focus as I can and on the flow of the prose. . . .Takes a while. All I can say for now is it's improving. Maybe start uploading within the coming several days.

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

Built-in hold prior to setting out tomorrow for points south and east. . . .

29 March 2011

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

To the Springfield airport and back to Douglas ("Booger") County, MO again. Also made a brief exploration of the campus of Missouri State University and some other sites in support of a different novel (title: 11) that i'd begun previously, to have been set largely in Springfield. I suspect 11 will never be finished.

28 March 2011

George Caleb Bingham's General Order No. 11.

Click on the image for an explanation of General Order No. 11.

Battle of Lexington Video.

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

Missouri History Museum, Scott Joplin House, Gateway Arch, Fort Davidson, and an evening race with the moon through the Missouri Ozarks.

27 March 2011

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

Transit of Little Dixie: Lexington. Confederate Memorial State Historic Site. Glasgow. Centralia. Fulton. Jefferson City. Then an abortive trip to the Bellefontaine Cemetery and dinner at Guido's. Spent the night in Earth City.

26 March 2011

MBA'10: One Year Ago Today.

One year ago today I flew into Kansas City and located the grave of Thomas L Bogle at the Leavenworth National Cemetery ("Old Soldiers' Home"): (39.275059, -94.8877730).

21 March 2011

RIP Pinetop Perkins, and TFOB Redux.

Today Pinetop Perkins died. Read the story here: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDefault/*/Article_2011-03-21-Obit-Pinetop%20Perkins/id-9d73f4ebabda42eaaaf6b3ecba44fac0 I've posted links to "Pinetop's Blues," as well as several other tunes connected to Memphis Blues Again in one way or another, on the Music page. Check 'em out.

I'm getting closer to uploading the opening scene from the novel, but some other responsibilities are causing a slight delay.

Last weekend I attended the third annual Tucson Festival of Books. Two of the lectures I attended in particular are of special interest to writers, I think. These are called "Sharpen Your Dialog Using Theater Techniques" and "Future of Publishing." Sound recordings of these sessions may be found here: http://vimeo.com/user5849723/videos

More to come in a few days. . . .

17 March 2011

Savannah, Jambalaya and Joyce.

By way of Minnesota, my friend Melissa left with her family this afternoon on a long arc to Savannah. Contrary to the expectations of some who know me, I confirm forthwith that I did not smuggle myself on board her flight. I did stop on the way home from work this morning for jambalaya ingredients, however, which have been in the crock pot all day. Smells pretty good. . . .

Thoughts of Savannah and New Orleans. . . .But today being St Patrick's Day and all, my thoughts also bend necessarily to Joyce. Always up for a quote from Ulysses.

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter then all sank.

Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.

What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar.

Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J. on saint Peter Claver and the African mission. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants the same. Convert Dr. William J. Walsh D. D. to the true religion. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguished looking. Sorry I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.

Well right now I'm finishing the critique and criticism of a new novel by a friend of mine. Three more chapters to go. That's good because it gives me time to reflect on Memphis Blues Again before I start revising it. Thrusting it down to marinate subconsciously for a little while before I start uploading it. The first several chapters require some significant revisions and I have to decide exactly how to rearrange some of the furniture before posting any of it here. But have no fear. . . .some of my fundamental structural concerns are beginning to gel. So I do hope the first pages of the text will begin to appear on this site within the coming seven to ten days or so. Stay tuned.

16 March 2011

Left Over Inserts (Orphan Notes).

As I'm writing a first draft I start adding notes to the end of the manuscript: items I want to insert into either a later chapter, or back in some fitting point in an earlier chapter. So when I reach the end of a novel I always have these random scraps. I have 17 pages of notes that I need to insert somewhere into the text before I can start pruning the whole thing. These ideas are seldom thought-out, and although I may put them in one character's mouth when I jot them down, later they may very easily end up being the words or thoughts of another character altogether. Here are a few examples of some of these orphan notes:

plant early: The hands of all Americans are still stained with the blood of what our ancestors ‑‑ Northerners and Southerners alike ‑‑ did to blacks in this country. And still do to blacks, and to any other downtrodden race or group. Just ask the people in Birmingham how long it takes to wash the stains away! How long you have to pay and pay. Not to mention to Native Americans. We haven't even begun to address that matter in any serious way at all. And for the crimes that America has committed around the world, and continues to commit to this day. That's a lot of blood that we pretend not to see. But some day like Lady Macbeth we must see it. We must deal with it. We'll be generations trying to wash it clean.

The fundamental trouble with micromanagers is not micromanagement itself, but the concomitant and all-consuming myopia afflicting almost all micromanagers that leaves them incapable of discriminating between the relevant and the insignificant.

During the country's first hundred years the West was a relative concept that only meant west of here. Thus a lone log cabin in the piney woods of Illinois could be considered to be a frontier homestead in the West. But after Polk's Manifest Destiny succeeded in shoving the Indians and the Mexicans out of the way, and after all the trees were felled and all the buffalo were successfully slaughtered, the West became an absolute place. We are Westerners who are untroubled by all that complex, dirty past that made our lives and times possible, struggling to comprehend what all this ancient nonsense in the South and the East was all about, for it has so little to do with our own neglected and forgotten heritage. Ten thousand revisionists have successfully cut up the past and re-knit it together into a comforting narrative that suits the present. Pain, death, deceit, vainglory, cruelty, wickedness, depravity, even evil, all victoriously trivialized away into a few bland sentences in a high school history text. What do we really know about the past, any of us? We're nothing more than clumsy, sloppy mythmakers, amateurs without the time or interest to track down the primary sources. Interpreters and misinterpreters and political spin doctors and wolfish corporate yahoos and even mildly stupid but jackass-simple, everyday amicable, cloddish, unwitting depreciating distorters of events.

in Arkansas chap, Jessie points out that "criticism" implies the rigorous and consistent application of "criteria," not of opinion or appeals to emotion, and that history is always a matter of probability, not certainty. this provokes a reply from Charlie abt quantum mechanics. (in chap 22, Teddy bemoans that Jessie and Ras have been talking into the night abt such "esoteric philosophical matters" into the night during this trip.)

"¡Muchos tacos!"
"De nachos."

Time collapses between the Southern Manifesto and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Whites who had been won over by Martin Luther King, Jr and nonviolent resistance overcame bureaucratic resistance. And then the fall of racial segregation, coupled to the black vote, changed the political context forever ‑‑ at least, until Hurricane Katrina.

Charlie: I do not inhabit your pathetic world.
Teddy: What pathetic world do you inhabit?

Charlie: "I met Prince Phillip at the home of the blues. . . .or was that King Phillip? We'll see. . . ."

Tyrants, artists, paupers, con men and kings all alike manufacture history, and nearly all their names are, by and large, forgotten within a few hundred years, no matter how outrageous their crimes. History issues forth from every thought and every action: we are all designing the lives of our children's children's children, and their own children's children's children, in each moment. How we live our lives has consequences not only for us, but for thousands we'll never know, and whose lives only a few decades from now we can't even hope to imagine. Whatever you're doing right now matters. So try not to spend so much time being a grouch.

First Draft Diary.

While writing the first draft I kept a sort of diary on Facebook, recording word counts and various other minor observations. Here it is:

Bob Bogle
don't talk to me when i'm writing.

April 17, 2010 at 6:21pm - Bob Bogle ‎740 words.
April 17, 2010 at 8:46pm · Diana Rede What are you working on now?
April 17, 2010 at 8:57pm · Bob Bogle very new novel.
April 18, 2010 at 7:09am · Ben Northon Ah, so MBA'10 was a _research_ trip?
April 18, 2010 at 12:41pm · Bob Bogle all of being alive is always full time research all of the time. . . .for all of us.
April 18, 2010 at 4:13pm · Bob Bogle ‎2,459 words.
April 18, 2010 at 8:33pm · Bob Bogle chap 1 done. 4,000 words.
April 19, 2010 at 6:40pm · Bob Bogle ‎5,343 words.
April 20, 2010 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle ‎6,097 words. must sleeeeeep!
April 21, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle ‎8,970 words.
April 22, 2010 at 8:47pm · Bob Bogle ‎10,600 words.
April 23, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle ‎12,852 words.
April 24, 2010 at 7:06pm · Bob Bogle ‎16,830 words. pretty good day. coulda done more, but i had to split a runaway chapter 2 into chapters 2 and 3, which required a little backtracking and rewriting. almost done w chap 3, but sleep is more important right now.
April 25, 2010 at 8:59pm · Bob Bogle ‎19,742 words.
April 26, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle ‎20,455 words. a day w a few complications. rats!
April 27, 2010 at 8:02pm · Bob Bogle ‎21,917 words. slightly misleading. making transcripts of voice recordings, radically pruning, editing, adapting to fiction, etc. not "writing" as one might think of it.
April 28, 2010 at 7:39pm · Bob Bogle ‎23,729 words: the good news. the bad news: essentially no sleep today.
April 29, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle ‎25,099 words _and_ got a little sleep today. yipee!
April 30, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle ‎27,074 words, just beginning chap 6.
May 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Jeff Knowles that's like an insane number of words dude...wish I could focus. i'm not talking to you just typing
May 2, 2010 at 11:51am · Bob Bogle i like to think of it as a channeled obsession.
May 2, 2010 at 2:58pm · Jeff Knowles Yah I think I'm down with that concept. Better than the unchannel'd ones.
May 2, 2010 at 3:23pm · Bob Bogle ‎29,076 words. had to pause to do a little bit of research (concerning geology of the ozarks), which always slows one down. . . .but i'm quite happy to have written 2,002 words today. next stop little rock, by way of the battle of pea ridge.
May 2, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle ‎29,578 words. my lowest per diem word count so far, but a great, great deal of research had to be done today concerning the movements of the 9th iowa volunteer infantry, and it all has substantial ramifications for the rest of the novel. . . .some day, God willing, you'll see. . . .
May 3, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle ‎30,809 words, and still not in little rock. woulda got more done today but had to break for dinner.......well, this coming week, beginning tomorrow.........
May 4, 2010 at 8:31pm · Bob Bogle yay: 32,097 words. finally made it out of little rick and on the way east!
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle uh, rock.
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle ‎33,727 words. my clock's still upside down & can't think clearly, so gonna call it a day. abt half way through chap 7 and just crossed the mighty mississippi.
May 6, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle ‎35,860 words. down thru clarksville and on the doorstep of vicksburg. tomorrow will finish chapter 7.
May 8, 2010 at 12:02am · Bob Bogle ‎38,372 words. how to write abt vicksburg w/o making it a history lesson?
May 8, 2010 at 11:50pm · Adam Mieczyński you're a machine with a heart transplant, methinks. Try not to go the way of Walter Scott and the like. I hate those historical digressions, totally ruins the immersion.
May 9, 2010 at 4:07am · Bob Bogle yeah. good advice, but idk how well i can follow it on 1st draft. w this novel seems i 1st have to build the house before i tear out all the walls to remodel it. hold my feet to this fire w this advice in subsequent drafts if you please, however. . . .the ice berg metaphor is also appropriate. i feel like i must explore much of the mass that's hidden away under the waves b4 i can edit it all out again, firm in the knowledge that, nonetheless, it is there. . . .
May 9, 2010 at 5:31am · Bob Bogle ‎40,286 words. spent a good deal of time consulting vicksburg resources today, but also did a fairly decent job, i think, of minimizing the depositional tone, so. . . .would have liked to have written more, but this is a pretty good compromise.
May 9, 2010 at 9:06pm · Bob Bogle ‎42,858 words. this has not been an easy day for writing, but the effect achieved is good, i think. with luck i'll be out of vicksburg tomorrow.
May 10, 2010 at 11:12pm · Bob Bogle ‎44,341 words. coming in to nola.
May 11, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle ‎46,601 words. strolling through the streets of new orleans. a niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice part to be writing.
May 12, 2010 at 8:10pm · Bob Bogle ‎47,247 words. gr. garden district history, architecture.
May 13, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle ‎49,152 words. sorry to have to stop now, but. . . .
May 14, 2010 at 7:59pm · Bob Bogle ‎50,179 words. yay, 50k+. um, all that jazz.
May 15, 2010 at 7:58pm · Bob Bogle ‎51,435 words. lots of research today; maybe less tomorrow.
May 16, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle ‎52,331 words. mostly cleaning up some loose ends. outside complications. . . .
May 17, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle ‎53,815 words. chap 10. . . .
May 18, 2010 at 7:22pm · Bob Bogle ‎55,121 words.
May 20, 2010 at 11:09pm · Bob Bogle ‎55,892 words.
May 21, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle ‎56,490 words.
May 22, 2010 at 9:42pm · Bob Bogle ‎58,265 words.
May 25, 2010 at 1:15am · Bob Bogle ‎58,784 words.
May 26, 2010 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle ‎59,023 words. tomorrow....................
May 27, 2010 at 8:24pm · Bob Bogle ‎59,948 words. started chap 11.
May 28, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle ‎61,481 words. much better.
May 29, 2010 at 8:17pm · Bob Bogle ‎62,464 words. pausing to organize notes....
May 30, 2010 at 8:52pm · Bob Bogle ‎62,778 words. >:^[
June 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle ‎63,909 words. sloggin' thru wet concrete.
June 4, 2010 at 11:26pm · Diana Rede ‎?
June 5, 2010 at 10:33am · Bob Bogle ‎64,498 words as of yesterday. sometimes, diana, it flows. sometimes you're struggling forward against the storm surge. last few weeks have beeen disrupted by various outside influences. i have some reason to hope i broke through that s...tuff yesterday and can now start getting back on track.
June 6, 2010 at 6:23am · Diana Rede O so dinner might be out of the ? thought we should catch up...
June 6, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle of course not, my friend! food is always a good idea. did you have anything specific in mind?
June 6, 2010 at 8:01pm · Bob Bogle ‎66,957 words. enough for today. now. . . .on to alabama!
June 6, 2010 at 8:05pm · Bob Bogle ‎67,808 words.
June 8, 2010 at 5:41am · Bob Bogle ‎68,336 words.
June 9, 2010 at 2:38am · Bob Bogle ‎70,844 words.
June 10, 2010 at 8:03am · Bob Bogle ‎72,181 words. shifting emphasis to mid-60s. (remember the mid-60s?)
June 10, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle ‎72,651 words. still recalibrating. it's a long road from new orleans to civil rights.
June 12, 2010 at 7:13pm · Bob Bogle it's just a cheap psychological trick for my simple brain to keep up motivation. beyond that it has no meaning whatsoever. it must be hoped that the final word count is significantly less than that of the first draft.
June 12, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle ‎73,380 words. made some minor but important modifications to a few earlier chapters.
"Anyone seen that danged old Yazoo and Delta Railroad?" he said, but no one answered him. He shrugged and climbed in last, muttering: "Don't say I never... warned you when your train gets lost."
June 14, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle ‎74,070 words.
June 15, 2010 at 8:32pm · Bob Bogle ‎74,803 words. montgomery.
June 19, 2010 at 1:34am · Bob Bogle ‎76,260 words. almost in birmingham, and irritated in abt 10 different ways. more eager to reach georgia than you can possibly imagine.
June 20, 2010 at 12:11am · Bob Bogle ‎76,936 words. lost a large chunk of what i wrote yesterday; didn't mind too much as i didn't care for it. rapidly reconstructed what was best and pressed on....night in birmingham & nearing the end of chap 13.
June 20, 2010 at 10:12pm · Bob Bogle ‎78,847 words. starting chap 14.
June 22, 2010 at 12:03am · Bob Bogle ‎80,249 words.
June 23, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle ‎80,909 words. took a few days collecting and preparing notes. the civil rights stuff is very difficult; probably the hardest part of the whole shebang. today mostly inserting the occasional sentence or phrase throughout the earlier chapters. probably this seems pretty strange. . . .
June 26, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle ‎81,337 words.
June 27, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle ‎83,418 words. most of birmingham is done.
June 28, 2010 at 7:52pm · Bob Bogle ‎83,787 words. and here we go again. . . .
July 1, 2010 at 4:21am · Bob Bogle ‎84,246 words.
July 2, 2010 at 2:43am · Bob Bogle ‎85,477 words & across the border.
July 3, 2010 at 1:05am · Bob Bogle ‎87,643 words.
July 3, 2010 at 9:46pm · Bob Bogle ‎88,888 words.
July 5, 2010 at 7:28am · Bob Bogle ‎89,971 words.
July 6, 2010 at 5:10am · Bob Bogle ‎92,431 words. interesting....going to have to add one more (short) unexpected chapter abt atlanta.......unfortunately, must call it a day to start getting ready for another trip.....i do hope to be able to continue working while we're in seattle, though prob at a much-reduced pace.
July 6, 2010 at 5:37pm · Bob Bogle ‎93,687 words. back from seattle. better get yourself together darlin', join the human race.
July 15, 2010 at 1:42am · Bob Bogle ‎94,596 words. plus some more notes that will comprise actual text later.....anyway, i should do some reading, or watch a dvd, or something.
July 15, 2010 at 10:22pm · Bob Bogle ‎95,967 words. atlanta nightfall. murder & decadence.
July 17, 2010 at 1:19am · Bob Bogle ‎97,602 words.
July 17, 2010 at 11:16pm · Bob Bogle ‎98,749 words. research mode & in urgent need of a mindless movie or something. zany doings atop stone mountain in 1915. ugh.
July 18, 2010 at 9:51pm · Bob Bogle ‎101,081 words. reconstruction blues.
July 19, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle ‎101,446 words. worked all day on the book though the #s don't show it........ug. all too soon back to work......well, i did meet my goal of breaking through the 100k word barrier.
July 20, 2010 at 9:30pm · Bob Bogle ‎102,444 words. uh, that would be more or less abt 480 pages.
July 21, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle ‎102,640 words. pretty poor showing. reading abt the leo frank/mary phagan case.
July 22, 2010 at 8:11pm · Bob Bogle ‎103,696 words. almost to stone mountain.
July 23, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle ‎104,575 words, and day 100 of this novel.
July 25, 2010 at 8:20pm · Bob Bogle ‎105,690 words. ah, unfortunately, too sleepy to go on today.
July 28, 2010 at 7:04pm · Bob Bogle ‎107,076 words.
July 30, 2010 at 1:56am · Bob Bogle ‎108,409 words.
July 31, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle ‎110,807 words.
August 2, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle i've spent a week re-immersing myself in savannah and scribbling occasional notes and additional material for previous chapters, and pausing briefly to write an unrelated story. preparing to resume writing-proper on the novel, soon. . . .perhaps i'll upload some interesting images of savannah i've come across on line. it's important to get this part of the story reasonably right. . . .
August 13, 2010 at 6:17am · Bob Bogle ‎120,062 words. after writing the long walk, i've spent several days reviewing a lot of divergent thoughts and notes and compressing, reconciling, and distilling them, making my word count shorter and shorter, so progress to the 120k mark ...has been slow and almost asymptotic, but finally i've arrived. approaching the end of chap 18, i think. the longest chapter at (so far) 12,858 words. the thing is that i'm not really writing the novel right now but a pre-novel, in which i'm trying to let the characters grow organically w/o me dictating who they are, and also i'm trying to figure out what the whole setting is about. i am getting there, but the novel itself must eventually grow out of whomever these characters become. so perhaps it's like writing forwards now, and later everything will be rewritten in reverse. . . .something like that. it's maybe hard to understand if you haven't done something like it. sure. i don't really understand it myself.
August 24, 2010 at 6:58pm · Bob Bogle ‎121,780 words. just finished chap 18. at 1.5 line spacing, this puts me at the top of p 495. chap 18 is the longest so far, at 14,576 words and 56 pp (before this was averaging 26 pp/chap). day 135 of draft 1 of this pre-novel tome. in some ways it's growing joycer, although not so frankly stream-of-consciousness. chap 19 is to be rather complex, involving various mystical, arcane, numerologic and occult forces......prob will take a fair amt of time simply to begin outlining it before i actually write a single word........
August 29, 2010 at 10:02am · Bob Bogle ‎123,838 words. on the way to fort pulaski and tybee island.
August 31, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle ‎125,000 words on the nose.
September 2, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle ‎125,841 words. chap 19, episode 7/32.
September 4, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle ‎126,507 words. chap 19, just finished ep 7/32.
September 5, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle ‎127,659 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 6, 2010 at 8:40pm · Bob Bogle ‎127,999 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 7, 2010 at 8:43pm · Bob Bogle ‎128,951 words. chap 19, beginning ep 10/32. just remembered i have a 2 hr audio recording pertinent to chap 18 that i haven't listened to yet.....
September 9, 2010 at 6:01am · Bob Bogle ‎131,062 words. chap 19, ep 11/32.
September 18, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle ‎132,124 words. Chap 19, ep 11/32 now finished. temporarily side-tracked writing another story and derailed into genealogy, among other things; hope i'm back on the scent of the novel again. for the first time, i'm beginning to feel the end of this story reaching out for me from out there.
September 25, 2010 at 7:50am · Bob Bogle ‎134,101 words. Chap 19, ep 12/32 finished. the pivot point: was going south and east; now going north and west.
September 26, 2010 at 9:53am · Bob Bogle ‎136,526 words. Chap 19, ep 14/32 finished. at 14,745 words, chap 19 has now become the longest in this tome, and only abt half way through it. on p 551, for what little that's worth.
September 29, 2010 at 6:11pm · Bob Bogle ‎138,173 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 begun.
September 30, 2010 at 7:32pm · Bob Bogle ‎138,950 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 continues.
October 3, 2010 at 7:49pm · Bob Bogle ‎140,182 words. chap 19, ep 17/32 done..........almost.
October 8, 2010 at 5:40am · Bob Bogle ‎141,370 words. chap 19, ep 18/32 done.
October 8, 2010 at 6:03pm · Bob Bogle ‎144,876 words. chap 19, ep 21/32 (mostly) done. 2k+ words today. yay.
October 10, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle ‎147,266 words. chap 19, ep 24/32 done.
October 14, 2010 at 8:39pm · Bob Bogle ‎149,257 words. chap 19, ep 26/32 almost done. a patch of poor productivity. grr.
October 19, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle ‎150,326 words. chap 19, ep 27/32. getting there....
October 23, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle ‎154,108 words. chap 19, ep 29/32 screeching to its end. day194 of writing this novel. a good writing day to end a rather crummy week.
October 27, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle ‎155,877 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. slow-going trying to be faux-literary while sneaking in a geography lesson. tightly crawling, curling, contorting rivers!
October 30, 2010 at 8:44pm · Bob Bogle ‎158,840 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. done w the worst of this river-writing like a hard math problem. just abt forgot what this book is supposed to be abt.
November 6, 2010 at 2:49pm · Bob Bogle ‎160,852 words. chap 19, ep 31/32. that's more like it.
November 7, 2010 at 8:49am · Bob Bogle ‎162,011 words. chap 19, ep 31/32 almost done. hope i get more words in today............we'll see.
November 8, 2010 at 6:11am · Bob Bogle ‎162,782 words. chap 19, ep 32/32 done, 1st pass-through. chap 19 is 41,001 words long so far.......have some christmas tree ornaments to go back and hang on its various branches still.........then some probable additions to be made to chap 18 before pressing on to chap 20.
November 9, 2010 at 12:34pm · Bob Bogle ‎163,466 words. still a few more christmas ornaments to go on chap 19; should be done tomorrow.
November 11, 2010 at 7:51pm · Bob Bogle ‎163,659 words. done w christmas ornaments; well, except for a pile of notes i need to look through.....and a new book i recently bought abt the mississippi.......
November 12, 2010 at 7:42pm · Bob Bogle ‎164,311 words. minor additions to chaps 18 & 19. a few more amendments to be made later, but officially i'm now ready to start thinking abt and writing the last 4 chaps....i definitely see the tunnel opening up before me.........the light at its end is not quite visible, however.
November 14, 2010 at 7:23pm · Bob Bogle ‎165,770 words. chap 20 of 23. goes very nicely.
November 15, 2010 at 7:31pm · Bob Bogle ‎169,817 words. maybe abt half thru chap 20 of 23. approaching charleston; brief detour for m theory, constants, etc.
November 22, 2010 at 3:10pm · Bob Bogle ‎171,887 words. chap 20/23. in charleston for a few moe paragraphs. a week of witing lost to seriously degraded vision........but some seriously sweet sentences today. hey isn't it about time that sometimes now and then the good guys win???
November 29, 2010 at 11:39pm · Bob Bogle ‎174,588 words. chap 20/23. almost to charlotte, nc and end of chap.
November 30, 2010 at 9:08pm · Bob Bogle ‎179,025 words. chap 20/23. only a few more pp to go in this chapter, but after writing 3,830 words today -- my most prolific day ever -- i've decided to set the ol' laptop aside for awhile............enuff is enuff!
December 4, 2010 at 6:17pm · Bob Bogle ‎182,058 words, chap 21/23. two weeks lost researching this chap, but now i'm back.
December 19, 2010 at 3:42pm · Bob Bogle ‎185,195 words, chap 21/23. good, steady progress in a difficult chap.
December 21, 2010 at 10:32pm · Bob Bogle ‎186,751 words, chap 21/23. a CRAWLING pace, but some pretty good words strung together. i hope it starts to pick up again soon.
December 27, 2010 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle ‎189,223 words, chap 21/23. a little better; a very hard, research-intense chap.
January 1 at 10:19pm · Bob Bogle ‎193,220 words, chap 21/23. back in georgia for a flanking turn against chattanooga.
January 4 at 7:35pm · Bob Bogle ‎195,558 words, chap 21/23. many words abt rosecrans and bragg.
January 7 at 7:30pm · Bob Bogle ‎197,019 words, chap 21/23. days of distraction for thinking persons; not so many of them left.
January 10 at 7:19pm · Bob Bogle ‎199,652 words, chap 21/23. on the cusp of chickamauga.
January 19 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle ‎200,825 words, chap 21/23. day 280. the 200k word threshold broken.......again!
January 21 at 7:45pm · Bob Bogle ‎202,034 words, chap 21/23. about another thousand words, then out of chickamauga and in chattanooga and ringgold. then............chap 22. but still a ways to go. but a good couple of days.
January 22 at 7:47pm · Bob Bogle ‎202,704 words, chap 21/. farewell chickamauga.
January 23 at 6:43pm · Bob Bogle ‎206,030 words, chap 21/23. day 290 of writing. 2772 words today; 5th best day.
January 31 at 7:21pm · Bob Bogle ‎208,635 words, chap 21/23. hopefully just 1 more day on chap 21.
February 3 at 1:46pm · Bob Bogle ‎212,347 words, chap 22/23. half through shiloh.
February 13 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle ‎213,756 words, chap 22/23. almost in memphis.
February 20 at 6:45am · Bob Bogle ‎214,275 words, chap 22/23. now have to write abt .... basketball. ah, the trials of being a writer.
February 20 at 6:35pm · Bob Bogle ‎216,018 words, chap 22/23 done. on to the end.
February 24 at 7:01am · Bob Bogle ‎220,769 words, chap 23/23. 1226 hr/1600 hr. on beale street.
March 2 at 7:23am · Bob Bogle ‎221,387 words, chap 23/23. 1235 hr/1600 hr. bars, bars, bars.
March 4 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle ‎222,076 words, chap 23/23, 1307 hr/1600 hr. beyond gibson guitar factory.
March 8 at 7:14pm · Bob Bogle ‎230,438 words. THE END.

15 March 2011

Welcome to the Blog.

Hi and welcome to the blog.

I recently finished writing the first draft of a novel called Memphis Blues Again. As I proceed with the subsequent drafts I'll be publishing selected excerpts on this blog. I'll probably also post associated materials that inform the story, external links, photographs, and so on ‑‑ anything that strikes my fancy and that is related to the tale and/or its setting.

So what is Memphis Blues Again?

Set in the present, the story recounts a road trip made by a small group of thirty-something former college friends driving through the Southern United States in late March/early April 2010. The characters are all from the West, primarily Arizona and Washington state, so the novel also provides a distinctly Western perspective on America, past and present. I've previously told friends, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Memphis Blues Again is something like Gone With the Wind meets On the Road, although to be more complete I suppose I should also include the movie The Big Chill in the mix. And probably Joyce's Ulysses, too. . . .

Some writers compare the writing process to painting on a canvass, but in my experience it's more like the sweaty work of a sculptor working in stone. While the most labor-intensive part of the job is getting the first draft written, when you're done with that quite frequently you're left with a partially-shaped, rather thick-limbed blob. Subsequent drafts require trimming away and discarding much of what was written originally in order to try to find a more elegant structure buried somewhere deeper inside the original rough text. You'll be able to watch some of that cutting-down process taking place here.

I've started this blog because I'm interested in any opinions and criticism that anyone may wish to express about the work. In this way anyone now reading these words may quite possibly affect the final shape of the novel. Please do feel free to make any comments at any time, and share the blog with anyone whom you think might find this material to be of interest. Post comments about what you like, and about what you don't like, and clarify why you don't like something as best you can. The comments and criticism of the public is the raison d'être of this blog.

Also, feel free to comment about matters tangential to the tale, even if your observations are not immediately central to the action or storyline. We're going to be covering a lot of interesting terrain as we drive through Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. There are just innumerable tales to be told about rivers and battles and freedom and slavery and racism and heroes and floods and earthquakes and preachers and family secrets and villains and ghosts and gators and bayous and coastlines and jazz and blues and rock-n-roll and Southern writers and low country cuisine. So post the affiliated stories that I didn't have time or space to cover in the novel. Or comment about your own experiences that occurred in the places mentioned in the story. Share corrections of my factual errors, or insights that I've overlooked.

So. . . .We'll be seeing you in the future!