When I was walking back from the beer store (I didn’t even get any beer because it was too damn late and I got lost wandering around the lake because it was so clear out and the sound of ice breaking was amazing) and anyway so I don’t even get beer tonight…eh whatever…but I was thinking how I really can’t wait for these books to be done (they kinda took over my life) so I can do something new and real and I didn’t think I’d go back to gonzo reporting because I made a character up and I don’t want to be that. So I was thinking, what will my next book and project be?…and I was excited and I was thinking maybe I’ll just work on being a student and practice prose again and getting better (which this takes just about as long as each book takes, there’s many processes at work here that are separate but important to one another)…but I was thinking about writing a simple easy book about just myself and one about becoming a better person and happier in life, and that’s all the book is about, just living life and looking at everything with fresh eyes that I already have but everything in my book is wild and you know everything is just so text driven these days…
ha, and so These books are fiction and I should never have drawn on my life the way I did. because I took places that I’ve really traveled to and used them like I was scouting for a movie, and that’s exactly what I did, and so now I can’t really write about my real life because it would be almost as if I was writing everything over again but only real lol…
And so see I made the decision to be a fiction writer (when it comes to novel form) but I really didn’t have a choice because the books have a mind of their own, and in many strange ways They were like a science experiment where I recreated society and got to see what would happen as if I had a microscope, and I don’t know but I think at least the new book is more a sociological investigation as it is a novel, but I don’t know about all that, but what I do know is that I’m going to go skydiving again on my birthday and typewrite in the air (not) But when these books are done I’m going to just use the typewriter again and besides the writing that I have to pump out just to survive and maybe forget about the situation and everything that I’ve lost I’m going back to the basics and chewing on grass and skipping stones and climbing trees and wandering around and once in a while I’m going to do something else lol…and I’m going to move somewhere where there’s no winter (I love you Michigan but the vortex was a bit much)…and honestly I have no clue and it’s a great feeling and I mean that, because what happened and the things I’ve lost although I miss them they have all led me here to these keys to write these words and without what happened these words would not exist and I like these words and so be it. And maybe somebody who works for a writing business (magazine or whatever you call them these days) will help me out sometime (but they seem to treat me like I’m competition) or maybe society will give me a job in a lighthouse or a national park and then all of this will just stop for a while and these will be called my most productive years as a writer and then I’ll get old and slow…But At least for the summer I’ll do a few more gonzo things, because man, it’s some of the most fun writing I’ve had…even though it’s wild and one second away from a black eye… case and point:
“It’s not real” I said right before her boyfriend who was on Team Holland came in and then it got awkward because I was throwing-up off from the tenth floor balcony sometime after that. And I was there for the scoop but I slept-in the last day missing pancake brunch with The Scandinavian Trade Commission. I didn’t get to talk to Team United States again about further Team Iraq sanctions and then I got threatened to be thrown on the streets by Team Hotel Security for my overall debauchery as word was starting to spread about “The Reporter From Michigan… you know…the one who keeps getting caught where he’s not supposed to be”.
Later that day team staff yelled at me for swimming in the locked up pool.
“The door was open” I said.
“What one” Mr. Manager said.
“I don’t remember”… (SILENCE)… and then I said, “excuse me will ya Mr., I have to work on my cannon balls now.”
Adventures In American Writing 