Writers are best when they're failures and struggling and rejected. . .

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interview with J.P. Donleavy, writer, artist, and all round bad boy. He is quoted as saying, "Writers are best when they're failures and struggling and rejected. . . So that's been my history. Total isolation."

Well, that's consoling. It is a hard slog, that's true. I'm rewriting 2 novels, planning a third, and except for my blogs, not writing much. I finally have a beginning for the California book, which will start on the train en route to California in 1928. Recently I read that every story is either the journey or the quest, and of course a story can be both. Certainly all of my books fall into those categories.

The "Burning Man" book is still such fun, and I'm on the final rewrite of the East German book, oh, yes and trying to cut words from the "Wisconsin" book.

There was a terrific idea for a short story in the local paper. A pig (I am assuming it was one of those Vietnamese pigs that were popular as pets a few years ago) escaped and ate the neighbor's garden. Not once but twice. I have so many ideas for animal stories that I think "Grapeshot's Bestiary" will come into being. Ideas are like kamikazees, always incoming.

So this strugging, rejected, failure is pretty upbeat. I'm sure with the postal increase that none of the agents will bother to put 2 cents on the SASE. WTF?

Grapeshot