A scrapple kind of day

What is a scrapple kind of day? A day when you're out of it. So to the store and back with the makings, which I'll do later today. First chore, start the new syllabus.

Eager to see a POD of the book. Here's one thing about the publishing business: to me, and I bet to most writers, it's much more satisfying to hold the OBJECT of a paperback in hand, a new book done, than to see the pdf on a computer screen. Great sense of accomplishment in the former. You can flip through the pages and get a physical sense of the whole, which you really can't duplicate digitally, at least not yet. So as a reader I prefer Kindle reading but as a writer I prefer holding the book as a physical object.

Been thinking of a post-novel project, an  idea for a play, and I consider all new plays (like Oregon Dream) "posthumous" in the sense that I don't want them done until after I pass. Why? Because the only play ideas that interest me these days invite controversy and I don't want the personal hassle of dealing with it. I don't need strokes or validation as a playwright, so I'll write them to be dealt with, if at all, after I'm long gone. I can enjoy the performance in my head and don't get the hassle. Maybe I'll change my mind about this but that's where I am now with it.

This new idea is good, four characters, perfect title, political and topical. I started a few pages. I may do it when the novel is to bed. A teaser. The title is Unoccupied.

And I definitely do hope this is my last novel. My last complex, layered, go for broke kind of project -- and that I move back, in what little writing I may be doing, into smaller, easier arenas of creation, easier to understand and easier to write. But every writer has a few Finnegans Wakes in him ha ha. Serious novels are so damn  hard to write, so much is going on, language demands are so extraordinary, so many balls to have in the air at once, the writer as super juggler. Gives me a headache just thinking about it.

And I did it! Now to see if the effort is wasted or worth something.