E THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE BLOGGER

It's all so solitary. Writing by yourself into a machine to people who may or may not exist in the real world. In a way it's re-channeling your loneliness into a national pastime, or at least a little league team. The meager amount of feedback feels like a direct insult. The less feedback I get the more I get to feed back on myself, the more LA does not transmogrify itself into SF. The silences between thoughts are interesting. I don't know if I have ever taken more than a minute between sentences before I thought about what I was going to say, nor have I taken a minute afterwards to examine what I did say, assuming I could understand it. I have many deep existential and emotional issues in my life now. And writing intimately without allowing them in the door becomes a kind of meditation. Often it is not one' s loneliness that is the problem but the way one thinks about one's loneliness that is the problem. Having been in publishing for over 25 years (I think I've fed you that tidbit before, don't get excited), whenever I have wanted to do any personal writing, I have had to force myself out of the box where you can criticize what you have done or I would never get past the first sentence, which I would mark up, say, "This sucks" and stop. LA may suck too but it will suck by its own standards, not those of publishing. I am reading a novel that I am very much enjoying. It is a realistic novel about a character I like and to whom things happen. I lose myself in the book. My mind makes the scenes real. But I know if I hone in close enough I will see toothpicks and paperclips holding up the scenery and the strings coming out of the character's mouths. Does this destroy my enjoyment of the novel? No more than a hiss or a click coming from my ipod would destroy my enjoyment of a piece of music. I require novels with all their paraphrenalia to get me out of the world sometimes and I accept their contrivances and conventions. But LA abandons the training wheels and bannisters though it dramatically aspires to many of the goals of the novel--to find readers who enjoy and relate to it. As one gets older (and this one is getting older) one increasingly respects the habit of habit. LA has become a habit for me. I wonder whether it will bring me enlightenment or exhaustion. Perhaps enlightenment is exhaustion. But as I have been saying for the past week or so, the floodgates are open, the words are pouring out and the author has no intention of stopping as long as he is physically and mentally able to continue. And to you, my real or imaginary readers, I leave a pile of pastepots, rubber bands and paper clips.SWEET.