Tri-image correspondence, the novel as pie, $3 pints of awesome

Wrote a poem called “Heights” combining the multiple-plane stacking effect of landing corridors over major airports, the architecture of my grandparents’ house, and the inescapable sounds of children scampering overhead here in my new Brooklyn home. It’s enough to make a fellow sure he’s right when he says kids irk him. Someday this attitude re: children will change. Today is not that day.

Wrote 2K words today, actually, and these attended to the main character Richard Moodie. (Oh, and it was pointed out to me that Richard might be the long form for Rick, in which case the writer Rick Moody and his relative fame will mean renaming my central character. Them’s the breaks.) & today was exciting as well because I’m beginning to set actual events into motion rather than just setting up. Exposition and history is fun, but I fear sometimes that I’m so attracted to it because it is the easiest way to write fiction and remain lyrical. Writing immediate scene—dialogue and actual activity—such that one remains true to the POV is one thing; writing POV-faithful immediate scene AND doing so in a lyrical way is another very different thing, it seems to me. While this is a potential problem for me as a writer—I’ve always struggled to make my fiction show and not tell, because telling for me verges on the natural—I am aware of it. I think I can counter it. I’m encouraged that I’m beginning to fill out the tasty middle of this big pie of a novel, even though I think the crust is the easier part to make, even from scratch.

These matters weighed nothing on my mind this afternoon; I wrote at a bar & café deal on 7th Ave. here in Brooklyn, downing one $3 pint of Brooklyn Brown Ale as fast as I could to try and get another one before, at 5 p.m., they wouldn’t be $3 anymore. I succeeded, barely. There was a golden retriever there beside me the color of old faded paperback edges who belonged to a Paul and Jamie-looking couple having an early meal. (Remember them, Paul and Jamie? NBC, Monday nights? Maybe 10 years ago?) He looked at me, I looked at him. His tail started up in anticipation of attention. I did what I could without petting him. Why do I get dogs? I really get them.