JP Dellova – Thoughts on Writing:

II – A friend’s unfavorable reaction to my BFF Blog entry; and my response

Mark – I read your piece on writing and helped me take a much needed nap at work and except for my head hitting the monitor it was a positive experience. Hmmm let’s see telling the world how smart you are, name dropping generals you played chess with who is clearly demented worrying about a sneak attack from the Canadians or Mexicans depending whether this was Maine or Texas (believe it was Maine). Plus showing off your knowledge of music and history and your incredible memory. You just want the rest of us to feel inferior….sort of I can’t write due to having too many ideas in my head but I’m still better than you are – even not writing – I get it. Too much sun, too much rain, I’d love to have a vegetable garden but I’m too lazy so I’ll hire kids to do it and pay them off with produce…yeah…fascinating stuff.

== JPD I guess it could be read that way. It wasn’t the way I intended it, what I was doing was writing the thoughts that went through my head as I wrote it. I happened to be listening to the Beethoven piano sonatas so that’s what I mentioned. I didn’t think I came off as seeming smarter than anyone else, but, oh well, I guess appearing to be smug and more intelligent is one disadvantage of being superior. ;–) I thought it was kind of boring too but my friend asked me to write something for his blog. I only had a couple of hours to do it in, and that’s what I came up with. As I said, I’ve been having trouble writing lately. I think part of it is my farming techniques, anxiety over my plants, and my own failure to get local kids to work for me on the promise of vegetables that have yet to show themselves.

And it was Maine, Loring AFB, which was part of SAC at that time. There wouldn’t be any point in dropping the man’s name because no one would recognize it. And in any case I don’t remember what it was. Anyway, I thought he was an interesting guy and I really did like him and I felt bad about the anguish and soul searching he had to do on a daily basis. It actually drove him nuts.

As for my incredible memory, I forgot my friend the general was only a full colonel when we had that chess game. A short time later he was promoted to brigadier general and, in that later chess game, he told me it was their way of quietly kicking him upstairs, where he couldn’t hurt anyone. It was one of the few times I saw him having a good laugh. He was being reassigned to an administrative position and he was thankful to no longer be directly involved in the bomber strike part of things. That was one of the last times I saw him.
Mark – Actually , of course, I do know you better than that and that you weren’t trying to impress anyone. Just stating things as fact. Just seemed to me that’s the way it would come across to most readers but maybe I’m wrong. You, as the older (much older) man probably understand these things better than me, the younger man. So I’ll bow to your senior (very senior) wisdom and accept that readers understand your inability to write is due to tomato plants and lazy kids unwilling to farm for a little produce. That a mind, such as yours, cannot help dredging up old Nazi’s and deranged generals who stop your creative spirit from expressing itself on paper. I get it now, thank you

== JPD Just drank a couple of glasses of Geritol and I’m feeling much better. Anyway, I agree about that piece, it would definitely be a rough draft and I offered it too soon, it needed a second draft.
If I’d had time for a revision I’d have mentioned that I like writing while listening to music, but without singing in English, which I find very distracting. So I listen to either solo piano, or chamber music because it flows in the background.

Naturally all music tells a story, if it’s worth anything the story is good, if not it’s just notes, like bad writing that is nothing but words. In the case of Beethoven all the stories are good – the occasional monstrosity, like Wellington’s Victory, would have been written deliberately because they made a lot of money, just like Shakespeare writing that terrible Titus Andronicus, but it made more money than any of his masterpieces.

So I should have said music sparks thoughts that help me write.
Also, that having a huge backlog of work needing to be rewriten hinders me from doing new writing, but explaining why would take more time and space than I wanted to spend on it, and more of both than I want to spend now for that matter.

The Beethoven piano sonata bringing back memories of that Austrian/American physicist was perfectly natural as the box set was a gift from him and his wife. I sort of touched on it, but not enough.

I’m thinking about rewriting that blog entry and putting those things into it, then sending it off as an essay. Something about the mental process of a normally productive writer who’s hit a snag – or at least what it’s like in my own case.

It’s good to write something like that once in a while, if for no other reason than to keep the creative process in perspective.
Mark – Now that’s brilliant stuff. That’s exactly what you could have (should have) said. That’s exactly what does happen and that’s exactly what can help with inspiration. Pity you didn’t put all that in. Everything you said hits the mark.

Still amazes me when you write at such a high level. Your last email was tens times better than your blog post.

== JPD – Appreciated.

– The next installment, if Wade agrees to post it, will be the rewritten original post.

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