It is never good to lose a reader. I think I am a complicated basket case. Luckily I still have my arms and legs but my brain is that of a schizoid. Unintentionally I often create conflict, but that is the entire point of writing a novel. It probably gets old and don’t I know, we are all getting older. It is best to dare to dream regardless of what people think. I have been deeply tucked in my bed and I let my baked ideas wander and roam like a pack of wildebeest ready for slaughter. There is so many logical problems with what I want to do, but deep down, I think I am smart enough to actually accomplish the impossible. No longer is my drive women – but as I write that I wonder if I have burrowed so deep in my cave that my sex drive has been deprived of any need for human intimacy. But really, I just think I’m a better person that compulsive hormones. I am alone but never lonely. I drank three bottles of brown sugar and that is all the indulgence I would ever need. I pray for six more weeks of boring winter. My real vice is a blank page and spilling my blood to cover it like a Pollock painting. I am very bad at looking at analytics but I think I have something like 8 readers on any given night. Do you have any idea how much that little means to me? It’s not everything only because if it was nothing I’d still want to show off my online diary but you mean a lot to me. It is best to cherish the little things because they will give you back the belief that it won’t end how all the best writers I know died. The background on my phone is the last picture of Jack Kerouac taken by Allen Ginsberg in a Manhattan apartment. He is frowning. He died at 47 when his liver ruptured, an unhappy man I’m sure. Deep down I believe the poet is the only free man (though I am behind on my appointment to write my poetry if I am following the “everytime I find a poem in a book I write one” schedule). Even if you don’t like me, I have done enough with my life to not be a tragic hero. Nearly 5000 miles and there is still more to go. I am not in a rush to die even though it must seem like that from how much I bitch, but one must build pathos to delight in self deprecation. I’ve even wrote a few stand up jokes even though I am terrified of the stage even though one of my passions is public speaking. I hope you don’t think I am copying by thinking about becoming a teacher. With the rollercoaster that I have in store it will not occur for the next few years. The best thing I can say about myself (that I doubt everyone can say) is I’ve never copied anything, from an overdue essay to a romantic belief, I am 100% pure beef.
Revision – there is one sentence in my book that was not original…or was “inspired” by what someone else wrote who I knew. I may take it out of my second draft even if nobody knows because to me, it is like having a foot in a stew, it ruins the whole batch. God knows, it’s only practice.
Ben Bonkoske 