Fragments

We’ve pretty much settled into our new apartment a little farther up the Eastern seaboard. The new job assignment is good as new day job assignments go. (Hell, I’m just happy to be gainfully employed these days and thankful Hurricane Sandy wasn’t any worse for us than she was. Continuing thoughts go out to those still without power.) But the employment does nip into the publishing and writing game. Specifically, the writing. For someone like myself who could nail Jack London’s 1k a day with ease, I was lucky over the last month to even type, “Once upon a time.” Now the republic could probably stand it if I slowed down a bit. The latest Cash Laramie collections remain steady sales. So, it’s not product (cold word, but true) I’m worried about; it’s the worry about becoming razor-dull with my own chicken scratches. You understand, keeping the creative spark lit.

Enter James Bond.

Yeah, 007. Secret agent, License to Kill, and all that nifty Skyfall jazz. Always been a fan of Ian Fleming’s short stories. Not so much the full-length novels that have taken on iconic status, but the moodier, pithier pieces like “007 in New York,” “The Hildebrand Rarity,” and the Somerset Maugham homage, “Quantum of Solace.” You learn more about the famous spy and what makes him tick away from the gadgets and babes and villains with crazy names. So what does that have to do with me and writing?

Well, I have gotten this question several times—which side of the American Civil War did Cash Laramie (my anti-hero) fight on (or champion since he was only a tyke in 1861)? So, in little bursts over the last few nights I answered that question in a flash piece called “On the Death of President Grant.” Also, I found time to whittle a scene of Cash and Miles playing chess and discussing Twain’s take on Cooper’s literary offenses. These lil’ bits and two more flowed from fingertips to keyboard with zest. Kinda sorta my characters off the clock and, well, being normal Joes.

I’m sure a few of these will turn into longer pieces and others will be discarded. I am calling them fragments because that’s what they amount to at the moment. But they have served this writer well by keeping the blade sharp and, more importantly, just being fun to create. I have shaken and stirred the mojo. So for that, I say, thank you, Ian.

Jack London Excerpt & Quotes

Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone

Excerpt from MARTIN EDEN (1909):

It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machine likeness of the process. These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he had received hundreds of them—as many as a dozen or more on each of his earlier manuscripts. If he had received one line, one personal line, along with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been cheered. But not one editor had given that proof of existence. And he could conclude only that there were no warm human men at the other end, only mere cogs, well oiled and running beautifully in the machine.

Quotes

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."

"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog."

"I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate."

"Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?"

"I wrote a thousand words every day"

#

Special thanks to Matt Mayo for bringing to my attention Wolf: The Lives of Jack London. A terrific bio that is highly recommended.