Edd's Gatherin' Place

The following post titled appropriately comes from my original blog From the Hart dated November 22, 2004 – a long time ago but it feels like yesterday:

Rage – The American Heritage Dictionary defines rage as the following: 1.a. Violent anger, b. A fit of anger, 2. Furious intensity, as of a storm or disease. Rage of frustration, helplessness, and self-pity struck me like a lighting bolt from the sky last week for the second time since sometime in late September 2001. I went into a self-pitied, asinine rage literally wiping out my Novelette and Novel, all 16 chapters, and destroying their respective back-up disks because of my increasing inability to think coherently and continued bouts of confusion - the Coup de Grâce for over two years worth of writing.

After an extensive writing campaign on my Novelette – due November 30, 2004 – and my Novel all day Wednesday and late into the morning, Thursday raged across the landscape similar to, “The Perfect Storm.” Words raced across pages as if a herd of notoriously and dangerous rogue elephants frighteningly rampaged across an African plain directly towards me while I perched directly in front of them on the pinnacle of a deep canyon. The writing was pure garbage, inconsistently driven, deviating from plot lines, and at times looking like pure gooblygook.

Today finds me grotesquely critical of my impotency and the irrationality of my actions. Two words come to mind when thinking of the finality of destroying these works, statutorily senile. Back in 2001, soon after hearing from the Mayo Clinic of my rare brain disease, I went into the attic removed all my Journals kept since the age of sixteen and literally set them afire in the open field behind our house and then again erased all electronic entries made on my computer. Eventually a hacker friend of mine helped me restore three-fourths of the electronic journal but unquestionably, the paper journals fell to the heat of the fire.

My wife knows but now comes the disappointing and difficult task of informing my publisher. I do have a knack of getting myself in these cockamamie and constricted positions on such a sweeping regularity it’s almost comical if it wasn’t so downright bizarre.

UPDATE, November 26, 2005, 6:58 PM: As of yet the publisher has not made a final decision on the use of a Ghost Writer although it looks positive. Much depends on my willingness and me - I am not yet 100 percent sold on the idea. Why, for the life of me, I cannot tell you the answer. After over a year and rewriting the outline and summary several times along with edits, etc., I am not as mentally up to the challenge with all the initial damage I did to the manuscript. My disparaging nature still abounds in all its cynical glory when thinking of The Day of Flames.