Click to Subscribe
Crackpotglyphics
Writing Exclusively, Fulltime
© 2018 James LaFond
APR/15/18
I have written more than a book on writing, largely because smarter people than I, with a better grasp of their subject and of this confounding language I am still struggling with, have often asked me, how I write so much.
For me the question of how much is the same as how good. I’ve never been good at anything without doing a lot of it. My indulgent editor, Lynn, a maternal creature with a far larger brain than I possess, warned me, that when I moved, I would hit a writing skid and that I would find my rhythm within a month and I did, and here it is. Mind you, I have yet to plug in my desk top, which was the foundation of my previous writing system and have been writing in this tiny, $140 laptop which will be my platform for 3 months of the year as I travel.
I failed to consider how much my mind had wrapped around my urban living arrangement and how much shock a materially better arrangement would be to me.
I no longer have to journey the streets of Baltimore City and Baltimore County on foot at night.
I no longer have to gear up for combat to walk to the grocery store during the day.
I now have duties around the house, for I earn my cheap suburban rent by cleaning all three floors of this house once a week and caring for the Rotwieler and Greyhound. I even cook once a week, a ritual keenly observed by the two “pups” as the stocky one squats on his haunches glaring and the lanky one leaps like a kangaroo and prowls slathering, eying me and the crockpot [my only cooking implement] as if to say, “Your hairless primate ass is feeding us some of that master chow or we’re getting Paleolithic on yo ass!”
I have gained leadership of this makeshift pack, they now answer to “Boys,” as if they are my own bodyguard, and I expect them, once I leave town for the summer, to kidnap Mister and Mrs. Rich tie them up, seize the lap top and begin emailing me for recipe advice and on Mister Rich’s encrypted computer.
Just in case this falls through, I’m buying them fitted hats and sunglasses so they can go to the pound in style. However, I think whatever pound that the Riches would exile their four-legged children to would exceed my standard of living by at least 20K a year…
So what is my writing schedule?
Well, dude, once a week I do this, stay up 24 hours by calibrating caffeine and alcohol to produce a toxic storm in the brain. I am seriously considering getting the dogs drunk, slaughtering the males in the neighborhood, dragooning the old women into dog slaves and appropriating the young ones for my own use…but this is unfortunately not a fiction piece…
As I sit here in the wine cellar surrounded by $200 bottles of 20 year old scotch and unthinkably ancient wine, it occurs that most of my nights are spent snoring. The other morning, after staying up all night listening to Myth of the 20th Century, I was awakened by—my own snor—in the middle of a dream about using a chain saw to clear Mirkwood for Bilbo Baggins, but the thing kept on jamming, which was sleep apnea, I know. I noticed the strident barking of the beastly canines and wondered if our master had been way-laid on his way to his Audi. Staggering out of bed, tripping over my saber, failing to fining my jockstrap, but locating a sock that served as a makeshift Mek penis sheathe, I went looking for the head of the household only to find out he was still in the shower and not yet off making his millions. Sliding down the stairs in one bare foot and one silk sock—the other one you know where—I came face-to-snout with the wannabe pitbull and the fanged kangaroo, who were barking, “Get the fuck, up you old ape, we haven’t had any hot food since you started crawling down that bottle of rum last night—wake the fuck up already!”
So my week begins, emerging from a lethargic fantasy rescue of my master from the hoodrats assailing him to the reality that I’m the slave of his fucking beastly pets…
Monday begins with waking up tragically sober and cooking something actually devourable by the rarified landlord while keeping the beasts at bay with super soaker gun loaded with his wife’s body wash.
Then, after I throw them some meat scraps, I wait until a squirrel is within striking distance in the yard and let them out, of course, just like the negroes I used to manage, they fuck it up. But I pat them on the head anyhow.
I then sit down in the patent leather recliner with my laptop on my lap, the mini greyhound head on my right hip and the block head on my ankles, to do posts. I no longer write and post on the same day.
This continues from 9 until 10, when I tell them I’ll be back and go for my walk.
Back from my walk, I write from 11 to 1:00.
I then either do a podcast, read or shag the retired nun up the street until 2:30.
At 3 I begin writing on heavier subjects until 6.
Then I either go shag the cheerleading coach—the actual cheerleaders are far too nubile for me to catch—read, or have dinner and watch Drugs Inc. or some Netflix show with Mister and Mrs. Rich.
Then it is off to bed.
The outcome of this is 3-6 articles per day.
I only publish 2-3 articles I write per day and 1-3 guest articles.
It seems my current word count hovers around 3,000 per day. This is less than the sometimes 7,000 word peaks I would hit on my previous schedule. But I am reading more and I am logging this word count seven days instead of 5.
Interestingly, I spend less hours writing than I did when I was poorly rested and working the grocery job and am producing at about the same rate.
Currently, in my book saves folder, I have, written over the past 5 weeks: 105 nonfiction articles, averaging 600 words, which need to be worked into various ongoing books.
Since last week I have adopted a more structured approach, where I have stored articles by subject in folders, with their own book save folders within them. The published and unpublished articles in each of the flowing categories are:
Masculinity: 1 to post, 4 saved
Plantation America: 4 to post, 12 saved
Harm City: 6 to post, 4 saved
Modern Combat: 3 to post 1 saved
Blog and Literature: 3 to post, 3 saved
Ancients: 4 to post, 1 saved
So, that is the writing week.
In late April early May, when I have enough articles written to post two a day on the website, 1 a week at the blog spot and 1 a week at patreon, for two weeks, I will try and finish 10 nonfiction titles in 14 days and bury my editor and proofreader for the summer, when I intend to finish the 7 ongoing novels.
That is pretty much a week in the life of a crackpot writer.
Writing Unchained
Prolific Writing by Design
Who Created These Norms Anyway?
Clown or Hyena, It Doesn't Matter to Me
The Pale Usher
Impressions of Moby Dick: Herman Melville and Modern Man?s Transcendental Journey
Kindle Edition:
‘His Own Red Fear’
blog
Blood in the Water
eBook
wife—
eBook
hate
eBook
ranger?
eBook
advent america
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
shrouds of arуas
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
dark, distant futures
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message