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Entries in publishing (8)

Monday
Sep092024

fear sells

Earth peoples, oceans wave,  celebrate life energy sex and harmonic forces, said Rita, What happened in the love hotel? Use your imagination.

They paid a woman 3,000,000 Yen through a slot in the door. She gave them a key. It unlocked Akiko’s chamber of secrets. The room featured an American wild-west motif with an Indian chief on a white horse. Very cute, said Akiko. They stripped each other down. They took a long hot herbal bath exploring geography with tender lust. They jumped each other’s bones. It was in-out dialogue, pure passion. Show doesn’t tell, said Z.

He toweled me down, said Akiko. I felt thick cotton noun fibers edge my thin shoulders, along my verb spine, weaving his fingers across my flat stomach, erasing, tracing water fingering my direct object jungle. Slow and easy baby, I sighed being his Shinto shrine as he gave me his offering. Our relationship ignored verbal language, said a blind Japanese masseuse in a love hotel.

 

What conflicts exist?

-Human vs. Human

-Human vs. Nature already mentioned.

-Human vs. ______><_______

-Human vs. self. Do I or don’t I? Will it eat me? Is it safe?

-Nature vs. Nurture

Will someone playfully deconstruct the truth with literal facts to move the narrative along and get to the mind-at-large awareness of his or her experience, said Tran.

I hope so, said Omar, A literary agent at a writer’s conference in Oregon said my writing was a word photograph jazz beat. She suggested throwing the narrative out.

She said and I quote, Pick one time or geographical place and flush out the narrative with more exposition. I would like to see character development and social and political realities in 60,000 words.

Yeah, said Rita, What did you say?

I told her some novelists do exactly the opposite of what they’re told because disobedience is freedom.

Beware of book doctors and blood thirsty greedy dictatorial aliens with an agenda, said Rita.

Ok, said Tran, How’s this sound? Write everything in the first five pages. Grab the reader with a hook in every sentence, at the end of paragraphs and at the end of chapters.

Yeah, said Grave Digger, WE need a hook, a big iron hook covered with dried blood hanging in the center of an empty Kampot market reminding genocide survivors what happens to them if they fuck up. They get a big fat rejection hook in the neck or through their trembling beating pulsating heart. Fear sells. Fear is a universal language.

Good idea, said Zeynep, Work fear, sex and growth into this. Readers need to keep turning pages. This work doesn’t flow from A 2 Z. It presents a form with a minimum of punctuation  ... punctuation is a nail. Is it an error or a mistake (part of a statement that is not correct) that’s a question for a linguist.

I love Linguini, said Devina, but he doesn’t love me. What else? Split the infinitive hairs. Infinity. Infinite. Finite. Dynamite.

Kids know eternity adults are scared of it, said Death. It’s long, cold and black. Nothing ever happens again.

Well, it’s ok to be horrible, said Z. Some writers give up because they want it to be perfect. You need to be passionate and persistent about your art without become obsessive-compulsive about it. A writer has grit and stamina. Do it because you love it. Make a mess. Clean it up and make another mess.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned, said Duchamp Ulysses Take Nothing For Granted. Kill your father. Marry your mother or versa visa. Push a stone up a hill. It rolls down. Push it up again.

We are all orphans sooner or later, said Rita, Speaking from my hard-lived sojourn, Experience is my teacher. The rest is just information.

Editing is a form of censorship, said Leo Told Story, waving a pile of rejection letters from lame stream mainstream upstream.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Wednesday
Jun012022

Chapter 15

Earth peoples, oceans wave,  celebrate life energy sex and harmonic forces, said Rita, What happened in the love hotel? Use your imagination.

They paid a woman 3,000,000 Yen through a slot in the door. She gave them a key. It unlocked Akiko’s chamber of secrets. The room featured an American wild-west motif with an Indian chief on a white horse. Very cute, said Akiko. They stripped each other down. They took a long hot herbal bath exploring geography with tender lust. They jumped each other’s bones. It was in-out dialogue, pure passion. Show doesn’t tell, said Z.

He toweled me down, said Akiko. I felt thick cotton noun fibers edge my thin shoulders, along my verb spine, weaving his fingers across my flat stomach, erasing, tracing water fingering my direct object jungle. Slow and easy baby, I sighed being his Shinto shrine as he gave me his offering. Their relationship ignored verbal language, said a blind Japanese masseuse in a love hotel.

What conflicts exist?

-Human vs. Human

-Human vs. Nature already mentioned.

-Human vs. ______><_______

-Human vs. self. Do I or don’t I? Is it safe?

-Nature vs. Nurture

Will someone playfully deconstruct the truth with literal facts to move the narrative along and get to the mind-at-large awareness of his or her experience, said Tran. I hope so, said Omar, A literary agent at a writer’s conference in Oregon said my writing was a word photograph jazz beat. She suggested throwing the narrative out.

She said and I quote, Pick one time or geographical place and flush out the narrative with more exposition. I would like to see character development and social and political realities in 60,000 words, Yeah, said Rita, What did you say? I told her some novelists do exactly the opposite of what they’re told because disobedience is freedom, Beware of book doctors and blood thirsty greedy dictatorial aliens with an agenda, said Rita.

Ok, said Tran, How’s this sound? Write everything in the first five pages. Grab the reader with a hook in every sentence, at the end of paragraphs and at the end of chapters, Yeah, said Grave Digger, WE need a hook, a big iron hook covered with dried blood hanging in the center of an empty Asian market reminding genocide survivors what happens to them if they fuck up. They get a big fat rejection hook in the neck or through their trembling beating pulsating heart.

Fear sells. Fear is a universal language.

Good idea, said Zeynep, Work fear, sex and growth into this. Readers need to keep turning pages. This work doesn’t flow from A 2 Z. It presents a form with a minimum of punctuation  ... punctuation is a nail. Is it an error or a mistake (part of a statement that is not correct) that’s a question for a linguist.

I love Linguini, said Devina, but he doesn’t love me. What else? Split the infinitive hairs. Infinity. Infinite. Finite. Dynamite. Kids know eternity adults are scared of it, said Death. It’s long, cold and black. Nothing ever happens again.

Well, it’s ok to be horrible, said Z. Some writers give up because they want it to be perfect. You need to be passionate and persistent about your art without become obsessive-compulsive about it. A sincere writer has grit and stamina. Do it because you love it. Make a mess. Clean it up and make another mess.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned, said Duchamp Ulysses Take Nothing For Granted. Kill your father. Marry your mother or versa visa. Push a stone up a hill. It rolls down. Push it up again.

We are all orphans sooner or later, said Rita, Speaking from my hard-lived sojourn, Experience is my teacher. The rest is just information, Editing is a form of censorship, said Leo Told Story, waving a pile of rejection letters from lame stream mainstream upstream.

Book of Amnesia V1

A flower has profound responsibility.

Sunday
Nov152020

Two Hearts

After detox and affirmations in Tacoma I accepted a new tennis teaching job at a Richland athletic club in the high eastern desert.

I lived between the Hanford Nuclear Reservation leaking toxic waste and a military high-grade uranium destruction site.

Sweet earth. Delicious water.

Glowing in the dark improved my writing visibility at night.

Clean and sober I wrote a small children’s book about trust and love.

Two Hearts On A Grand Precious Adventure has The Prince of Yogurt and the Princess of Chocolate on a quest for the beginning of the ocean. I self published it as an e-book.

I turned my attention to big work. I sifted through worn travel journals, old letters, faded yellow evidence papers, typed manuscripts, stories, fragments, poems, and photographs gathered from wandering Earth.

For two years I wove threads into a non-linear draft of epic adventures entitled A Century is Nothing.

I murdered my darlings and rearranged sentences in the farrago. They were stories about people telling stories about people in stories experiencing courage, transformation and impermanence.

I researched markets. I mailed out the synopsis with query letters. Fifty rejection letters from literary agents sang a refrain. “Sorry, doesn’t meet current mainstream needs. Too edgy. Needs more heavy, deep, real, personal Vietnam insight and growth. Fewer characters. Bottom line: I can’t make my 15% selling this.” Wallpaper. So it goes.

*

One morning I went to the Richland P.O. for stamps.

Taken from the Hubble Space Telescope they were named Eagle Nebula, Ring Nebula, Lagoon Nebula and Galaxy NGC 1316.

I enjoyed a stimulating discourse with a young unarmed postal woman about the amazing galaxies and how incredible it was to contemplate them living five miles away from fifty-five million gallons of buried radioactive waste left over from W.W. II seeping 130 feet down toward water tables along the Columbia River.

“Fascinating,” she said.

Editing material for my book I read a faded yellow page marked Top Secret Evidence.

“It’s called Technetium, TC-99m,” said an Indian scientist on a shuttle between reactors. “This is the new death and we know it’s there and there is nothing we can do to prevent it spreading.”

The waste approached 250 feet as corporations vying for energy contracts with D.O.E. discussed containment options and emergency evacuation procedures.

Scientists read Robert’s Rules Of Order inside the organized chaos of their well order communities. Hanford scientists, wives and children suffering terminal thyroid disease ate roots and plants sprinkled with entropy.

As the postal worker and I talked, a frantic mother yelled at her daughter, “DON’T touch the stamps!” because at her precocious age, curiosity about the expanding universe developed her active imagination.

Holding a Nebula space dust galaxy in my hand I told the postal woman how we are a third the life of a 13.7 billion year-old universe. She handed me change and said, “That’s interesting. I never looked at the stamps before.”

“What happens next?” said Plot.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

 

Ethnology Museum, Hanoi

Saturday
Dec142019

Write

“Beware of naysayers, soothsayers and book doctors,” said a kid. “We are together through thick and thin, health and illness. Writing is a disease. We lie for a living. We make things up and write them down. No editor will drink champagne from our skulls. We’re trapped in our bodies, this hospital and labyrinth. You’d think there’d be a word doctor around here moonlighting as a heart specialist. Shine on bright star.”

“Ok,” said the writer kid, “how’s this sound? Write everything in the first five hundred pages, uh, I mean five pages. Grab the reader with a hook at the beginning of every sentence, at the end of paragraphs and the end of chapters. Start and end sentences with a strong word.”

“Good idea,” said a kid, “keep them turning pages. What happens next is a reader’s quest.”

“People are born, live and die. People fart around. Nobody comes. Nothing happens. We are the architects of our actions and live with glorious or tragic consequences. Is this a fill-in-the-blank life test?”

“I only want you to bring two things to class,” screamed an overworked, underpaid, undersexed Hanoi teacher afraid of losing face in front of eighty robots. “Your ears.”

She pounded on a podium with her Marxist pedagogical elephant control stick, “Memorize the text idiots so you can vomit the material on a test.”

“I’m going to be sick,” said a bulimic kid.

“It’s ok to be horrible,” said a kid. “Some writers quit because they want it to be perfect. Many never start. Many never finish. It ain’t about starting, it’s about finishing. Write your dash between birth and death. You need to be passionate about your work without being obsessive-compulsive. Do it because you love it. Make a beautiful fucking mess. Clean it up and make another beautiful mess. Release the monster into the world.”

“Yeah,” said Tran, “a work of art is never finished. It’s abandoned. Like an orphan.”

“Editing is a form of censorship,” said a kid waving a rejection letter. “You don’t want to make the reader work too hard, do you?”

“No, most humans are lazy. Obese, addicted to fast food, screen visuals, social web sites, FaceLost and sex texting with short attention spans. CONTROL owns them. No attention span? No problem.”

“Rewriting is writing. Be cold and unsentimental. Polishing is the party. Being a writer is like having homework every single fucking day.”

“What’s a word doctor?”

“Someone who red lines manuscripts,” said a blind kid waving a Mont Blanc 148 piston fountain pen splattering A- blood on everyone in their radius. “They kill words and sentences.”

“Writing is like digging a well with a needle,” said Orhan Pamuk.

“Punctuation is a nail. Period.”

“Just tell the truth,” said a Cambodian orphan boy, one of 12,000, “and then you don’t have to remember what you said.” His parents rented him to an NGO on weekends for donor sympathy advertising.

“The truth is I need a fix. Does anyone have any spare drugs?” said a gazebo group addict, “I need to get out of here and mainline an adventure.”

A Vietnam veteran screamed, “More drugs, nurse, more drugs. I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been somebody.” A nurse shot him up.

ART

Burma

Monday
Jun032019

Suicidal Clare

A cell phone sang on the train between Marrakesh and Tangiers.

Omar rummaged in his robes. A depressed suicidal woman named Clare in Washington State was on the Suicide Hot Line. It may as well have been shit out of luck S.O.L. He switched from Arabic to English.

“Yes?”

“I am trying to save my insecure relationship from jealousy.”

“Jealousy’s a disease. It eats people alive. What are you looking for?”

“I am looking for love and meaning. Can you help me?” She had all the questions.

“I am only an emissary between people. Between you and your dream.”

“It’s a nightmare. What’s going to happen to me?” 

“You’d best be prepared for armies of touts, hustlers, beggars, thieves and economically loveless destitute men. They will want to escort, guide, lead, and administer their opportunity,” he said.

“Will they be gracious or benevolent with their tricks, traps, deviations and detours offering fake potential to save me? Will their well formed greed based on my desire, an illness of imaginary needs plead for my attention deficit disorder?”

“Yes. Eight hours on the ground in Morocco will seem like twenty-four. You’ll become a character in your own low budget film. It will open in small art theaters. You’ll be all the characters in the comic tragedy.”

Listening to Omar, I imagined everything as the suicidal woman’s voice assaulted the blind man.

Clare was too poor to pay attention.

She was beat. Omar knew Clare would be an expendable extra in an independent film. If she didn’t get real smart real fast she’d be lost in the drama. She needed a new identity theory. She’d change her name to Clarification.

The story was complicated with many jump cuts.

I remembered Ann, a New York literary agent’s advice. “Keep the big themes in mind and give us strong narrative structure.”

“Why? It’s not linear or logical.”

“I can only represent you if your work has these ingredients. Publishers want books for a general readership. It’s a tough market now. 175,000 books were published in this country last year.”

“I’ve survived markets in many countries Ann. It’s a miracle I’m alive to tell the tale. Traditional publishing is all about marketing, branding, product, price and placement with a hook.”

“True. It’s too disjointed and sporadic as it stands. You need to express more artistic and emotional beauty. I expected more from your time in Vietnam. I want to feel what you felt. I want you to expose your vulnerability. I want to detect patterns and opportunities.”

“Vietnam was FUBAR, Ann. Like Iraq, like any conflict.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”

“Oh, I see.”

“This is honest work Ann. Memoirs and stories are about hunger. Some are even about food. This is edgy gonzo shit. It blends creative nonfiction with memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, social autopsy, and magical realism. I’ve asked myself, who or what has come alive? I’ve let it speak. I’m a conduit.”

“Tighten it up and send me your revisions. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this business. I need to make 15% off your genius because I’m the expert. What else are you working on?”

“At the moment I’m traveling with Omar, a blind Touareg Berber from Morocco who lives in a Spanish cave with a tribe of survivors after 9/11. He’s one hell of a storyteller and we’re sharing tales. He’s given me a stack of paper higher than Everest to read and revise. His daughter is a word-weaver working on a new narrative structure in an isolated Spanish pueblo. Together we’ve weaved 180,000 words so far. It’s about levels of personal and spiritual awareness, emotional growth, 9/11 repercussions, economic terrorism, religion, cultural prejudice, and healing.”

“What’s your hook in fifty words?”

“How oral traditions, myths, and truths are passed in verbal form from generation to generation in a metaphorical way. Stories are primarily a comic vehicle for moral instruction or spiritual guidance. Tragic narratives have been overused since the Greeks and Europeans. A tribe’s customs and structure...Themes are healing, authenticity, awareness, alienation, loneliness, boredom...it’s just a fucking book for God’s sake ...sheets of paper inside two pieces of cardboard...we’re breaking up Ann. I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him, this blind muse of a seer. I’ll call you when I get back to the states of conspicuous consumption. To the states of amnesia.”

Meanwhile, Clare changed long distance carriers to get a better plan. She failed to plan and planned to fail.

She whispered to Omar on a tenuous connection, “I played a willing manipulative victim. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted people who loved me to feel guilty and responsible for my suffering. My life is fear and ignorance. I collapsed inside my chaos, fear and grasping. I had to ask for help.”

“I see,” said Omar in a clear clairvoyant voice.

“I tried a walking meditation. It was really hard. I crawled. I walked. I tried to run. I collapsed into the quicksand of my neurosis. I wanted to fly like an eagle. My monkey mind went nuts. I slowed down sensing a new beginning inside me, inside my life. I walked on the curvature of the earth.”

“Marvelous. You have to break down before you break through.”

“I need to see you,” she said. “Where can I find you?”

“At Paleolithic caves south of Ronda.”

Before their connection died Clare related a quick story.

“There was a horrific accident.”

“What happened?”  Omar knew what he didn’t know.

God and Allah and the devil are in the details.

“Crazy men took planes and crashed them into city sky scrapers. The big apple.”

“I see.” He paused to hear more. It was a learning tool he picked up moving through the world’s worst nightmare manifesting historical fairy tales where Poverty and Wealth raised children named Expectations.

“Yes,” she said, “it was shocking.”

“Has the healing started?”

“Healers are working overtime. It’s going to take forever,” she stammered.

“Yes,” he said, “17,000 children in the world starve to death every day. Poverty is the real terrorism.”

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s just a thought.”

She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. Media masters in her right wing country had assembled their militant word/image arsenal and persuaded, cajoled, sold, exchanged, blasted, admonished, punished, harangued and scared them shitless, informing them how it affected their little world.

They ate fear like there was no tomorrow.

She was one weak sister. Being depressed and suicidal didn’t help. Friends, family and media convinced her the world was one huge scary place and she was a small expendable organism. Her habitat was on a well-exploited fault line. They sold her fear, healthy doubt and compassionate uncertainty in a nice neat little package. She consumed the whole enchilada.

“Omar and his friends knew many would remain in their complacent darkness,” said a veiled woman in the compartment.

They turned to her.

“It was very comfortable there. They would always live in shadows, oblivious to historical truths blinded by five senses, colors, sights, sounds, vibrations and frequencies. They were transparent sheep. It went right through them. Clear through.”

“How do you know this?” said Omar.

“Their world is made of glass, their vision obscured by ignorance and compliant stupidity. They needed a large dose of painkillers and glass cleaner for their belief windows. Tears softened their pain. They wiped down the days of their demise,” she said looking out windows flashing their reflections. She had old deep wise eyes.

“How do you see this prophecy?” said Omar.

“My name is Rose. I am a seer. I was born in the dark of the moon. I remember the future.”

“Where do you come from and where are going?”

“I’m like you and your companion here. Passing through.”

The three of us were very comfortable with the dark arts, energies and manifestations.

The Heart Sutra said, ‘emptiness was form and form was emptiness.’

Weaving A Life Volume 4