Work in Progress

For decades, before I'd sit down to write anything, I would journal for a while to "warm up" and I've saved all those journals. Today they form a book that I did not know I was writing while I was writing bk at that time, I did not know how it would end. Now as I edit it and make it ready to ... publish, I may be writing the ending as it happens as well.
wow. cosmic
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It even has a beginning middle and end that it did not have as I was writing it but it has now.
It leads into the pedophile priest story.
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Kay Ebeling

March 5 at 7:59 AM · 

Having this incredibly wonderful experience. 
For years I carted around a pile of boxes, from L.A. to Albuquerque to West Virginia to Chicago back to L.A. and now up to South Lake Tahoe- for almost ten years. I’d ship them or store them one place for a while then cart them somewhere else. When I finally got into Tahoe Senior Plaza last June, I finally had the boxes all in one place, and for the first months I was here, they were piled like some nightmare sculpture in a corner of my living space. Finally I unpacked them into a forty dollar set of shelves I got on Amazon.
This amazing thing happened. I have journals and journals, some on yellowing paper in smudgy print from the portable Smith-Corona I carried with me when I hitchhiked from L.A. to Alaska and ended up in Texas in 1970.
The typing machines could be a theme in the book- yes it's a book that I found, already completed in one draft, now all I have to do is compile and edit it that is the wondrous thing-
The typing machines over the ages, from my Timothy Leary inspired ramblings on the portable, to hand written scrawled things that it will take me a while to read (some of it is in shorthand, yikes)
There is an entire book here. The pages of manuscript from beginning to end is four or five inches thick and most of it is Good Writing and believe me I am my own worst critic. It's good writing. It even has a beginning middle and end that it did not have as I was writing it but it has now.
It leads into the pedophile priest story.
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It even has a beginning middle and end that it did not have as I was writing it but it has now.
It leads into the pedophile priest story.
(felt like repeating that)
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I know it's bad luck to talk about a work in progress but in short, the book is about a forty year old free lance writer in L.A. suddenly coming up pregnant and everything that happened after that, leading up to Lizzie turning age five and me remembering what happened to me at the hands of Father Horne-y at age five and then … well that's the next book. And it's already written on my blogs starting here http://cityofangels3.blogspot.com
What's wonderful about this is that writing a book is So Much Work that it's daunting to me now.
Going through a Found Manuscript and editing it, knowing that you have an actual book manuscript draft one completed and THAT'S why you were carting those boxes around for so long- that's a whole nother thing.
I’d forgotten what was in the boxes, just knew I had to keep the boxes.
The experience is all documented there, even the period of weird isolation that led to me remembering what happened with Father Horne around the time Lizzie turned age five.
So this will be book one.
Plan now is not to try to get it published but to post it all on my blog because hardly anyone makes any money from their first book anyway so why deal with publishers who want Ronan Farrow not me.
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It leads into the pedophile priest story.
(felt like repeating that)
*
So last 6 hours I put the entire stack of stacks into a manuscript beginning to end. Next I start typing it into the machine. One page at a time. Watch this space for first posts when I put it on a blog, not sure which of Cityofangels 1-30 I am going to use. Stay tuned. It starts with me getting pregnant with Lizzie in 1987, ends with me looking up Father Horne at SF Library in archives in 1994... I have Draft One finished of an entire book manuscript and ... stay tuned.

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Throughout manuscript I found letters to editor and guest columns I wrote, even a period of dipping my feet into Right Wing politics around 1988, most of those letters are hilarious with skewed post partum logic.
I plan to elaborate and exaggerate on a lot of parts to make them funnier or otherwise.
great to have a project like this (see previous FB posts this AM) to occupy me and lift me up next few years.

Posting this story here:  (http://cityofangels15.blogspot.com/)