First Post about Writing

Writing about writing seems kinda lahdedah hi-toned nonsense, but so is writing about one's self. Hell, I guess I'll just commit both sins of pretension at once.

I was talking to a WWWIHHI last night, Woman With Whom I Have Honorable Intentions. So let me coin an abbreviated acronym right here and now: WiHi.  So I was talking to this WiHi and she said in reference to a book she wants to write that she feels "a sense of obligation" to writing it. I can see that.  Some stories, and I am sure hers qualify, must be told.

I wrote my first book, SURFING VIETNAM  as an apologia (look up the word; it does not mean "apology") for a youth spent in a very confusing and often self-destructive search for "the light". I felt an "obligation" to write this for any children I may have spawned in a youth spent sowing some wild oats. No, I do not know they exist for sure. Surely it is one of the curses of approaching old age that one writes an apologia.

The second novel  HOW TO KILL YOUR WIFE is a highly imagined and extremely fictionalized account of a divorce I am familiar with. The emotional tone is true, the details and facts are made up. It is not an apologia, it is a toilet flush.

The detective series I am engaged in now, the first volume of which is FOUR JOHNS AND A JILL,  I first wrote as a screenplay.  I felt this series had no particular personal or social value except as a fun entertainment and a possibly profitable venture. As I write the second book, I am seeing the relationship between the two characters (both extreme types) within a Jungian framework of male and female archetypes. As the series progresses, my two detectives will explore a lot of issues concerning sexual identity and integration and balance within the personality.  And still be fun to read!!!