Writing is It's Own Reward

Henry thinking—holy fuck come on people! Nobody reading his stories @ Busted on Empty anymore—

Henry’s last two stories only eighty hits between them, he was averaging two hundred hits per story before—he didn't know why people were losing interest in his work.

Why keep writing?—There was nothing  in it for him. 

Henry old, his body ached inside and out, weedy and weak-kneed,  everyday a endeavor.  

Booze and dope a temporary fix.  Henry— a life of misdirected addictions, he was fragile and bedazzled.

Nothing he loved worked anymore, the magic evaporated.

Henry wasn’t grousing, this self-depreciating expose— an exercise  in literary method. 

Literary method a phrase he invented a few seconds ago, it was his method of checking his wits. 

His work neither apropos or spot-on. 

Henry didn’t write for money or glory, none of that for him— he wrote because he wanted to be read.

Writing is its own reward.

– Henry Miller

Henry Junked on Beer

Henry drunk some, at it again, listening to the Rolling Stones, junked on beer.

Lately, unable to write without a drink, needing to get mildly intoxicated to pull it off.

It was months between stories,  Henry lazy, uninspired. 

The other day a fan of his work, John May, sent him a SMS on Facebook.  John said he loved Henry’s stuff—John loved all the real stuff out there—Bukowski, Hunter Thompson,  William Burroughs.

John asked him why he didn’t write more, Henry could only say he felt tapped out, in a vacuum. Ten years of writing and not a word from anyone, John was the first.

Henry was a big fan of Herbert Hunke—

Hunke a Times Square and Coney Island junk/ hustler for allot of years. Hunke junked the beats for the first time, Burroughs took to Junk like a pro. 

Burroughs wrote on Junk, way out there,  cranked up, it moved him, he was on the moon. He could see the future.

Henry wrote on beer like Bukowski, Junk too much for Henry. 

Bukowski saying—

“Stay with the beer,  beer is continuous blood, a continuous lover.”

Bukowski, Indian cigarettes, beer and wine, late night writing sessions with Beethoven and Brahms on the radio.

I was fairly poor

but most of my money went

for wine and 

classical music.

I loved to mix the two 

together.

Henry like a steam engine moving slowly down the track, rolling steady. 

Writing was music and melody, splashing paint on paper, it got easier.