The writing game is a biotch.

What at 8AM seems like light, breezy brilliance with some great laugh lines, a message to make you cry, and a cliff hanger at the chapter end, looks, by evening like arrogant, mean-spirited drivel with an offensive remark in the middle guaranteed to prompt a lawsuit. Better try another draft, dude. But, oh, wait. You’ve already hit send. You’ve published this time bomb in public.

This is the time to be thinking about the future, the person you’ve become, and how you might want to alter course and maybe clean up some messes. What messes? How to prioritize? Because you can’t deal with all of them.

Well, how about the mess made by publishing stuff about the SalMar Construction, which has a narrow audience but steady traffic, on the same page that bears a link to that whacky fake memoir with all of its potential to mislead and do damage? You can plainly see in the stats that someone (something?) is getting from Sal to Cal and eating into that funky stew of ribaldry, illegal activities and the ghosts of years yet to come. If these shadows (er, links) remain unaltered, your font may dry.

Ah, but is this paranoia about things that will be or about things that may be? What’s so bad about the not- so-general public reading that book? You yourself know full well that it’s well-nigh unreadable and it fizzles out at the end. What’s the harm in letting the occasional musicologist have a go? At least that reader would get the harmonic analyses. Perhaps that’s not the mess most foul.

This is the time to fire up the iChing Online and take a reading.

The question: ‘what is the effect of sharing?’
It’s kind of general, but you know what you mean.

The result of the six clicks of meditation:
The kua Sun (the penetrating wind).

A beautiful image, and as it so often seems, right in line with the nature of my inquiry. I decided to write a novel. I need to persist and see where the process leads. I promised myself I’d write about Sal Martirano and the SalMar (and the tapes), and I’ve begun to do that in a tentative way. Small, persistent focused effort on both fronts. Success eludes. I’ve consulted my wife and reached out to writers I respect. I haven’t talked to a lawyer. But do I need one? And I’m consulting the iChing.

There’s a pair of changing lines, and as the rules have it, the old yin predominates.
The yin line in the fourth place:

Wow. Not the harsh I was feeling. But quips about game hunting need professional analysis from iChingers of greater experience. Willhelm-Baynes:

Not hard to plug that into the metaphor. Writing is an offering to the gods. What? It’s good for my soul to persist, it’s good for the readers of my words (guests) and it might make us some money (everyday consumption)? My question was not solely about the writing. I was asking about putting myself out there in general, in all its complexity. A kitten whispered this idea into my ear.

The change comes to rest in the kua Ting (the caldron).

From W-B:

In other words, you’ve got to ‘know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.’

Do I know? When will I catch on? Have I ‘acquired an intuitive sense of what can and cannot be?’

I have my doubts. I doubt my doubts can set me free. And this is what is, to use my new vocabulary in a sentence, harshing my mellow.