To that I'm afraid I had no comeback.
June 19th, 1995 (Bangor)
Tabby and I just got back from the Bangor Auditorium where our youngest (and about four hundred of his classmates) finally got a diploma. He's now officially a high school graduate. Bangor High and the Bangor Rams are behind him. He'll be starting college in the fall and then Tab and I will have to start dealing w/ the ever-popular Empty Nest Syndrome. Everybody sez it all goes by in the wink of an eye and you say yeah yeah yeah ...and then it does.
Fuck, I'm sad.
Feel lost. What's it all for, anyway? (What's it all about, Alfie, ha-ha?) What, just a big scramble from the cradle to the grave? "The clearing at the end of the path"? Jesus, that's grim.
Meantime, we're headed down to Lovell and the house on Turtleback Lane this afternoon - Owen will join us in a day or two, he sez. Tabby knows I want to write by the lake, and boy, she's so intuitive it's scary. When we were coming back from the graduation exercises, she asked me if the wind was blowing again.
In fact it is, and this time it's blowing a gale. I can't wait to start the next volume of the DT series. Time to find out what happens in the riddling contest (that Eddie blows Blaine's computerized mind with "silly questions" - i.e., riddles - is something I've known for several months now), but I don't think that's the major story I have to tell this time. I want to write about Susan, Roland's first love, and I want to set their "cowboy romance" in a fictional part of Mid-World called Mejis (i.e., Mexico).
Time to saddle up and take another ride w/ the Wild Bunch.
Meantime, the other kids are doing well, although Naomi had some kind of allergic reaction, maybe to shell-fish...
July 19th, 1995 (Turtleback Lane, Lovell)
As on my previous expeditions to Mid-World, I feel like somebody who's just spent a month on a jet-propelled rocket-sled. While stoned on hallucinatory happygas. I thought this book would be tougher to get into, much, but in fact it was once more as easy as slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes, or those Western-style short-boots I got from Bally's in New York 3 or 4 years ago and cannot bear to give up.
I've already got over 200 pages, and was delighted to find Roland and his friends investigating the remains of the superflu; seeing evidence of both Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail.
I think Flagg may turn out to be Walter, Roland's old nemesis. His real name is Walter o'Dim, and he was just a country boy to start with. It makes perfect sense, in a way. I can see now how, to a greater or lesser degree, every story I've ever written is about this story. And you know, I don't have a problem with that. Writing this story is the one that always feels like coming home.
Why does it always feel dangerous, as well? Why should I be so convinced that if I'm ever found slumped over my desk, dead of a heart attack (or wiped out on my Harley, probably on Route 7), it will be while working on one of these Weird Westerns? I guess because I know so many people are depending on me to finish the cycle. And I want to finish it! God, yes! No Canterbury Tales or Mystery of Edwin Drood in my portfolio if I can help it, thank you very much. And yet I always feel as if some anti-creative force is looking around for me, and that I am easier to see when I'm working on these stories.
Well, enough w/ the heebie-jeebies. I'm off on my walk.
September 2, 1995
I'm expecting the book to be done in another five weeks. This one has been more challenging, but still the story comes to me in wonderful rich details. Watched Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai last nite, and wonder if that might not be the right direction for Vol. #6, The Werewolves of End-World (or some such). I probably ought to see if any of the little side-o'-the-road video rental places around here have got The Magnificent Seven, which is the Americanized version of the Kurosawa film.
Speaking of side-o'-the-road, I almost had to dive into the ditch this afternoon to avoid a guy in a van - swerving from side to side, pretty obviously drunk - on the last part of Route 7 before I turn back into the relatively sheltered environs of Turtleback Lane. I don't think I'll mention this to Tabby; she'd go nuclear. Anyway, I've had my one "pedestrian scare," and I'm just glad it didn't happen on the Slab City Hill portion of the road.
October 19th, 1995
Took me a little longer than I thought, but I finished Wizard and Glass tonight...
August 19th, 1997
Tabby and I just said goodbye to Joe and his good wife; they're on their way back to New York. I was glad I could give them a copy of Wizard and Glass. The first bunch of finished books came today. What looks & smells better than a new book, especially one w/ your name on the title page? This is the world's best job I've got; real people pay me real money to hang out in my imagination. Where, I should add, the only ones who feel completely real to me are Roland and his ka-tet.
I think the CRs* are really going to like this one, and not just because it finishes the story of Blaine the Mono. I wonder if the Vermont Gramma with the brain tumor is still alive? I s'poze not, but if she was, I'd be happy to send her a copy...
July 6th, 1998
Tabby, Owen, Joe, and I went to Oxford tonight to see the film Armageddon. I liked it more than I expected, in part because I had my family w/ me. The movie is sfx-driven end-of-the-world stuff. Got me thinking about the Dark Tower and the Crimson King. Probably not surprising.
I wrote for awhile this morning on my Vietnam story, switching over from longhand to my PowerBook, so I guess I'm serious about it. I like the way Sully John reappeared. Question: Will Roland Deschain and his friends ever meet Bobby Garfield's pal, Ted Brautigan? And just who are those low men chasing the old Tedster, anyway? More and more my work feels like a slanted trough where everything eventually drains into Mid-World and End-World.