The Writer I Was, 1983

 I was going through a box and came across this photo of me, taken in Cox’s Mills in 1983 or 1984. I was 25 or so years old. Some things about the photo:

1. Three clocks and they are all set differently. This is something I would do in my Youth, a nod maybe to the Modernists or something. Or maybe I was just trying to keep track of when the bars closed. (No bars in Cox’s Mills, though).
2. A black & white tv my dad got me for Christmas in 1974 or so.
3. On top of the tv and beneath the clock are some envelopes containing notes on my novel-in-progress. Each envelope contains notes and drafts for a different chapter--an inefficient way to organize your work. Don't try this at home!
4. Beneath my work shirt, I am wearing a Gutter Brothers t-shirt. At some point I will do a post about the Gutter Brothers and Lowell Mick White Night at the Tex Lounge….
5. The typewriter is a Smith-Corona I bought when I started college c. 1976 or so.
6. The poster in back is for Bow Wow Wow when they played the Opry House in Austin. And it’s signed by Annabella! (Don’t know where that poster is now, sadly).
7. I think that's an outline of my novel on the wall next to Bow Wow Wow.
8. That’s a wooden giraffe on the windowsill.
9. Got my copy of War and Peace handy. It’s the Norton Critical Edition, Maude Translation. I might well have been typing up inspirational Tolstoy mots.
10. The loose-leaf binder holds the novel I was working on. On the cover of the binder? My backstage pass to the Clash! (From June, 1982).
11. In the foreground, a pamphlet of West Virginia hunting and fishing regulations.

The most remarkable thing: How fracking skinny I am! If anyone has a time machine, please go back to 1983 and buy me a pizza.

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​You might be interested my novel about West Virginia--BURNT HOUSE.

Read it now!