Notes - consciousness of characters / checking / Official title: Great Merlyn's Ghost /

         You have no words at present. (0923)

         1013 hours. Carol is The Children's Center at the First Baptist Church on West Fairmount taken Brennan in for an hour or two so he can get used to daycare once again. We will do the same tomorrow. Then tomorrow evening we are taking the cat and heading home for a few days.

         Last night you were thinking about deleting the part on the driveway to cut down the words in Pouch-3. Let's work on that first, then, run through all the chapters once again for reworks and/or corrections. - Amorella

         1311 hours. I have taken Pouch-3 down to 887 words and I am feeling much better about it.

         You feel embarrassed about your drafts because they are not so well written as they could be and you don't observe this at the time because you are relieved to have the draft completed. You are in somewhat the same mind mode as Friendly is at the conclusion of Pouch-3. She has a sudden almost overwhelming urge to run to safety, to return to HomePlanets. She does not wish to commit any errors in communication, even the slightest modifications of grammar, for fear the primates will misread her intentions to demonstrate that a like congenial species with heartansoulanmind exists in the same galaxy. Post. - Amorella

         Earlier you were considering a change of title to Merlyn Dead-an-Alive; or, Merlyn's Spirit. - Amorella

         On paper (figuratively) Merlyn Dead-an-Alive appears more immediately interesting. I also thought Great Merlyn's Ghost might be a good title, of course this was sometime in the middle of the night when imagination jumps down from the ceiling or up from under the bed. Some might catch the allusion to Shakespeare's line: "Great Caesar's ghost," from Julius Caesar and thus see this as a portent to disaster.

         Who is to say it isn't? Are you so arrogant to think your novel might prevent a calamity such as the rising of the Dead or the entrance of a conscious alien species walking into the world? Amorella

         I am more apt to think my novels have nothing really to do with common reality. This is another experimental attempt at better communicating unconscious and conscious self-expression. Irony is the only feature I see traveling through the four chapter sections. I am no longer angry. Satire is out. I hope the wordiness is out too.

         Just checking, orndorff. Post. - Amorella         

         1630 hours. I am ready to have a title.  I like Great Merlyn's Ghost as it is in its simplest, a ghost story. I need two other titles though and I'd like to have them in my head.

         How about the Roman numerals I,II,III. This keeps it simple, only one title for three books. - Amorella

         I find no such book title on the Internet. I know titles cannot be copyrighted so I'll go with it.    

     

         My copyrighted books: Braided Dreams, Running Through, and Merlyn's Mind are being majorly reworked and will be republished [©2012 Richard H. Orndorff] under the titles: Great Merlyn's Ghost I, Great Merlyn's Ghost II and Great Merlyn's Ghost III.

         Looks good to me, boy. Post and we make it public.  - Amorella

         1731 hours. I have everything consistently organized on Page and presently it is 9928 in the three chapters. I have to go over the Prologue next.

         It would also be good to make a Page copy on Word for your overall Reading check. Keep these documents in one folder with the Near Final Page always copied to a Near Final Word. - Amorella

         1816 hours. I cannot get this to correlate. Both Word and Page have different criteria as to grammar.

         Stick with Page but keep the copied document in Word from Page. - Amorella

         2018 hours. We had dinner and were out buying yogurt for dessert. As I begin going over this manuscript. I can see this is not going to be completed before we leave tomorrow. I keep discovering error after error. Perfection is not on my mind but as this is to be a near final copy for now I feel the necessity of making even more corrections.

         You are concerned that you are too old for this focusing because you are not catching as many errors as you first thought. Mostly though you are becoming more cognizant of the tone and style you feel you need embedded between the lines to present the rightful presentation to the reader -- a "handwriting on the wall" so to speak. - Amorella

         I should not see this work as "handwriting on the wall", as a biblical-like statement from the hand of Ezekiel rather than the voice of Merlyn.

         That is how you see this revision nevertheless. - Amorella

         I know better.

         You know next to nothing, and you know you know next to nothing. - Amorella

         I am at a loss on how to amend myself to be matter of factual but not biblical (although I am not sure what biblical means here because I don't want any lecturing in here, no preaching from the mountaintop.

         Ezekiel had a purpose in book four. - Amorella

         So, that's what that was about . . . feeding my arrogance and superego. I really don't know where that comes from because I have never in life been prophet-like.

         Not true, at least one of your sixties poems was strongly influenced by Gibran's The Prophet because you thought Gibran's style was "really cool". - Amorella

         I did. This was in 1965-1966 before Fritz and Carol Milligan were married. I wrote them a poem in that style for a wedding present. I did not see myself as Gibran though. I am a romantic with too much imagination and drama. I guess I thought it would be fun to be like Moses in "The Ten Commandments". 

         Time for bed, boy. Perhaps it will take the weekend to complete this how it should be in your head, perhaps longer. Post. - Amorella