Graphomania

Is there such a thing as "graphomania"?  If so, I must suffer from it.  Just the other day it occurred to me that I have the following journals:

Dream Journal (Dr. Mingus)
Diary (Mariah)
Prayer Journal (this doesn't have a name)
This blog (Famous Hat)

That is on top of poetry, short stories, and novels.  Novels?  Yes, that's right, I am always in the process of writing a number of novels:

The Great American Ninja Novel - I can't describe this one, other than to say the only person who has ever read it besides me is Hardingfele, and she said, "That book was so weird I couldn't put it down!"  It does suffer from a cast of thousands and lack of discernible plot.  I am thinking of totally redoing this one as a murder mystery, but when I told Richard Bonomo that I also wanted to change the title to Hyperwhack, he said The Great American Ninja Novel was better.

Tribute to Charlie - this is about a poet, a philosopher, a pianist, a playwright, a policeman, and an archaeologist.  In case you are wondering, Charlie is the pianist.  And (spoiler alert!) the archaeologist lives six millennia after the others and is trying to find out if a legend is based on reality, which of course it is because it is the story of the other characters, the ones who have more P-ness to their vocations.  (I have had several glasses of wine - do you think anyone will be able to tell?)

She the Horse - just so you know, everyone hates the titles of my novels, especially this one about Osby English, who has antigeria - if in fact there is such a thing - so that he ages veeery slowly at the cellular level and is actually (spoiler alert!) 960 years old.  His current wife has no idea what is going on.  This one comes with a bonus short story, "Whoa Isme," about three bratty teenage girls who are actually (spoiler alert!) a clone, a Neanderthal, and the adopted daughter of space aliens posing as professors of Medieval Studies.

And then a whole series of thinly-veiled autobiographical novels about my typical Cathopalian childhood, my adolescence as the one kid from the 'hood in advanced classes, my college years of sex, drugs, and Baroque music, and my working life.  Also, two novels that are my autobiography if I were a fish:  After This Exile about an amazing thing that happened to me in Paris during World Youth Day, and In This Valley of Tears about my ongoing recovery from some sort of autism.  If those titles seem familiar, you are very astute:  I stole them right from the Salve Regina.

Oh gosh, and then there's the murder mystery Under the Dragon Tree, where the protagonist is a plant.  Maybe I should have Keith write this one.  Just so you know, these novels do all exist in partial forms.  I just never seem to finish any of them but GANN, and I keep rewriting that one anyway.  Maybe what it comes down to is I suffer from graphomania.

Famous Hat