Journal 2000: Everything

By Joseph Sutton

Journal 2000: Everything covers the gamut of what goes on in a San Francisco writer's life and mind. It covers everything about writing, from becoming a writer to getting published to promoting a book to writing itself. It covers the close Bush/Gore presidential race of 2000, baseball and football, family, friends, exercise, touring Greece and Italy, Socrates and democracy, homelessness, the environment, arthritis—everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Sutton
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005697716

Joseph Sutton

Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

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JOURNAL 2000

Everything

by

Joseph Sutton

Copyright 2022 by Joseph Sutton

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Description

Journal 2000: Everything covers the gamut of what goes on in a San Francisco writer's life and mind. It covers everything about writing, from becoming a writer to getting published to promoting a book to writing itself. It covers the Bush/Gore presidential race of 2000, baseball and football, family, friends, exercise, touring Greece and Italy, Socrates and democracy, homelessness, the environment, arthritis—everything.

Friday, February 11, 2000

My Novel's Debut

This is my first journal entry of a new century and a new millennium.

What has happened since the new year began? Politics: It's Al Gore vs. Bill Bradley among the Democrats. I'm leaning toward Bradley, an ex- Senator, ex-New York Knicks basketball player, ex-Princeton graduate. I remember seeing him play in college and the pros. He was a solid ballplayer. I'd be satisfied if either he or Al Gore gets the Democratic nomination.

With the Republicans, it's between John McCain and George W. Bush. Bush was the big favorite until McCain destroyed him in the New Hampshire primary. McCain has momentum going for him now, but you never know in politics.

Our son Ray turned 19 this past Monday. We gave him a large check and took him out to dinner to Delfina in the Mission District. Not bad food, but expensive. The place was extremely noisy.

I found out from Creative Arts Book Company that my novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life, will be published this coming fall.

Friday, February 18, 2000

Java Beach Coffeehouse

I've been working on a story about the health junk mail that the postman delivers to our house on an almost daily basis. I started writing the story a few days ago and have put some humor into it. The gist of my health junk mail piece is about a man who is completely absorbed with receiving health junk mail that he refuses to think or care about his work, his wife, and kid. The only thing he cares about is his health. The guy is looking for the fountain of youth in a pill, can't seem to find it, but because of the persuasive letters and their testimonials he keeps ordering from different companies. Maybe I'll call the story The Health-Mail Man.

I was in a hiatus mood in 1999. The only thing I worked on was to rework, for the fourth time, an old novel of mine, Highway Sailor. I've got to start writing new material.

I'm sitting outside of Java Beach Coffeehouse at the western end of Judah Street. It's warm, there are no clouds, the sky is a beautiful light blue, the air is clean.

I sit facing the Great Highway. Ocean Beach is on the other side of the Great Highway. Two guys are conversing at the table to my left. They're talking about work. I heard one of them mention the word tired. Yeah, work can be tiring, but I like my work of writing.

The Muni streetcar comes to the end of the line where I sit and circles around to head back toward downtown. It keeps coming and going on this warm, T-shirt day. Pigeons, a whole flock of them, just settled on the telephone and streetcar wires. All of a sudden, as one, they start to circle up above, circle, circle, then land back on the wires.

I have written 29 journal notebooks dating back to 1970. It took me a year to start a journal after I began my writing career in El Cerrito on my 29th birthday in 1969. It was my good friend Gerry Dowd who put me up at his place in El Cerrito till I found my own place, which turned out to be a duplex I shared with John Coggen, a New Zealander and grad student in geology at UC Berkeley. John and I didn't communicate much. He left early in the morning and I wrote at a large desk in my room during the day. That was the beginning of my writing career in good old quiet El Cerrito at 616 Elm Street.

Monday, February 22, 2000

How I Became a Writer

How did I become a writer? My fourth grade teacher at Selma Avenue School in Hollywood, Miss Snyder, once complimented me in front of the class on my writing. She complimented me on both the content and neatness of it. I felt very proud of her praise.

There were always books around our house, mainly those of my oldest brother Charles, thirteen years my senior. He was like a father figure to me. I looked up to him like I would a hero. He was always buying me and my four brothers books. Reading has a lot to do with becoming a writer. I mainly liked biographies—how a famous person became what he became. I must admit that I never read a biography of a woman. It was men—explorers, presidents, football and baseball players, revolutionaries—that whetted my appetite, and still do.

At around the age of nine I started, on my own, to learn how to type. In our dining room was a small, sturdy table with an old, heavy, black Remington typewriter on it. Next to the Remington was a manual that came from a typewriting class. I'm talking 1949 here. The manual wasn't Charles'; he typed with two fingers. One of my three other brothers, Dave, Bob, or Maurice, must have brought it home from Bancroft Junior High. I followed the exercises in the manual, one page after another for about half the book in a period of about a year. So there I was, a kid of nine interested in learning how to type. Even though I had no thought of ever becoming a writer at that time, I'm pretty sure that learning how to type led to my becoming one.

When was the first inkling of my wanting to be a writer? I'll never forget it. It was after a football game my junior year between Fairfax High and Hollywood High, the last game of the 1956 season in which I had played extremely well at quarterback for Fairfax. Joanne Knopf came running up to hug and kiss me as I was walking off the field. Joanne was treating me like a hero. I remember saying to myself, I'm going to write about this someday.

My brother Charles must have been a tremendous influence on my becoming a writer. Forty years a journalist, he worked for the Wall Street Journal, El Paso Times, Los Angeles Times, and for the last fifteen years of his life, the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Charles died of a massive heart attack at the age of 63 as he