Putting Word Factory into Production

John Lindquist

Portland, OR

October 27, 2018

Visiting friends in Portland gave me the opportunity to check in with underground writer James Boanerges. I have actually known Jimmy in one guise or another since college at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. I met him while studying philosophy and creative writing. He could write poems twice as fast and twice as good as any of the rest of us, and he would literally sit down in front of a computer and not get up until he had a finished short story. This phenomenon I was able to observe because he borrowed my computer for his assignments. His short stories related to youth and that transition to adulthood, but he seemed to find a way to slide in something that twists the way you thought the world worked. To put it bluntly, Jimmy was a writer worth reading, and the writer we all wanted to be. 

Even back then, Jimmy took what he calls the Salinger approach, and that the only thing that makes him a writer is that he writes. Quoting Jimmy fairly recently: “I write for the sake of writing, and I write what I want, the best I can write. If I had to take into account being published and being popular, I would have to surrender my creative freedom.” Even so, he has shared many of his short stories with select friends and family. Jimmy would print out a copy of his latest short story and let us pass it around; but we had to give it back. 

We know that he has written at least one novel. Years ago we were sitting around a picnic table at a backyard party when one of us asked Jimmy about the novel. He told us flatly that he threw it away. We questioned him, did he write, review, edit and rewrite a novel only to literally toss the completed manuscript into the trash? In true Jimmy fashion he answered flatly, “Yep.” 

We have always loved his work, and agree his stories deserve a larger audience. After years of pleading and cajoling for Jimmy to publish his fiction, I was able to convince him under the following conditions: he would write something new, it would be novel length, I would edit it and send it out to agents and/or publishers, he only had to write the one book he wished he could find at the bookstore to read. I admit this was kind of a trick because I’d removed his previous objections by effectively doing all the work except to write the book, and I created an audience of one: himself. 

He wrote the novel Word Factory; Social Construct Episode II. Editing his work was rather enjoyable. I gave him the name of Word Factory as well as one the slang terms I invented. When I reincorporated my company I borrowed the name of his fictious enterprise Social Construct, Inc. 

Where does Word Factory stand? There is already an offer from a publisher to put the manuscript in print. Jimmy’s response: cautious pessimism. He will only accept a deal with the right publisher; this one doesn’t feel right to him. 

As I wandered the stacks of books at Powell’s with him, I tried to feed his ego about possibly seeing his name on the shelf but he wasn’t having any of it. He took out a pencil and scribbled “Jimmy” on a USED sticker. “Now my name’s on the shelf,” he said deadpan.