The Writing Life: April 2007 Archives

I generally like to write to a soundtrack. With five kids puttering around the house, it usually helps to kill the background yammer and arguing over the 2.347 seconds longer that they got to play on the PlayStation and how he always gets to play forever and I never get to and the stomping off mad and the "he hit me for no reason".

But what to listen to?

I use iTunes on my Mac, but I don't have an iTunes account. I'm afraid to. Between me and the kids, I would be broke in two months. "But there's all this cool music and TV shows you can download and the songs only cost $1.00!" Yeah, they only cost $1.00 (well, $0.99 to be precise, but how many people does that actually fool? We always round it up anyway)...EACH.

So I listen to online radio. And if my handy little MP3 stream ripper happens to be running so I can catch those bits of the show that I missed because I had to be away from my desk, well… Current tracks in iTunes: 2,690.

So for those who just can't seem to find the right music to fit the mood for writing, here's my suggestions:

1) Don't listen to music you can easily understand the lyrics to. For me, it's distracting and breaks my already fragile creative concentration.

2) The mood of the music can affect the mood of the writing if you let it. Unless you're willing to stave off this effect, listen to music that somehow connects with the mood you're trying to convey. How you interpret that statement will have a lot to do with your own musical tastes.

3) Don't think that just listening to music that you "enjoy" right now is the same thing as listening to music that will help you write. You should be willing to expand your musical horizons anyway, because there's a lot of great music out there that you've yet to discover, just like there's a lot of great books out there you haven't read yet. Picking the right music to create art with is a much taller order than simply figuring out what your preferences are.

4) Assimilating a new musical style will affect your creative output in much the same way that assimilating new artistic styles (whether high art like painting or sculpture, or literary) will influence what and how you write. Don't ask me to explain it because I can't. I just know it does.

5) It seems like music that is creatively complex is more conducive to writing than other forms of music. That's not a rule, of course, just an observation. The most complex music I listen to is probably jazz and the most basic is primitive delta blues. But just because blues music is not musically complex like jazz is, it's still creatively complex because of the sound and the subject matter. You know this already because you probably don't choose to listen to kid's music when you write. It's not creatively complex enough to serve Music's intended purpose (topic for another day). Classical music of the 16th and 17th centuries is exaulted for reasons that have virtually nothing to do with tuxedoes and Rolls Royces, despite what your redneck sensibilities tell you (and before you go off all mad, remember: I'm from Missouri—I am a redneck).

I listen to Big Band, jazz, and blues quite a bit. In fact, I listen to the 1920's Radio Network probably more than others. KMHD (check iTunes Radio listings for both these stations) is also a great place to plug into for several hours and let the music drift into the background while the words on the screen take over. The Midnight Blues stations are also great.

Until I started getting into old movies, I didn't really listen to Big Band that much. But as the current musical trends toward nihilistic songs about lost sex (not love…apparently, post-modernists don't believe in love and define sexual intercourse as the highest expression of the "L" word) have passed me by (good riddance, glad to see them go), I've gravitated toward music with a richer experience. Big Band is musically rich, uplifting, and very soothing for someone who lives on the outer edge of the stress zone. It's also nostalgic, of course, which is probably why I turned to it in the first place (like I have all things early 20th century…literature, art, clothes), but it's an interest that continues to grow and mature instead of wan due to lack of depth, like post-modern music.

Today's word count: 13,500

The last scene I wrote didn't quite go how I expected. It quickly turned dark and violent. I'm okay with that, as it was a hit in workshop class (and let me tell you, when you're writing a character-driven novel and spend a semester getting dinged with comments like "I just don't see where this is going", it's nice to have people react positively to your work).

My instructor, author Karen Stolz likes it and that's really where the rubber meets the road. Not to imply that my peers' critiques aren't important to me (quite the opposite), but that you should really, seriously listen to the advice of those who've been around the block a little, especially when your instructor's critiques are somewhat at odds with what your classmates think.

Just because you're in a creative writing class doesn't mean everyone else there is trying to become the next Faulkner. At the smaller schools, like the one I attend, most of them are doing this as a minor, or as part of a Communications or more general English degree.

Just keep plugging away, doing what you're doing. That's what I tell myself. I hope it ends up being the Right Thing.

Oh, how I wish I could waste time. Being a creative, I'm a practiced procrastinator and an aficionado of useless, time-wasting activities.

Maybe I should first define what I mean by "time-wasting activities"?

1) Trolling the forums over on The Fedora Lounge , looking for leads on vintage suits in styles from the '30s to '50s.
2) Checking my website's referrer logs 213 times/day to see who's coming here from where.

3) At home, setting timers on the DVR to catch as many B science fiction movies and noir thrillers and just about anything shot before 1965 that the device's hard drive will hold.

4) Watching those movies.

What should I be doing?

1) Working on the novel.
1a) Working on a new scene for the novel.

1b) Rewriting the last scene on The Novel (if you use a term twice or more, can you capitalize it like in a legal document…hereafter known as "The Novel"?).

1c) Plotting and devising the complex nuances of narrative for The Novel.

2) Maybe do some work at The Real Job (hah!).

3) Spend time with wife and children (are artists really required to do this?).

At any rate, it would behoove me to do the thing I profess to enjoy the most, but I often avoid it. Like the Plague. It's difficult and demanding and wrings the life out of me. Putting words to paper in a way that makes me feel like I've done a good job is bar none the most difficult thing I've ever done. I used to work 12-hour shifts in a factory. That was hot and extraordinarily hard work. That was also easier. Writing is harrrrrd.

I really should do a little Real Work, then sneak in a few pages of the novel before I go to class and give a presentation on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde I'm utterly and embarrassingly unprepared for.

[sigh]

[shuffles off, depressed, tired]

I said I would do this and now…

Okay. Must shame myself into working. Must shame myself into working.

First, the details: Up Jumped the Devil is a literary historical novel set in the 1920's. One summer day, a mysterious, roaming revival preacher, The Soothsayer, shows up in the town of Rock Springs, Arkansas. The people he becomes familiar with are at once suspicious of the tight-lippedness of The Soothsayer about his past, and excited to have an interesting outsider among them. They talk him into doing things he doesn't feel comfortable doing until something that's meant for good is interpreted as evil and those who had been championing him are now out to exact revenge, if not justice.

Today's word count: 9,500.

I have to work on the next 10 pages for workshop class in a couple weeks and I'm still undecided on what I want to tackle first. An important character in the novel is a middle-aged black man who is a bootlegger and part-time juke joint bluesman. I have in mind a scene where he delivers a load of whiskey to a nearby speakeasy and stays to play a set with the "fellas" while the principal narrator of the novel, Samuel, watches from a partially closed door (since he's white, and a young boy at the time). I haven't settled on this one yet, but I know I'll have to tackle it sooner or later, so why not now?

Well, I finally bit the bullet and started the infamous Great American Novel. To be honest, it's a terrifying proposition. By announcing I'm writing a novel, I've committed myself. Don't get me wrong, accountability is a Good Thing, but what if it just dies half-way through? What if I do? What if I get stuck and simply can't move forward with it? I think I'm worried about all these little things because this is not something I've ever done before. Like everyone else, I'm learning as I go.

One interesting thing I've learned about this process is that I don't think you can truly teach anyone to do it, like you do with a skill or a trade. I don't know if I can adequately defend that statement, but the process of creation is so personal that you just have to launch into it and muddle your way through. Scouring tips and tricks blog entries can't prepare you for what you're getting yourself into. Neither can dropping $6.50 on a writer's magazine (unless it's Poets & Writers ). You have to find your own ways of making the story make sense. You have to experiment until you find the method of writing that works best for you. Do you write the whole thing, then go back and revise, or revise as you write? For me, the thought of writing a whole novel's worth of Brilliantly Witty Prose then having to back through it all and revise everything (and most likely throw stuff out because it doesn't fit the revisions any more) is Count-of-Monte-Cristo-escaping-prison daunting. I feel like I have to revise as I go. Which probably accounts for why I am making such slow progress.

But to fix that, I think I'll start doing something I've seen other writers do on their blogs: a running word count. I really dread doing this, but I think it will make it easier for me to plant my butt, turn off Turner Classic Movies, and start writing!

In the next post, I'll start off with a synopsis of what I've got so far, I'll think out loud about what I've got to write next, and what the current word count is.

Wish me luck!