Hello and welcome, reader.
At peaceful Pajama Flats, it’s so
far been a languid summer. Despite the now and again smoke from lingering but
distant wildfires.
My latest period of restoration
continues. Buckle up, and let’s see if I’m any less squirrelly than the last
time out. Here we go.
I want to blame the seasonal
nature of farming, but it's likely sports that started the training camp
mentality that still governs my habits. Because, you know, each of them had one,
and I played hockey and baseball early, and football through high school. Then,
boxing and its regular series of eight-week regimes, starting in the amateurs,
further ingrained it.
So, when later forced to adapt to
project based work in first the blue, and then white collared worlds, it proved
easy enough to manage. Likewise, my long career as a touring music artist
further exploited the same early training. As does my life as a novelist,
today.
Anyway, that's my story. When or
if asked about my taste for nowadays staying close to home, after a lifetime of
near unbroken travel, I mean. Much of my life’s work, of course, exploited
the capacity for putting on a thousand-yard-stare. While chasing ends claimed
to be found only along some never-ending highway.
I know, too, that doing my thing often
looks like canine fornication. But really, I’ve spent most of my time either in
or out of training for something. As, likewise, nowadays I spend most of it, training
to write novels.
If you’ve wondered, the answer is
yes. The blog is part of the training. And much like keeping fit, its long-term
effects are often overlooked. Because life is a whole experience, where nothing
happens to one without impact to all.
And from the style in which every
writer lives come the pages on which they must write.
Lucky for me, life as a novelist
exploits the love for solitude needed to handle the routine boredom of my early
adventures. Because writing novels is a lot like life on the road.
That is, it's months of
daily boredom followed by too few hours of extreme excitement. After years of unknown
practice.
Something like that, anyway.
And in each case, a few months working at it leaves a man needing a long rest.
For all that, writing novels is
easily the most satisfying of my pursuits. Though, like anything
else, there's a price to pay for success.
With music, it was non-stop
touring and recording for years on end. While with novels, it's even more time spent
alone. Again, for years. This time, while dissecting one's grasp of reality.
Of course, in print, one is
denied not only movement, but the feedback of a live audience so vital to
music's visceral appeal.
C'est la vie.
Did I mention how I'm known to be
a serious pita when at work? At various times, the derogatory term of
'Princess' has been applied to me and my behavior. Even when going well, it can
make me plenty cranky, too. Big fun to be around, I'm told.
For those new to the local
shorthand, ‘pita’ is code for pain-in-the-ass, here.
By now, a lifetime of writing has
convinced me that being alone is vital to the process. In fact, I think it
could be the most important part of being a writer. That's the truth of my
recluse’s life. I believe keeping a certain distance between me and the
world is best for the writing.
And everything done before was to
give me the chance to do this now. It was a simple dream. Each day, I'm
extremely grateful to live it.
Of course, I think of it as work,
and approach it that way, too. I always have. Though doing my best, every time,
on either the page or the stage, to make art.
Also, my health nowadays makes
travel mostly a pita, for me, too. By car, I'm limited to an hour or so. With
no guarantee of being ready to go on arrival. While my distaste for flying
is such that I will no longer do it, unless given sums of money, none will pay to
see either me or Harwill. Add my diet and herbal meds to the mix, and one gets
how traveling isn’t worth the trouble.
Not only that, but keeping the
overhead down eases life on a writer’s wages. Just don’t get the wrong idea, because
I’m no hermit, and that’s a fact, too. My private life is not only rich, but as
satisfying as a man could imagine.
Why, just a few weeks back, a brother
from another mother was out to visit. He’s ten years behind me, but also well traveled.
And like always, it was good to hang out and pick a few tunes. We wiled away
some hours, playing our favorites old and new, and talked of now and then
missing the stage. Because like any pair of shore-bound but once wandering
pirates, we both sometimes miss the sea.
And, if pressed, it’s likely we’d
both admit to missing the treasure. But it wasn’t long before we shared a smile
of mutual knowledge.
This life deal is about phases,
and finding different stages, and we both know that.
All the same, not long after he
left, I caught myself thinking about how many people I've already seen for the
last time. Then, I wondered if such thoughts are common to old folks.
After that, I thought about the untold
bacteria spread among the countless neurons most of us think of as the self.
And the ongoing research that daily changes what we think of as reality. Which
shortly led to ideas made for people with minds beyond my paygrade.
Like relativity, the spacetime
continuum, and things made possible only by quantum mechanics.
Such thoughts are too maudlin for
me. And not just because I’m an ignoramus, either. Though I won’t deny being far
too ignorant to do the math needed to manage those ideas.
I don’t write code, either,
though I was long ago trained in the basics of it. As usual, I won’t deny the rather
pedestrian limits of my grey matter in keeping me from that.
Anyway, while impressed by such
things, learning to do them myself held little appeal. As the world turned,
that’s a damned shame, too. Because there’s gold aplenty in them thar’ hills.
Let’s call it a road not taken. And
once again, C’est la vie.
From here, it often looks like
this writing stuff has mostly ever sought to keep me from a life of wealth and
privilege. Of the material type, that is.
But rest your concerns, reader. For
there are surely treasures found among these countless words that live in no
other place. And to their writer, they’re worth far more than gold. Nor have I written
truer words than those, and that’s a fact.
By now, I’ve learned such things
are rare. And perhaps even so fine they exceed the power of words to describe
them. Though I cannot yet say, for sure.
Meantime, there’s more to do.
For me, that means more time
alone. Because in-between is when it happens. The hours at the keyboard, like
those once spent in a studio, are transcribing. Those in-between times are when
things get made. Here, as near as I can tell, that’s how it works.
Of course, I could be wrong, too.
I mean, all I’ve got to show for doing things this way are the results. For
better and worse, they speak for themselves. And just between us, beyond a few
simple methods, I don’t really know either where it comes from or how it gets
done.
I never have.
As near as I can tell, it’s
innate. And I’ve always thought of it as a kind of magic. Though, true enough,
over the years, I’ve built methods and learned ways to encourage it to show up.
I’ve learned to be ready for work when it gets here, too. By now, it looks to many
like I’m in control of what some call a talent. Lucky for me, I know better.
It’s a fire. And my job is to
keep it burning.
See, I’ve always known I was a
writer. I learned to read while quite young, and at once felt the world speak
to me through the words printed on a page. Likewise, song lyrics ever tugged at
my heart, perhaps even more than on my ears. And so, since boyhood, I’ve heeded
the call. To learn and practice. To grow and change. To try, and to try again. Only
after many years was the true nature of writing at last revealed.
All good writing is rewriting.
From concept, through assembly, to finished product, this simple truth holds.
All good writing is rewriting.
Just as, for a writer, there
should be few limits on anything else. I include methods on that list of
else’s, by the way, and not just experience.
But most important, is the
rewriting.
Here, the three draft method
takes three passes to make a first draft. And the same amount to write a
second. Plus, the same again to ready a third one for editing.
And much like an athlete training
for a season, or a songwriter going on tour, a writer needs to be in peak form
to do their best work. As only by sticking to a dull routine of daily practice can
any of them eventually reveal the true limit of their talents.
Though, as with all things, they
must accept and deal with the effects of random chance. Otherwise known as
luck.
For there are no sure things.
Daily training readies each of
them, as much as possible however, for the known tasks common to their
pursuits. From there, it’s a matter of staying the course. For only then can
what stands in the way become it.
Even here, training rules apply.
I think it’s a good habit for a
writer to write often, too. If not daily, then at least five or six times per
week. And it doesn’t have to be much. Because even a few words are enough to
keep one’s writing muscles in shape.
Not only that, but it’s as easy
to pick up a good habit as a bad one.
Again, for me, since the long-ago
days of my youth, despite injury and illness, fitness training is a much-loved routine.
And just in case it’s not clear, what
you’re reading here is me not writing. Thus, my editor’s pencil isn’t so sharp.
Nor the constraints too strictly applied.
But, and for many years before I
was a working writer, I wrote notes to myself. Sometimes, they amounted to the
next day’s to-do lists. At others, they included a sentence or a verse. As time
went on, a few paragraphs joined my list of private accounts.
Nowadays, because it’s my
livelihood, I’ve plenty of reasons to write. So, on most days, you’ll find me
at the keyboard. But on many others, I make notes with the smartphone. Not only
when I’m working on a manuscript, or a magazine column, or as a writing coach,
either. Because as much as I love writing, I need all the practice I can get.
Though most of what I write is
seen by none but me.
In those ways, if in few others, I’m
like every writer who’s ever lived.
And it turns out old Papa
Hemingway was right about one thing, and that’s for sure. Every writer should
know it, too. Because if you claim to want to write about life, you’ve got to
live it first.
That’s all.
With writing, you can rest easy,
because aside from that, everything else is horseshit.
Thanks for being here. And for
sharing this with anyone you think might like to read it.
- TFP
July 22, 2023
