Storytellersunplugged

“I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality,” Salvadore Dali

To follow Storyteller Thomas Sullivan’s moving tribute to Storyteller Frank Wydra is a daunting task.  And one I don’t relish.  There’s been a little too much reality in the last days for my taste; and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  I so desperately wish for the days of no decisions necessary, and no bad news in the mail.

But the job description doesn’t say I can only be brilliant when there is good, and peace, and harmony in my life.  In fact it is the measure of our work when we don’t feel like working that is the measure of our professionalism.

And so, on we journey.

And as this particular journey deals – this year – with the guts of writing, today let me approach an aspect of the gig that is seldom discussed, but is integral to any writer’s eventual success.

Snack food.

Err . . . sorry.  I had an early lunch and skipped dinner.  Not that snack food doesn’t have its place in a writer’s tool box.  Foods that you can eat at the computer without getting crumbs in the keyboard or making your hard drive sticky is a critical subject.  In my case, particularly so since I often am at the computer for seven to ten hours at a time and forget to eat.

The Cool Autumn Breeze is working to break me of the habit.  She gently and elegantly suggested that I set up a timer and every ninety minutes – no matter where I am in the work, I take a break.  Later on, when Breeze noticed that I was following her advice (but remaining at the computer) she suggested – gently and with genuine caring, the only way she ever suggests anything – that I actually lift my butt out of the chair during each break.

So, I tried it.  I set up a digital timer right on my desktop – top center of the monitor – turn it on when I start work and had an alarm go off at the ninety minute mark.  Like a Spartan soldier seeking to impress his cadre commander, when the hour and a half struck, I stopped what I was doing; saved my work, and left the office.

It hurt.

I mean real psychic pain at first.  I could picture my words sitting there within the computer waiting to be launched onto their cybernetic pages.  I could actually hear them calling to me:

“Rick!  Please come back; were sorry if we offended you.  Honest!  We’ll be better, more interesting, and more cogent.  Don’t leave us out here, please.  Not waiting in the birth canal, just barely able to see the light in the distance.”

Eventually, I couldn’t take it any more.  In keeping with the spirit (if not the letter) of Cool’s dictum, I decided to take my breaks – still more frequently than I had been – every 1,500 words or so.  It’s not precise, but somewhere around that level of output (always at the end of a sequence) I step away . . . usually outside (since if I don’t I can still here my keyboard whimpering at my absence) often getting something to eat, or at least to taste while I’m out.

No, I am not a candidate for a rubber room or heavy doses of lithium – although all offers generously and honestly made will be fully considered.

Anyway, back to the real thing, the important thing I want to write about today.  It’s the thing you most need to know to be a successful novelist, playwright, poet, essayist or other professional writer:  the music mix.

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong, but this column is about the most unspoken of things that you really need to know to be a successful writer.  I mean it really is truly important.  It’s just that if I don’t have the right music playing in the background (or on headphones) I can’t write.  Or at least I can’t create.

I spend a lot of time finding the right music mix to work to; and I have them all carefully cataloged on the computer.  There’s individual mixes for each novel, play, short story, even for my Storytellers column each month.  It isn’t so much that there is a direct, obvious connection between that particular grouping of songs and the subject matter.  It doesn’t work like that for me.

I wrote my first major release – The Gemini Man – to Meat Loaf.  Nobody’s Safe was largely created to the songs of Bob Seger.  The Four Phase Man to Betty Buckley.  There’s no direct connection between the style of the music or the performer, and the subject matter.  The psychic connection between the music I work to has more to do with the emotional content of the music and the performance rather than the specifics of the lyrics or the melody lines.

I wrote The Believer (probably my next hardcover and film release) originally to the recordings of a dear friend, Susannah McCorkle.  There was a sweet pain to her voice, and her life, her interpretations of both music and lyrics somehow brought out in me the emotions and places I needed to be for that novel. And through the first five drafts – yes, although a wonderful novel, it was a pained and prolonged birth – it was Zan’s emotions so clearly worn on her tongue that drove me.

Then, long after we had parted – two years, maybe three – I was listening to the news one morning and they mentioned that she had killed herself.  Laid out food for the cats, left detailed notes on the disposition of her things, and then stepped off her upper flight balcony.

And although I needed to, I just couldn’t work on The Believer with any style or talent, or even professionalism, I set the computer on random play and still couldn’t work.  Then a song came on, and the work began to come again.  It was replaced with something else . . . and nothing.  It happened a few more times (slow learner that I am) before I caught on.  I did the remainder of the extraordinarily complex and involved rewrite to the music of that singer, then a stranger but now my friend:  Amanda McBroom.

In the final rewrites, to bring it ready for the publisher, I wrote it to a mix of Susannah and Amanda.

These mixes change and evolve over time, as I change and evolve; but I cannot write without them.  As I work on this column for Storytellers Unplugged my headphones are filled with Linda Eder, Meat Loaf, Amanda McBroom, Gene Krupa, Bonnie Raitt, Margie Gibson, and Raul Esparza.  Some interior tonal colors on the particularly selected numbers put me in the place I need to be to write for Storytellers.

Although I should probably change the mix since I keep getting drawn off topic, which was . . . uh . . . give me a second . . .

Right! 

The thing you most need to know to be a successful writer.  Okay, no more distractions.  I just had some pizza with The Cool Autumn Breeze and The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion (who suggested that if I can’t hold my concentration for longer than I have been, I should just give you the letters and let you, gently readers, write this one for yourselves.

Not to worry, I’m on the job now and completely focused on the task at hand.  Here’s what you need to know to make it as a professional writer, as opposed to merely the creative typist that I’ve been so far.  Here it goes:  the secret is, drum roll please . . . 

. . . Watching old movies to relax before every session. 

NO! 

Wait, the secret is talking out your story problems to yourself while playing Spider Solitaire on your computer. 

AARGH!!! 

The secret is reading The Voyage Of The Space Beagle whenever you need to remember what good writing is.

UHHH!!! 

The secret is chocolate and vanilla soft ice cream served together, but not mixed, in the same bowl, the touch of a good woman stroking your cheek softly while your working, living in libraries until you become your topic, the touch of a bad woman at two in the morning when the work refuses to come . . .watching perfect children at play, being struck mute by a sunset, having a dog curl up on your foot while you type!!!!!

Oh hell.

A B C D E
F G H I J
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P Q R S T
U V W X Y Z

“A great French Marshall once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years.  The Marshall replied, In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon,” John F. Kennedy

There’s no great secret to becoming good as a writer.  It just takes time; and hard, often unappreciated, usually overlooked, work.  It takes talent and commitment and belief in yourself.  Belief in your gifts.  Belief that there is a reason God – or whatever works for you on your dark nights of the soul – put the need to express your heart in words within you.

Belief that the work, by itself, is enough, regardless of however successful or beaten down you become.

In that end, that pretty much covers it all. 

When in doubt, when you don’t know what to do next, where to turn, when the characters stop talking to you and the story won’t make sense, just close your eyes, take deep, relaxing breaths, go to a place in your heart, in your soul that is completely safe and warm and loving and remind yourself to:

Believe!

Rick Steinberg