Wrote a new song. Loved it. Well, most of it. I was having a little trouble with the bridge, which didn’t seem to lead anywhere. So, I played the song for my music partner Bill Williams, expecting him to suggest a little touch that would do the trick for the trouble spot. He floored me by saying that when he looked at my lyrics, he was hearing a completely different rhythm and tempo overall. I so wanted him to be wrong. “But I love this rhythm and tempo…” I kept thinking.

If I have learned one thing about writing it is this: Beware when you are saying to yourself, “But I love this…” Last night, I forced myself to try Bill’s suggested rhythm and tempo and the song came to life. As I was singing, new lyrics came to me for that troubled old bridge over which I had labored. I can’t even remember now what I loved so much about the old song.

I read an inspiring piece of advice for all writers and artists from Jack Brown in the January 2012 edition of the Songwriter’s Association of Washington’s newsletter.

“The best songwriting advice I ever got in my life was from a Nashville pro—even though my sound is
not a Nashville sound. He said, ‘You have to remember that it’s not your job to tell people your story.
After a few minutes at best, they’re bored with your story. What they want to hear in
your songs is THEIR story.’” –Jack Brown

So true. Failed first novels are often too focused on the autobiographical (”literal memory is your enemy” is a mantra I learned from Robert Olen Butler). I say this from personal experience. Learning to save my diary as the receptacle for my personal effusions has been a professional lifesaver for me.

Get over your own story, and embrace Story.

I am a writer first and a musician second, so I have developed a natural habit of being lyrics-centric. I tried Max’s suggestion, and it helped me to create a musically stronger chorus and bridge, as well as more interesting musical transitions between all the sections, and a lovely new opening and closing.

Spend some time in your work focusing on what you usually don’t.

From my reader: “Nobody realizes the bad plots in their life story until they have witnessed them in someone else’s. As soon as I read The Naked Mole-Rat Letters I realized that my plots were the same as Frankie’s…these were not the plots I wanted to have in my life story. I didn’t want to have a poor relationship with my dad anymore; I wanted to build a new strong one, so I decided to make a change. I decided to go and have an open discussion with my dad. This changed my whole life story; in fact it changed my whole family. Families are like baskets, every piece has to be woven together just right, or it will all fall apart. Before reading The Naked Mole-Rat Letters my family was a collapsed basket, however it now stands strong and proud because of you.”

I’m so grateful that this reader shared her story with me. For all of you out there who are writing…remember that you never know who you might touch.

The opening story is about a father–Larry– who is meeting his daughter’s boyfriend. While the boyfriend is cool and poised, the father feels himself unraveling. It’s told in 3rd person and here are my favorite lines:

“He [Larry, the father] could feel his heart kicking the blood straight to his cheeks and armpits.”

and

“It wasn’t fair. Larry felt exposed, stupid and even more angry and hopeless. And your man over there just looking back at him, like he was an ad on the side of a bus shelter.”

Write on!

For all my friends, colleagues, and adult students who are just starting to write their first novel or play or song…

“When I was young, I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.”
–W.Somerset Maugham

Found this quote in my favorite magazine, The Sun.

Painting by Nana Bagdavadze

“Inspiration comes when I am organized and work hard. I have to earn it.” –artist Nana Bagdavadze

I heard Nana speak at Ivan Amato’s DC Science Cafe. Her words are a great reminder that creative work is just that…work.

As a fiction writer, you have to know your character’s back story (what has happened in your character’s life before your story begins) and you need to carry it with you as you write. If you don’t, you lose authenticity.

Let’s say your main character’s mother drowned years ago and, at some point in your novel, your character goes on a boat ride. Well, if your character never once thinks about her mom while on that boat ride, then something will probably feel false or missing about the scene to the reader even if the reader isn’t conscious about what’s missing.

“For me, anyway, [writing] is what infuses the world with meaning,” says Jennifer Egan in the Washington Post’s BookWorld (9-18-11).

Not true for me. As I see it, the world is infused with meaning, whether or not I happen to notice. Writing, for me, is proof that I am noticing; it is also a way of making the perception of meaning concrete so that it can be shared.