Happiness

As I mentioned in an earlier post here, I've shared the podium at writers conferences with authors who tell the audience to ‘not even try' writing a book. I've heard the quote, "Writing is like cutting your wrists with a rusty razor" more than once. I have absolutely no idea what these authors are saying. It makes no sense to me. Why would you do something that painful, when it really doesn't matter to anyone else?
     Writing, painting, making things with your hands; these are things we do to fulfill whatever parts of us are in need of fulfilling. I love to write books. I'm always writing books, even if it looks like I'm doing something else. The way a bird flies past, the sound the wind makes, all the little things that make up a story. I've read about how some people spend a year researching their characters, writing down lists of things they like and don't like, and I don't understand that, either. Do we need to fill a character out before we can ‘know' the character? Maybe, but it would drive me nuts.
     We all create differently. I'm not saying you can't learn to write ‘better,' how to know when you've finished, lots of things. But writing comes from a personal place. At least, to me. I write because it's impossible not to write. It's the same with music.
       Luckily, I have Maggie and we have our duo Lucky Mud. We play festivals, bars, concerts and clubs, both here and in Europe. Anywhere they'll have us. We've shared the stage and a home for 40 years. We'll play a four hour gig without taking a break because we forget to take a break. And we don't really want to, anyway.
     We call it ‘the Groove.'
     When we're in the groove, we and the audience share a ride that is absolutely effortless. The energy produced is returned equally. The joy goes both ways. Stopping means losing the Groove, and that means having to find it again.
     That's why I write the same way I play. When I begin a story, or a chapter or a page...it doesn't matter...all else disappears. I may write ten minutes, if distracted, if I can't find the Groove - but once I find it I simply disappear. I'll write for days, for weeks without stopping except to eat or sleep or pee. And all the while I'm doing these incidental things I'm still in the Groove. I'll stumble over things. I'll forget where something is, though I put it there a minute before.
     To write, you have to visit the place you're creating. You cannot, absolutely cannot write a story from a distance. If you don't know that character, or that one-page walk-on enough to keep writing, to stay in the groove, then stop. Close the computer, put down the pen. Close your eyes and imagine the place. Imagine the person, the incident you're creating. Take a breath. Take several, then begin again. If you make mistakes along the way you'll always come back later to correct them in your edits. If you're lucky, like I'm lucky, you'll have someone close enough to you who will tell you the truth. Even when it hurts. Because we blind ourselves in this compulsion to create, and sometimes we blunder without knowing it. We need someone we can trust. Someone who will never let us down, because they're in the same groove.
     That's happiness.


(Tim Fik and Bridget Kelley joined Maggie and me on the Under the Oaks stage at the 2012 Florida Folk Festival Memorial Weekend )

Ghost Writing

It's been slow in the publishing world. That's an understatement. So my agent, who is very good at his job and cares for his writers, gave me a great chance to write a series for a well-placed London firm who had outlines for a line of police mysteries, based on an American police detective. I've never tried this before, but it sounded fun. And lucrative. So I said sure, made contact with the firm and was sent the outline.
     Because I'm sure some other writer has taken up the flag and created this series, I'll obfuscate. Trust me, what I tell you won't narrow it down enough to make it stand out. Enough to say it was the story of a detective forced to leave a big city for a little city. A town, really. He had a shrewish wife and an uncontrollable daughter, plus a sickly mother living with them. He'd gotten in trouble in the ‘big' city by mixing it up with a newspaper writer. Now, he's offered a new chance.
     The first thing he does is mix it up with a newspaper writer in the ‘little' town.
     Then, murders begin in this little town - murders that seem linked. In the outline I was given, the CSI team arrived on each scene and puzzled over it. Small towns have no CSI teams. They're lucky if they have a paramedic or coroner who pays attention.
     Then, the U.K. writer of the outline committed several errors that would never pass in American police stories. I'll only give one, since that was when I began writing my own story and not following the outline.
     In other words, losing the chance to write the series was all my fault.
     In this one action sequence in the outline, the detective arrives on the scene of a possible crime, sends his old and senile, just-waiting-to-retire partner next door to interview neighbors, then, alone, breaks down the front door.
     (This is where I say, but don't explain, that once I had to break down a door. It took over five minutes and my shoulder and wrist were damaged for almost a month)
     Once inside, the detective looks around, sees no one, so he exits,  runs around the house and breaks down the back door.
     Here was my dilemma. I should've contacted the London firm and explained how moronic this was. How out of place in American police action and, I'm sure, in English as well.
     I should've followed protocol and just maybe I'd be sitting pretty right now. Maybe I'd have a new car.
     The problem is I'm not cut out to write someone else's story. I never will be. That wasn't my agent's fault, nor was it the fault of the London firm. They had a simple outline for me to follow, and all I had to do was follow it.
     But I couldn't. The person(s) who wrote this outline, and were destined to write the sequels, had no clue  how to tell an American story. They had no knowledge of police procedures, of the feel of small American towns (another subject, but trust me) or even American family relationships. I never want to insult a reader by giving him or her something that isn't true, and this is where I come back to my same little horn. You'd think I love tooting it. But I don't really, I'm just driven as a reader or a writer to find logic in fiction.
     I could've written it, I could've been a pretender. I really didn't mind. I think I could have turned it into a hell of a series. But that's not what they were asking for. I love to write. I want to be successful at it, and I want people to enjoy the stories I tell. But I'll keep carving this little trail, because that's where my heart is.
     I'm preparing the sequel to A Thousand Bridges for release on Kindle and the rest soon. It's called The Foothills of Heaven. I hope someone, lots of someones will read it. I have more, including a brand new MacDonald Clay book in the works. But I doubt I'll pop up here and there ghosting for someone else. I found out that wasn't for me.