No matter what you do in life, there seems to be that moment before you step out the door into the great unknown. You have your backpack on, lunch money in your wallet, and an apple for the teacher. You turn back around to see your parents bending down to look at you, patting your extra strand of hair down in an attempt to make the unassuming public around you fall in love with you on first blush. This is a moment you need to perfect, or at least you think you do. In a world dominated by the idea of first impressions, we get hung up those moments because we don’t know a moment before then.
As they smile at us, they give us that piece of advice by which we try to enforce in the day ahead. You want to smile and act nice to the other kids, pay attention and take diligent notes, and whatever you do… don’t play hooky. We are all taught these straight arrow techniques because we don’t know any better. We need something as we step into the unknown for the first time and tackle our targets with some naïve sense of surety.
I think we keep coming back to this moment no matter how old we are. Maybe there isn’t a door by which we stand, but the idea still holds. The world is a place full of this unsure tension, and all we have is that advice to keep us moving. We think back to it because it’s comforting, serving as guidelines for a moment we can’t fully predict. We need to play by a series of compromised rules in order to get anywhere. While some will see this as some form of O.C.D., it could be something as simple as the hour by which we wake up, what we eat in the morning, or what song is expected to play from our alarm clock.
On a bigger scale, these are called traditions. Most of them are so recognized by the general public that to point them out is a trope. We are expected to cross the street at a crosswalk or pay the cashier the agreed-upon amount for a soda. These traditions keep the social structure in place, ever only changing when there is a radical need for it. We need that stability so that we can believe in a better world, where everyone seems more trustworthy. It makes walking out the door a lot more palatable. To quote Tevye: "Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!"
Everybody now!
Once you see this on a grand scale, it’s easy to understand why artists are so particular about what they do in their personal lives. For some, it’s merely a way to fend off negative notions. After all, we only want to create beautiful works with positive incentives. On the lighter scale, it’s picking a room to write in that creates a consistent atmosphere, where each manuscript is written on a regimented time schedule. On a crazier side, you become too obsessed with the process and it hurts your productivity.
For example, I’m sure that George R.R. Martin is a lovely man, but his writing process is insane. No, I’m not one of those foaming at the mouth waiting for “The Winds of Winter” to come out. I just happened to find out that he is a stickler about how he writes. Some people use typewriters, which I get. There is a verbal cadence to the clacking of keys that I find infectious on a keyboard and is probably better on the less digital cousin. No, Martin is obsessed with writing on old DOS software using the WordStar program. He’s written the entire Game of Thrones series on it, and I get why he considers it good luck, but the software hasn’t had a stable release for a good 21 years.
I bring that up because I want to point out how we all have crazy traditions that keep us going. It worked one time and brought us success, so we keep doing it as a form of centering our process. It’s a confidence booster of following the tried and true, and as much as I think Martin’s approach is crazy, I can’t claim to have written a book on WordStar that sold millions. I’m less committed to writing software, though that’s because I have to bend my knee to digital platforms for releases.
If I write in WordStar, I am, je ne sais quoi, screwed.
Even then, I think there is value to lining up at conventions to ask a simple question of the writers that you admire. You want to know “What is your process?” There is no right answer, save for not even trying, and there is that gleam in your eye that maybe they will have a tip so profound that it alters how you approach writing in general. The best that usually happens is that there’s some affirmation in the brother/sisterhood of writing where we’re supportive of each other, encouraging people who exist in that grey area where they don’t even know if they want to write another pointless essay. It’s kind of why I started this column as an attempt to make an interactive forum for writerly advice.
The thing is that process and tradition can be so interlinked that one is not distinguished from the other. I’m sure that one day I can go into detail about my writing process and not mention anything exceptional. However, I can mention my traditions and there will be that one thing that stands out as quirky or interesting. For instance, I dislike writing to music because I fear that I will become locked in the patterns, or flat out steal ideas. Is that more process or tradition? It’s a little of both actually.
Though the reason that I’m coming to you right now, as opposed to waiting for my regularly scheduled time of Friday, is because I have something special coming tomorrow. Anyone who read my piece on “Feeling Dumb as a Writer” will be aware that among the things I said in there was a brief announcement for my latest book “Esoteric Shapes: Short Stories About Life’s Meaning & Other Nonsense.” It is coming out this week on April 1, 2020, and I felt like it was a good time to share something that had become a bit of a new tradition. It’s something that I’ve been anticipating doing now for about six months.
Last year I published my first book “Apples & Chainsaws,” which was a 3.5-year endeavor. I am proud of how it turned out and the commentary since has been encouraging. I could go on as to how I wrote it, but that’s not the point of this. My tradition comes from the moment that I decided to publish it.
I worked my way over to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and was ready to submit the manuscript. Whereas I am not a fan of listening to music while I write (save for when I feel the need to enter a certain mood), I am not above listening to something when I’m doing the editing process. Honestly, the formatting stuff is dreadfully boring and some of the most tedious stuff you’ll do if you choose to go independent. It’s in the research of trial and error, realizing that you’ll just forget about it after spending hours every night playing with the margin size just to prove you’re wrong. It’s also in getting the pages aligned correctly (publishing 101: your first chapter begins on an odd page) and the information accurate. It doesn’t help that beginners will spend so much time uploading the manuscript to Amazon just to find out that the words bleed too much, meaning you have to move everything again.
While I am open to just about any album during this time, the one that I turn to upon my final day of work is the Original Broadway Cast recording of “Hadestown.” Why “Hadestown,” you ask? Like Martin and his precious WordStar, it comes from a very personal moment that made me see the act as holding a deeper significance.
I was in my old bedroom one evening. We had finished our day of packing and I had the moments to myself to do the last-minute work on “Apples & Chainsaws.” It felt like it would be one of those nights, so I searched for a long album since that is the only time I ever listen to music over 75 minutes. At two hours, the Anaïs Mitchell show spoke to me that night, especially since it had recently won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
On one hand, there was nothing exceptional about the editing and publishing on this night. I had worked out most of the kinks by this point, so it was a matter of uploading and confirming that everything was in place.
Even then, I felt captivated by the story at that moment. As much as I could be motivated by DeAndre Shields singing about the road to hell, I found myself just as intrigued by the reimagining of Orpheus & Eurydice. I found something compelling about Orpheus being a singer, who wrote the most beautiful song in the world and using it to save Eurydice. In my mind, I saw it as a deeper metaphor for my work. Considering that Mitchell had been working on the show in various forms for a near-decade, the artistic struggle was something that I clearly understood on a macular level. I used the album as my own form of expression. Considering that the wraparound segments sell this as Greek mythology being told, I saw it as a symbol for my own work being shared. These were stories that we shared with the world in hopes of bettering it.
Another detail that may play more like irony, this wasn’t my first run-in with this story. I actually worked with The Long Beach Opera during the summer of 2007, around the time that they were in early production on a much different take of the story. While I can’t say that I had close involvement outside of mailing and research, it was one of those moments that made me fonder of the album in particular. That, and it’s just an amazing show with so much heart and soul in every moment.
I have listened to it in parts, even going so far as to buy a physical copy, but I save the in-depth listening for those days when I know that I am going to hit publish. “Esoteric Shapes” has had that April Fool’s Day release for almost six months. I became obsessed with the date, wanting the book to stand out in other significant ways. It is a short story collection spanning back to material I wrote in 2015, and I am proud of how it turned out. Even my formatting skills have improved since then.
With all of that said, I will be preparing to unveil it to the world with “Hadestown” blaring in my ears. I hope for this to be the case with every book I write until I find a new tradition. Even then, I want it to hold a deeper meaning than just a catchy tune I heard on the right day. I want it to say something about the effort that I put into bringing my art into the world. Who knows. Maybe had my night been different, I would be playing “Sunday in the Park with George” instead. Even if I fully admit that I am done with work before Act I ends, I listen to it all, continuing the journey into whatever uncertain futures lay ahead.
The only time I’m likely to break this tradition is when I finally see it on stage. It’s coming Los Angeles way in the next year and I’m eager to see if the show I envisioned looks anything like what it actually is. Until that night comes, I will continue to hold it as a tradition that I haul out on important nights like this, when I’m about to end years of hard work and start the next phase. I don’t know that hearing “Wait For Me” makes the book any better or worse, but I don’t care to find out. It’s going to remain no matter what.
Comments
Post a Comment