Writing Like a Rock Star

Tags

attitude, D.C., music/writing overlaps, totally boss, writing life

I spent last Saturday at the DC 101 Chili Cook-off with Andrew and my 14-year-old sister, Becca (I figured that if the end of the world were to happen, listening to music and eating free chili with two of the people I love most would be a good way to go out).

Becca loves Weezer. She loves that band with the passion that many people only get for a few years in their teens. Becca’s a musician herself on piano and guitar (lucky for my dad, who had to wait a long time for a fellow musician in a daughter), has committed all the lyrics to the 100+ Weezer songs in their repertoire to memory and is learning to play as many as she can. You should hear the way she talks about Rivers Cuomo. He stood within a few inches of her at one point in their set, so she got a good look at one of her idols. The phrase, “the face of glory” came up more than twice. What amazes me is that this is her second-favorite band we’re talking about. If she ever sees her favorites live, we might need to have a stretcher handy.

One of the things that stood out to me, though, is that Becca mentioned that Rivers Cuomo has a reputation for having kind of a big head.

“He thinks he’s better than everybody,” she told me, and I heard admiration in her voice. “He’ll probably insult us when he comes onstage.”

They came onstage late, in fact, which sounds like the norm for a concert, but you need to consider that 1. the Cook-off started at 11:00 a.m. and they weren’t due onstage until 6:45 p.m., so they had plenty of time to get ready, and 2. the other bands played on time. When Weezer did saunter onstage, though, the crowd went nuts.

I meant to be annoyed at this swaggering behavior, but I found myself intrigued. Imagine the sheer confidence it takes to show up to work late, announce over a microphone that you intend to attempt to have sex with everyone present before the end of the day (as the lead singer of Panic! At the Disco did – make the announcement, that is, not necessarily follow through), and expect people to cheer? It must be exhilarating.

I’ve noticed that in general, musicians and writers and the like tend to fall in one of two camps. The first is the down-to-earth, approachable, fan-friendly type (Switchfoot and Neil Gaiman come to mind). The second is those people who know their music or writing is boss and don’t feel the need to tell a crowd that they’re looking beautiful tonight, or anything else for that matter (think of Harlan Ellison, who’s said he sees no reason for fans to expect autographs or meetings with him, that the books he’s written more than cover any obligation he may have to them).

The perk of the first camp is that I think you have a much more meaningful connection with people who like your work. Especially in an age where publishing is going through all kinds of changes and authors are expected to take a much larger role in marketing their work, I think it’s valuable to create a sense of community and connection. The other important fact to keep in mind is that people like Rivers Cuomo and Harlan Ellison earned their attitudes by virtue of a large quantity of excellent work. If I go around acting like an ass with no credit to my name, I’m just an arrogant jerk.

The perk of the second camp, though, is that I think on occasion people who do put out a lot of excellent work try so hard to be approachable and friendly that they almost end up apologizing for their success. My other sister, Elisabeth, has a tendency to downplay her accomplishments. She’s studying theater and business management, has worked on short notice and on plays that have been nominated for awards, but getting her to take a compliment can be like trying to catch a fish with your hands. Allowing yourself a certain confidence and awareness of your talents can be really empowering, and if the Weezer concert is any indication, as long as you have the talent to back it up, your fans will even embrace some swagger. I’m having fun adopting a bit of this attitude while I’m writing, complimenting myself on my word count or a sentence that comes out particularly well.

If you’re creative, do you find yourself more on the side of ultra-confidence or humble approachability? If you’re consider yourself more of a fan than an artist, do you admire arrogance in writers and musicians, or is it a turnoff?

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Electric Writing Days, or, How I Almost Missed the Train

Tags

epic bosshood, inspiration, making time to write, short stories, steps forward, totally boss, when the writing's going well, word count, writing, writing life

Much of the time, writing comes for me in fits and starts. I spend a lot of time treating myself like an old car, thumping myself around, muttering “come onnn,” and making vague promises and threats. Once in a long, long while, though, something magical clicks into place, and I get to spend a little while being the kind of synapse-firing, electric writer that I want to be. Yesterday was one of those days.

I wrote a story in a day, people. I wrote an entire story, beginning to middle to end, in a day. It came in at 3,174 words. Most days, I’m pleased if I hit 500 words, thrilled if I get past 800. During NaNoWriMo, my go-to insane writer’s challenge, reaching 2000 makes me feel like an overachiever, since you only need to write 1,667 to stay on track (I know. “Only.”). This is half again over the kind of overreaching goal I set for myself once a year. Forgive me for bragging, but I am feeling pretty boss right now.

And it was easy! For one glorious day, every time I sat down and opened the laptop, the next sentence came forth smoothly, and the next, and I already knew which scene needed to come after that. I nearly missed my stop on the Metro because I was so engrossed in what I was doing. It’s a good thing I happened to look up to think of the right word and saw “Metro Center” on the board, or chances are I would have been halfway to Vienna by the time I realized I’d been riding too long. It’s a good thing my stop on the way home is the end of the line, too, because it happened again. I only noticed I was there when I realized I was the only person sitting in my car of the train. All in all, between Metro rides, my lunch break, and two power sessions back home, the actual, physical writing of the story took about three and a half hours.

This is not, of course, the same as saying that the story took three and a half hours to write. I’ve been mulling over the world of the story for weeks now, ever since my professor mentioned there’s this crazy experimental poet who wants to use DNA strands as a medium for writing poetry and I thought, how cool would it be if human DNA did have poetry encoded into it? What would that mean for science, and literature, and religion? Who would read it? What would happen if someone didn’t have it? I took a couple stops and starts because there were so many different ways to go with it and I couldn’t figure out whose story I wanted to tell. So two days ago I got frustrated and spent my lunch hour putting together my notes of how this world worked, and who my characters were, and what they wanted and why. I don’t usually take that kind of prep time before writing, and I’m still not sure if I’ll make a regular practice of it, just because one of the things I’m learning is how different stories can be from each other. Practices that feed one story can suck the life out of another, but for this story, at least, making an outline worked in spades.

Next week is revising time, so chances are I’ll be grumbling again, but for now I’m still on the high. These are the moments to hold onto all the other times when nothing is working, and I hope next time I find myself in that place I’ll have the presence of mind to reread this and remember the rush.