On September 13, 2012, at 5:38 p.m., I completed the fourth and final draft of my new novel manuscript. But the feeling of closure was eluding me, even as I wrapped up being a writer for the week and hit the road as a musician for the weekend, and it wasn't until days later that the point was driven home. And it had everything to do with Page 333. But first, fellow writers, a peek into my process. Every chapter, regardless of whether or not I'm writing it for the first time or revising it for the thirtieth time, gets copied and pasted into my MacBook's "TextEdit" program. Here, I use the program's "Speech" function to literally read the chapter back to me, and I do this to catch all of the dropped words and weird grammar and spelling problems that my tired eyes may have missed. I then print out the chapter, put it in the binder, and move on to the next one. Now, sometimes as I'm revising, I may find a few consistency problems in the manuscript that require my going back and making corrections to specific issues throughout. Like any Word document, I use the "Find and Replace" feature, and then these pages get re-printed and then inserted into the binder where they belong according to page number. Well, my aforementioned lack of closure was wiped away as working in conjunction with my obsession with the number three, the Universe dictated that the very last page out of approximately twenty-five insert pages would be Page 333. Closure achieved. I have since moved on to writing the Synopsis for potential agency representation, as it is all a part of the package, a crucial step in the traditional publishing game that I intend to play. In a way, the Synopsis is harder to write than the book, as it forces an objective view of the material in order to include only the crucial plot points. But even this step has enforced the closure, for as I go back into the actual manuscript to find where I've left off in the Synopsis, I find myself reading with a freed-up mind that's just enjoying the quality of the writing as a result of over a year's worth of hard work revising. And it's all because of Page 333, the page that told me to stop, the key that locked this baby up ... at least for now. The journey begins. I just got off of the phone with a close friend of mine from New Orleans who reminded me of a lesson, one that he had actually taught me while Jess and I were there less than a month ago. It was a lesson and a reminder all rolled into one. It was a lesson in the little reminders! I have been struggling lately with the idea of being stigmatized as a self-published writer, and I have gone on about it here on this blog in a number of different ways, all of which if you were to put them into one, cohesive statement, would read: STOP! NO! DON'T SELF-PUBLISH! Now, there is a big part of me that still feels this way. In this business, the best way to go will always be the traditional way, and that way is by going from the agent to the publisher to the contract. But what if your books are already out there? What if, as is the case for me, your first two books are already formatted and saturated on the Internet and are available now in all of the relevant formats? Do I just turn my back on my own bibliography? Believe it or not, this was indeed my plan. I had already done the research weeks before my trip to New Orleans on how to pull my titles from the Internet as to not even exist as a published writer, saving that distinction instead for when something would actually happen, for when I finally sold my first book. That's right, I was going to destroy everything that defined me up until this point, all of the celebrations by myself and by my family while we held my books in our hands for the first time, shaking the proverbial Etch A Sketch on my vocation as a writer. I use the word "vocation" intentionally, mainly because I couldn't use the word "career" during the time I was considering erasing myself. In my mind, I didn't have a career unless I could consider it how I made my living. "Vocation," then, became a more appropriate word. So, there it was. I was going to rip my forty years as a writer-to-be from the history books, regardless of the fact that it would be virtually impossible to remove the books from every database that ever had an Internet spider go out and grab them and put them on their site. In my mind, all I had to do was cut off the blood source, and the body would die. And then I took a trip back home to New Orleans. The last part of our trip was a visit to see some old friends, one of whom I just got off of the phone with, and together we walked through his recording studio and looked at all of the visual art that had poured out of him over the past few months. It was astonishing. There were paintings everywhere. And hidden away underneath all the canvases was the actual recording studio, its shelves still holding tapes from recording sessions that were done years ago, still waiting in some cases to be mixed and put out into the universe. And it occurred to me just then that no matter how much tinkering would be done to these master tapes, no matter what harmonies would be taken out or added in post, that the songs would still maintain their integrity by their titles alone. They would all fall into a certain, chronological record of artistic productivity. As my buddy said to me only a few hours ago, "It would be something else to add to your Wikipedia page!" This last trip to New Orleans reminded me of what it is that I do, of where it is that I come from, and where I come from is a city of defiant creatives. The audacity that we had in scheduling entire days around sitting in recording studios was almost as important as what we were recording. It's where I get the discipline that I have today. And judging from what I saw on Facebook and Twitter before our trip, it was still happening, and I got confirmation of that as I strolled through my friend's skull there in his recording studio. And so, during the drive back, I decided that I was going to play ball with my fate. I contacted my publisher and asked them about the possibility of reissues, like any, say, non-fiction book that would have to be updated in order to keep the information inside pertinent, and they said it was no problem. Do I plan to do this? Maybe. But that would be between my publisher and myself and it would be undetectable. The point is that I have that option, and the fact remains that those two books, the ones that exist in the universe with their covers and copyright years and ISBNs all over the world, are my first and second books respectively. Period. They are mine. And they mark where I was then as a writer. Self-published books get picked up all the time now by traditional publishing houses, which marks yet another change in the industry over the years, and so having books out there that I can be proud of is simply the foundation on which everything else can be built. Regardless of what harmonies may have been added or taken out, and no matter what changes are made to the original compositions, they are still the same old melodies by title alone that inspired me to want to launch them out into the universe from day one. In summary, here is an excerpt from the "Acknowledgements" page of Scenes from the Blanket that I think says it all. Written during the year following Hurricane Katrina, it is exactly what I meant when I said that I was reminded of a certain lesson while returning to the city that made me who I am: "Lastly I would like to thank the great city of New Orleans, my hometown and infinite muse. This book is about you -- about your people and your geography, about your spirit and your darkness, about your culture and your ideas. You exist far outside your city limits, within me and within us all, through the aesthetics you've so graciously given to your children. For this gift, New Orleans, I humbly thank you." About two months ago, during the week of January 30th, 2012, I commenced to temporarily shutting down as a writer. I put every one of my writing projects on indefinite hold, and I envisioned the main one -- the final revisions of my newest manuscript -- to be lying under the sheet in my imagined lab like Frankenstein's monster. Or in the case of someone with a mechanical bent, like a car without an engine, sitting under a tarp in my imaginary garage. Either way, you get the idea. I was walking away from some unfinished woodshed projects, and even though I was leaving them as such, they were made tidy and clean in their incompleteness. The next month would be an experimental excursion into corporate America, a journey that I had always fantasized about but never really had an opportunity to realize. The ideal version of this fantasy starred me sitting in a cubicle doing my work quietly, whatever that work was, as long as it was my responsibility and as long as I could do it without much thought. But in taking the opportunity that was available to me, I was unexpectedly thrust into a world in which I simply didn't belong, one in which I could not function in any healthy sense. Sure, the month-long training was a snap. I can navigate through any classroom-type situation being that I'm an admitted career student. But graduate from the hypothetical and into the applied, and, well, I soon understood why I was approaching the age that I was and had not yet held a job in sales. I have since decided to give teaching a second stab, having already done all of the legwork a few years ago to get into the system. I just never did any actual teaching, putting it on hold as my musical opportunities took off. Such has been the story all of my life. And my music career is still well into liftoff, it's just that this year, I'm all about the Benjamins! I am thankful, however, for my journey into that particular level of corporate America, reminding me of where I belong, teaching me that although I have no real confidence when it comes to arguing with small business owners about their business, that I can certainly argue with younger, less-experienced students whose education is my business. Which brings me back to the monster under the sheet, and the thrill I allowed myself on Monday, March the 19th, 2012, when I yanked back the cover and revisited my works-in-progress. The truth was that I really couldn't afford the time to think about them in any productive way, and on more than a few occasions, I've actively had to put my work out of my head. I know, "Who doesn't?" Sorry. In my case that would be suicide. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. Say what you want, I don't think that's any way for an artist to live. And live I will, as will my work, both of us once again, alive! |
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