May 2, 2013 |
I’ve been doing a lot of writing recently. A few different projects – some work related, others not. And when I say I’ve been doing a lot of writing, what I mean is that I’ve been doing fairly small amounts of writing quite often.
I hop between projects and even between writing locations so that each small piece of writing feels like a fresh thing, and something that only takes a little of my time.
‘A little and often’ has sort of become my catchphrase.
But what I’ve found along the way is not only that fairly obvious thing about how it all quickly adds up (more than you’d even think), but also, more interestingly, that the pieces fall together.
By that, I mean that the writing takes on an unexpected shape, and the fragments of writing, when you come back to them, all seem to slot together well in a way that you might not have been anticipating, but which gives the finished product a far more interesting and complex tone.
More than that, it reveals hidden patterns. Recurring themes. There are a couple of things that I’ve written recently – including today – where I have discovered that the thing I was writing was not about the thing I thought I was writing about – but rather, something far more satisfying. Less obvious. More useful.
I think what happens is between bursts of writing, your brain processes stuff in the background. Finds threads. Makes connections. And then, perhaps while you sleep, it joins the dots.
It’s always quite pleasing to read back over your work and find out what it’s for and what it seems to be saying. And then, with a little rewriting and polish, you can make it look like that’s what you meant to do all along.
Apr 29, 2013 |
I’m one for rituals and processes. It helps me get things done and while I like change and spontaneity as much as the next person, repetitive behaviours (especially fun ones) are particularly useful for making progress on things.
I have a writing project I’m particularly enjoying at the moment, partly because my ritual is to go to a local cafe/bar near here when they open at 5pm, grab a table near the window at the back which lets in the afternoon sun, buy a medium glass of Malbec (175ml), and type until my wine is finished, usually about an hour and a half later.
I’ve been doing it for a couple of weeks now, and although I’m a reasonably recent addition to the bar staff’s own experience of regularity, I was asked today how the writing was going, and did I want my usual?
And in fact, the writing’s going rather well. Had something of a breakthrough today, actually. I continued tapping away at it when I got home and have carried on doing so long into the evening. What had been intended to be between 60 and 90 minutes of progress has now been five and a half hours of chipping away, getting it just right. Reordering, adding paragraphs, deleting sentences, reading back and moving forward.
I’m sure there was a whole bunch of other stuff I was going to do this evening – but given how sticky this new writing project seems to be, I’m making the most of this early bout of enthusiasm and indulging it to whatever extent it will tolerate. As a result, ten thousand words that didn’t exist last week exist this week. All of them are subject to change – but they’re a start.
Though my evening has completely vanished.
Apr 26, 2013 |
I’ve been writing a lot this month. I’ve made a point of posting something here on this blog every day in April as well as chipping away at all the work-related stuff (of which there’s plenty right now). There’s also the daily writing I do just for my own entertainment and sanity.
But sometimes you look at the screen and think “I actually don’t really have anything to say.”
This is one of those times.
I started running out of steam late yesterday afternoon, not long after I wrote that last blog post about listening to music I don’t really like. So last night, to try and get my head in a different space (and also because it was long overdue), I started alphabetising my record collection. This is an activity I usually relish. But this time, it turns out, I didn’t have the word power to sustain even that.
I got as far as C before turning in with a headache. Today, I’ve managed to get as far as O, but it’s been like wading through treacle.*
I’m hopeful that the weekend will see me getting the rest of the records sorted so I can move the furniture back into its rightful place in the living room. And with any luck, my cerebral cortex will kick back into gear and I’ll get the writing back on track. Apart from anything else, I have a deadline.
But sometimes you just have to go with the fact that your brain’s not on task, and no amount of determination or self-bribery will bring forth useful or eloquent phrases. Your best bet in these situations is just to sit back and ride it out. The hell with it.
The rest of my evening will be spent sipping a glass of wine, staring into the middle distance and listening to the rain outside over a soundtrack of Chet Baker. Nothing remotely demanding, in other words.
*Yes, I realise ‘like wading through treacle’ is a cliché. Normally I try to avoid those. I just spent ten minutes working on an alternative, but you do not want to hear what I came up with.
Apr 25, 2013 |
I bought yet another album full of music that I don’t like very much today. I was getting tired of the other albums of music I don’t like very much because I’d listened to them so often. I listen to quite a lot of music I’m not a fan of.
To be fair, I don’t particularly dislike them either, I just don’t get any particular pleasure from these tunes in the way that I do from some of the music I actively enjoy. However, this is music that is useful to me.
If you don’t recognise any of those titles and artists above, they come from a subgenre of electronic dance music known as Minimal Tech House. It interests me very little and I could certainly tell you almost nothing about any of the musicians involved. I listen simply because sometimes my back hurts.
As someone who writes as a large part of their job, I spend a great deal of time at a desk. That used to mean spending a great deal of time in a chair. However, I find that if I spend too long sitting in an office chair, no matter how good the office chair, I get a sore back. And not just for the afternoon – it deteriorates. It’s cumulative. If I keep it up for a week, then I have an unpleasant weekend.
So, as faddish as it might seem, I’ve become a convert to the standing desk. At least, during those times when my back is playing up, which thankfully is less often than it was – though I’m going through one of those times at the moment. It’s not debilitating, just annoying. Like being unable to stretch your legs on a long flight.
By ‘standing desk’, what I actually mean is a coffee table on top of an ordinary desk. I haven’t shelled out for an expensive adjustable arrangement. You can always take the coffee table off the desk and sit down again, and I do that a lot.
Standing and working at a computer is kind of weird. I mean, it feels weird. I’ve been doing it on and off for a couple of years, and that weirdness has never gone away. I find I can’t stand perfectly still and type. So (and this is going to sound even more nonsense)… I dance.
In my defence, I don’t mean that I jump around and wave my arms about (often). I just sort of bob along to a beat. But it can’t be anything I particularly like or something with lyrics, because that’s just too distracting. Minimal Tech House seems to be at just the right tempo (usually in the 124-128 bpm range) and is just boring enough to be completely ignored other than as tempo and a consistent, acoustic environment that draws no attention away from what my brain is meant to be focusing on.
I can write in silence when sitting down. In fact, I prefer that. But when standing, listening to this stuff, I get immediately into a rhythm (both physically and with the writing) and I can pretty much stand and type while grooving away for hours at a time (with five minute breaks every half hour).
My Radio in the Digital Age book (forthcoming Nov 2013) was written almost exclusively to a soundtrack of this stuff. Likewise Understanding the Music Industries. The last journal article I wrote and the one I’m currently working on too.
I couldn’t name a single track if called upon to do so – but for some reason, for writing standing up, this is my preferred soundtrack.
The ‘dancing’ (I use the term loosely) that I do is, I imagine, a moderately healthy activity – at least when compared with sitting in an office chair all day. A bit like having one of those treadmill desks (which I also kind of fancy).
And, when I’m in the groove, I can be incredibly productive. 4-5000 perfectly usable words per day is not out of the question when I really get going. I may look like an idiot and my friends with impeccable music taste might judge my listening choices, but I’m in my house with the door closed, so really, who cares?
But the interesting thing for me is that it only really works because I don’t care for it much. Turning this stuff off signals the end of the working day, and I can go and listen to records I actually like.
I could never write a book while listening to the good stuff. I mean, I can barely even hold a conversation.
Apr 16, 2013 |
I think I’d like to be a writer.
Don’t get me wrong. I already write. More than you probably think. I have books that you can buy, and I’ve written articles for magazines and journals. I’ve written stories, collections of poetry (and before you ask – no, you can’t) and I’ve started several unfinished novels of varying degrees of quality over the past 25 years.
I write a lot that’s just for myself. ‘Journalling’, if you like (though I wouldn’t call myself a ‘journalist’). Three pages longhand first thing every morning for years now. That’s about 750 words of braindump. Recently I’ve taken to doing it in the evening as well. So that’s 1500 words every day without even putting my fingers on a keyboard.
I’ve also been blogging here for the past eleven years, and have written an estimated million words on New Music Strategies. I have a music blog where I write about records I like and I’ve had a number of different blogs on a number of different topics over the years. I even wrote about whisky for a while there…
But I’m not a writer. Not yet. I’m simply someone who writes.
I know writers. I know some amazing, gifted writers. People who craft beautiful or heartbreaking sentences, weave narrative from fine threads of metaphor and myth, and tell stories with such impact that the reverberations continue long after the last words have been read. People who will string a group of words together that will just make you stop and say “Huh…”.
I know writers who write fiction and writers who write non-fiction. And many of them, I suspect, have written far fewer words than I have written – but for whatever reason, they are writers far more than I am a writer. It’s what they’ve focused their attention on, I guess. My attention has always been on so many different things all of the time. As a result, I like to think I’m reasonably good at lots of things, but exceptional at nothing in particular.
I guess the same is true for musicians, now that I think of it, or athletes maybe – but it seems that ‘writer’ is a state of being. A capacity. A quality. You can always tell when someone’s a writer, because they’re a writer when they are not writing. It’s who they are. A writer walking. A writer sleeping. A writer singing songs.
That’s what I want to be. And it’s not what I am yet.
But the way that I’m going about becoming a writer is by working at it. Focusing, finally, rather than merely dabbling an awful lot. For the longest time, writing has been how I do lots of other things – rather than the thing that I’ve paid attention to for its own sake. And so improving the calibre of the composition has not been the at the heart of my work, but instead, I’ve used writing instrumentally in order to communicate in a particular mode in the service of some non-literary aim or other.
You may have noticed an upsurge in the number of posts on this blog of late. This is a writing exercise. It’s practice. 350 words minimum every day here (usually substantially more), and a post each day on my music blog. And improving the calibre of writing is the primary purpose of those activities.
Don’t worry – it’s not going to be this regimented or relentless forever. I’d like to be in a position one day to simply write for pleasure, as the mood takes me. But I do want to make some headway towards that goal of being a writer which, for me, follows from being good at writing.
Much like someone who wants to become a concert violist must perform and practice every day, I’m sitting at my keyboard as a matter of ritual observance, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life, and I am practising. I may make some occasional squawks and play some wrong notes – but the purpose is to just write.
I know I can put a sentence together that communicates, generally speaking. And I almost never have the paralysis of the empty page that so many people talk about. But the quality of my prose is nowhere near where I’d like it to be. It’s the craft of writing and the feel and taste of the words on the page that I want to really master. It’s the difference between cooking a family meal each night – and being a chef.
It helps that I have a couple of work-related book projects on the go. That gives me plenty of opportunity to write. Every bit helps. And I’m studying the work of others, as well as some writing about writing that I’m finding incredibly helpful.
And yes, I’m also working on a novel. In my spare time. You may be waiting a while for that one. But I’m thinking of that project as my graduation.
A novel – especially one that I’m pleased with – will, I hope, be the chrysalis from which I emerge a fully fledged writer with the kind of colourful wings I see on those that currently soar above my head.
Which is all really just to say… hence all the blog posts recently.
