It’s been nearly two weeks since I hit my deadline, and I still feel like I’m shaking off a bit of PTSD, but a sense of being totally and utterly alive has come over me. It’s like I’m stripped naked and wandering, raw to the bone, a creative man without a thing he’s creating, my soul bared, the call of the unknown lighting my path.
I just finished the new and brilliant documentary about Billy Joel on HBO, and I came away feverishly inspired to chase after new tales.
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One of the the reasons his songs were so wonderful was that each of them had autobiographical roots. He wasn’t coming up with words out of thin air; he wasn’t simply looking for rhymes. He was attaching his own life to melodies, never afraid to bare it all.
I had no idea that the song “Big Shot” came from his experience of waking up with hangovers (perhaps during one of his particularly dark times) and recalling the stupid things he’d done and said the night before. He’d look in the mirror and say to himself, “You had to be a big shot, didn’t ya?”
Or with “New York State of Mind,” he wrote that tune driving back east after running into a creative rut in California. As he drew nearer to his homestate of New York, music began to creep into his soul, manifesting into one of the most important songs ever written.
I’m reminded that each of my books has a piece of me in it, so as I open myself up to new stories, I’m doing more than seeking seeds externally. Sure, I’m taking down tons of books and movies, listening to friends tell stories, eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations, listening to the quiet of nature, often just finding stillness, but I’m also looking inside.
What’s going on with me?
Wanna know? Oh, what the hell.
Just like Billy Joel often did, I find myself wondering where I’m going right now with my career. Do I want to write pop? Literary jazz? Do I want to write whatever the hell I want? Should I consider my current readers? Do I play the game of writing to market or do I simply write for myself?
Do I want to continue to push myself? With each of my fifteen books, I’ve taken on new challenges as a way to keep it fresh and interesting, to stay in the curl of the writing wave. It might be writing in present tense after years of past-tense stories. Or writing dual timeline. Maybe setting one of those timelines in the 1800s. How about writing a story from three or four points of view (not easy). What if one or two of them were female? After writing a handful of tales that span the length of a summer, how about tackling a story that evolves over decades? And if you’ve read my stuff, you know I love to tackle a new setting.
I won’t name names, but so many successful authors find their lane and stick to it. Similar settings, time period, characters, theme. Do I need to do that? What if I get bored? But…what if that’s where the fame and fortune is? Can readers handle following an author who does what he wants?
(As an aside, there are elements that I’m always interested in. I like love stories, and there will likely always be one or two in my novels. I like colorful everyday characters who are thrown into extraordinary circumstances. I like underdogs. I adore dysfunction in all types, like characters who strip down to nothing and get down on their knees in the middle of a row of vines and howl at the moon with the coyotes.)
I’ve been desperate to write a dystopian novel, one that might have zombies of some sort. A literary dystopian love story. Don’t worry, that’s not happening right now. I’ve also had this idea to write a modern-day Lorna Doone, which was an English masterpiece written my a relative of mine: R.D. Blackmore. The books that have most captured me lately have some element of time travel, like the work of Emily St. John Mandel. I can’t get enough. But oh my, would I upset my agent, my publisher, and many of my readers if I climbed on that train.
Back to the Billy Joel idea, I’m pointing at the push and pull going on within me right now as a working artist, and I wonder if there’s a story in me about a guy or gal who is experiencing the same emotions, wondering which path to take, wondering where the sweet spot is between creating for himself and others. (At the height of his fame, Billy wrote and released a solo-piano album of classical music. Good for him!)
Let’s go deeper. There’s more going on inside of me than simply wondering about my career. Things far more important.
How about growing as a father and husband? As a son? As a member of my community, my state, my country, my world. Can I incorporate characters who share a similar want to be better?
Sure, it’s enough to write beach reads, but I’d like to shine my light even brighter if possible. I’d like to change a life or two. I’ve wrestled with grief in real life and in my novels, and so many of you who’ve lost someone have written to say that I’ve given you hope or helped you turn a corner. I’m not sure what more I can ask for as a novelist, and I want to keep doing that. Whatever I write needs to have some power behind it.
Another thing that plagues me is my nomadic tendencies. I’m always eager to move and check out new places (I would move to Madrid or Estepona tomorrow), but as I get older, I’m also attracted to the idea of throwing out anchor, connecting more deeply with local friends, finding what it’s like to live in a place for longer than our norm of three years. Writing stories about searching for home interest me.
As do stories about people moving to new places, because that’s something my family and I have done a lot. We know what it’s like to be the new kid.
There you go, friends, a bit of the Boo you might not have known. Next time, I’ll touch on more of the external search for story, because it’s one of my favorite parts of the writing process, that headline that grabs you while scanning through the news, an arresting experience like seeing baby birds poke their beaks out from a nest, or a clever bumper sticker that rings your bell and makes you think, “That’s it! I know what I’m going to write.”
I’m all ears and eyes and heart right now, waiting ever so patiently for a story to say hello. In the meantime, I’m going to keep feeding my soul and attempt to stay steady in the present.
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