The Trouble with Endings

Old orchard

Two weeks ago I finished the first draft of the novel I’ve been working on for a year. My kids were spending the week with their grandparents and Andrew was backpacking with his brothers for a few days and I went feral—falling into irregular patterns of eating, sleeping, and grooming—and wrote over 13,000 words in five days. I was determined that I would finish it during this huge gift of a week and then actually enjoy our upcoming family vacation. I would bask in the glow of this momentous accomplishment and let the draft rest during the back-to-school crunch and agonizing transitions of September. I would pick it up again in October and revise it during the coming academic year. 

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A New Site and Two New Songs

The River’s Bend Sessions

Andrew and I decided our songwriting project needed its own home, so Andrew built something. It feels good to have given it a home. We just posted two new songs there. We wrote both of them in January, so they’ve been in progress for a long time.

You Never Knew Me

This one was at least 80% Andrew (the writing—the tracks are always about 95% Andrew). He wrote it on the last day of his two-week music focus. My memory of it is that I took our four-year-old down the street to his thirty-minute swimming lesson, dropped him off at a friend’s house (also just down the street), came home, and Andrew told me he’d written a song. Then he played me something that I thought was totally catchy and fully formed. I was excited because I liked the song a lot, and because he’d accomplished one of the things he’d set out to do during his time away from his regular work. I must point out here that although he wrote most of this song in an hour, it was on day ten of ten days he’d dedicated to thinking about and playing and writing music. This supports my theory (and I’m sure much research, which I don’t feel like looking up right now) about creativity. Sometimes it takes a long time to prepare the soil, and then when something grows it seems miraculous. But it’s not. He made the time and did the work. 

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Happy Birthday Dear Blog

Today is my blog’s first birthday. It’s also my thirty-eighth birthday. It’s also my nephew Liam’s second Birthdaybuddiesbirthday. I started the day off right eating breakfast at the Deluxe Town Diner with him and a few other great people, and then we struck a birthday buddies pose in front of these trash cans. I think it’s fair to say that both Liam and I have learned a lot this past year. 

When I wrote that first blog entry, I had no idea what kind of year I was headed into, and it’s turned out to be one of my best. It even has a theme: the year I stopped allowing my fear of creating something bad to paralyze me. 

Exhibit A: I started a blog, even though there are many people better qualified to write about all the things I write about. I’d been meaning to start a blog for ten years. 

Exhibit B: I started writing the novel I was excited about writing instead of the novel it would have been more sensible to write. The one I’m writing is about musicians, which I knew had the potential pitfall of not being able to convey what it needed to convey about music. I knew this problem might be impossible to solve. I’m not at all sure I’ve solved it, but Andrew and I have been creative about trying to, by… 

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New Song: Love Is a Sickness

Here’s our new song, Love Is a Sickness

I finished the 1992 section of my book during the first week of January, and since then I’ve been trying to get a handle on what comes next. I began this project with a sense of where the book ends and an outline for part one, but no outline for the rest of it. I’ve spent the past few weeks writing about the book instead of writing the book, and when I finally started actually writing part two we were barraged with snow and its evil companion: snow days. I’ve missed a lot of writing days as a result, but I’m still scribbling in my notebook and thinking about it, and it’s becoming clearer. 

It’s been great to have songwriting as a tool for figuring out what comes next. The book picks up eight (or maybe even a bit more—still not totally sure) years after part one ends, so the character has changed. I thought if we could write a couple of songs for Johanna for part two I would be able to get a handle on who she is eight years later. And I was right. I wrote one that we haven’t recorded yet, and then I came up with the lyrics for “Love Is a Sickness.” Apologies to Samuel Daniel, who coined this phrase in the 16th century. 

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The Best Books I Read In 2014

I read twenty books this year. I wish I could say I’d read more. There have been years when I read a book a week. Or at least one year: 1999, when I graduated from college and worked at the Harvard Book Store. I had time and easy access to an incredible variety of books and a lot of smart people to discuss them with. It would have been uncool of me not to read a book a week. I’m planning to read more books next year. Instead of naming a number, which suits my goal-oriented, analytical style, my reading goal for 2015 is to always have a book going. No lulls. I’m happier when I’m in the middle of a book, and I learn something about writing from every one I read. 

The great news is that I read some fantastic books this year, books that have really stuck with me. I started the year off right with Battleborn, a short story collection by Claire Vaye Watkins. I found it arresting from the first paragraph of the first story, “Ghost, Cowboys”: “The day my mom checked out, Razor Blade Baby moved in. At the end, I can’t stop thinking about beginnings.” The narrator of the story is named Claire, and she tells some of the story of her family’s past (her father ran with Charles Manson). She plays with the line between fiction and memoir. Much of the collection is set in or around Reno, and its history and desert setting figure prominently. Most of the stories are modern, but there’s a terrific novella about the gold rush nestled in the middle. Her language is impeccable, as is her storytelling. I love story collections but rarely experience them as page turners, usually putting them down for a while in between each story. I couldn’t put this one down.

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Mom’s Egg Nog

When I started this blog, I promised the occasional recipe, and I’m finally coming through with a killer one. This beverage is a paradox. It is both the richest and the lightest thing I’ve ever imbibed. Every night on Christmas Eve my mom makes this egg nog. It ruined me for anything that comes out of a carton. Last year she passed the recipe on to me and I decided to double it, but I won’t do that again. As delicious as it is, one is enough (and I never say that about anything). I made it tonight for my friends and have concluded that it makes about six six-oz servings. Some guests licked the insides of their cups. Why yes, I do have super classy friends, and I promised them I’d share the recipe. 

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New Song: “Never Enough”

Never enough

Here’s our new song, “Never Enough.” 

When I handed this song off to Andrew not even half-written, I realized that we’ve gained a lot of confidence about working together. I’d taken it as far as I could, and I knew he’d at least be able to come up with an idea that would allow us to figure the rest out together. For the first three songs, I was able to make a morning’s work of coming up with some kind of melody and nearly complete lyrics. It didn’t go as smoothly this time. 

Beginning with our second song, “New Girl,” I’ve been thinking about the Nine Inch Nails album, The Downward Spiral. I bought this album when it was released in 1994. It’s a concept album detailing a man’s downward spiral, and it was recorded in the house where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by members of the Manson Family, a choice I found to be disturbing and tasteless even when I was sixteen.The album is dark, and I listened to it a lot and thought it was good without ever falling all the way into it the way I did other albums of the era. What strikes me now when I listen to Nine Inch Nails is how synthetic the music is, in a very deliberate way, but how emotive and human the lyrics are. This contrast feels perfect to me.

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New Song: “Easy to Be Good”

Johanna wrote a song (she’s a fictional character, and this song is part of something I’ve recently christened The Reckless Gamble Project). 

It’s called “Easy to Be Good,” and it’s here, along with Andrew’s post, if you’d like to give it a listen. 

It’s her first song, and it’s about longing for a man she knows is no good. “I’m tired of good/I’m sick of nice/I’m ready for/a taste of vice.” That’s the gist. She’s only fifteen (almost sixteen). She knows what she’s doing and she doesn’t. There’s something a little desperate about it. 

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On Relentlessness

Two days ago I found out that I received an award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. I was overwhelmed by this news. The last time I checked my email in the middle of a writing day, which I am not supposed to do, I received my second rejection of the day for a short story I have out. I can handle one a day, but two felt like a lot. That was last week. Also, I applied for this grant six months ago with no luck. This time I applied with the first chapter of my novel-in-progress, and they dug it. They even sent me nice comments from the jurors encouraging me to keep going. I am still reeling a bit from the MCC Fellowship, which I found out about in May (they funded me based on nearly the same work sample I sent to the Sustainable Arts Foundation last time around, so it really does depend on who’s reading).

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New Song: “New Girl”

New girl

Andrew and I have a new song. It’s called “New Girl.” I came up with what turned out to be the bridge a couple of months ago, from an idea in the novel I’m working on. The bridge is: “Baby, leave me here with my last cigarette. You don’t want to be the only vice I’ve got left.” I liked the idea of a person or a relationship being a vice, and I like the idea of a sober addict transferring his addictive tendencies to a person, and how it might feel to be that person. This song became a warning from one of the characters in my novel to another. She ignores it, of course. 

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