Music Before the Money

The drama around starting a novel or play has been a mainstay in movies from the first talkies to Diane Keaton in “Something’s Gotta Give.” The infamous opening “It was a dark and stormy night” has been spoofed by many a movie and was brought to the Sunday papers by Snoopy sitting on his doghouse tapping out the words on his typewriter. So, how does one start a novel. Well, coming from someone who has never suffered writing block (I have a writer’s form of “verbal diarrhea”) my first thought is an old adage: “Write what you know.”

Now, I know that is just as much a cliche as Snoopy’s line of type but it is the truth. Until you can get good at projecting yourself into foreign lands and hostile dramas by reading about them - and interviewing people who have been through these experiences - it’s best to start with familiar locales. This is not to say you can’t delve into these other areas. I mean I wrote about World War I when I knew very little about many of the battles. But I spent many hours reading in a variety of libraries (before internet), and watched videos of both fiction and non-fictional programs to learn. But, if you like kayaking, for your first novel it would be easier to choose a lake, and write about the people who boat on it, than it would be to base your drama on the second shift at the steel mill.

But I digress (That is a habit of mine!) My point is, to start your first novel it would be easier to choose a genre that is so familiar to you that your fingers race across the keyboard when describing it. You know, the sounds, the way the light hits certain spots at certain times, etc.

And I bet you won’t get blocked.

I was mistaken about the first school bus adventures in my blog, Band Buses. Although not a band The Merry Pranksters took a road trip in a psychedelically painted school bus in 1964. According to Wikipedia, the purpose of the trip was to promote the publication of Ken Kesey’s novel “Sometimes a Great Notion” and to visit the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Ken’s most famous novel was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Pranksters included activist Wavy Gravy.

In a cloud of marijuana smoke, and various pills, they also hoped to meet Dr. Timothy Leary. Tom Wolfe, the author of “The Right Stuff,” penned a book about the trip called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test.” The resulting tour included peaceful confrontations with the law and bizarre street theater and impromptu concerts.

But what about the the bus? It was a 1939 International Harvester school bus named “Further” purchased by Kesey for$1250. The interior was stripped to accommodate the Pranksters. It made several appearances at various other locales in the years to come including Woodstock in ‘69. The Smithsonian institute attempted to acquire it but Kesey rebuffed them. Then, in a bold “prankster” move, he tried to pass off a counterfeit but the museum got wise to the plan. It supposedly was the inspiration for “The Magic Bus” by The Who.

To avoid further attempts to get his bus Kesey submerged it in a swamp on his property. Now there are eager people who want to restore the badly decomposed bus but the price tag is upward of $100,000. Kesey should have just stuck it in his barn.

So, “Further” could very well have been the first school-bus-type band bus.

It doesn’t matter how early some people rise in the morning there is always a pattern to their days’ beginning: Read the newspaper and turn on the TV. So after a night’s sleep - which may or may not have wiped your brain clean of yesterday’s stressors - you decide to feed your brain a potpourri of information, most of which is negatively spun.

Now, many people in diverse occupations rely on receiving information during their initial waking hour to help shape what day they may face. Stockbrokers, investment bankers and people of many other occupations need information to begin the day. Others, like my mother-in-law, are CNN junkies and have the TV on from daybreak to sleep. My grandmother was the same.

Your first waking minutes belong to you. In almost every instance (except in emergency cases) an extra ten minutes to yourself won’t ruin your day. In fact Anthony Robbins, one of the premier self-empowerment gurus in the world, wants you to spend more time than that. In his course, “Get the Edge,” Robbins’ first CD is called “Your Hour of Power.” In it he says that this first hour of the day is the time when you energize your mind and body. Exercise and listening to motivational speakers - on mp3’s or CD’s - fulfills this power regeneration and gets your day off to a big start.

I agree. However, in my opinion, if you haven’t an hour, take fifteen minutes. Sit and meditate (learn this fine art) and take tens minutes to clear your mind for the new day. Then open a book of positive material - Scott Peck, Zig Ziglar, Ken Roberts, Napolean Hill, etc. - and spend another 5 minutes reading.

Now, you can read the newspaper and get the headlines on CNN. You’ll have a negativity buffer going for you!