Can’t leave off without these lyrics by Harry Nilsson:
“First day in August, the last rain was in May
When the Rainmaker came to Kansas is the middle of a dusty day
Said the Rainmaker to the people, tell me what you are prepared to pay
Said the Rainmaker to the people, now I’ll conjure up some rain today.”
I strongly recommend writing courses, even for experienced writers (and published ones!) The reason for this is that I have never been to a course where I walked away with little or no valuable piece of information. Someone once asked me what was the difference between a professional and an amateur whereupon I replied, “A pro does it for a living, that’s all.” It’s a little simplistic but basically true. The teacher had sold a few articles, and was a published novelist, but had to work as a teacher to live. In the truest sense of the word, she was an amateur - just like me.
However, as she spoke my pen was moving; me with four published novels and four more in manuscript form. In other words being published doesn’t mean you are any better or worse than the next conscientious writer. It means you’ve been to the mountain top but, like the majority of writers, there’s no guarantee of a chair beside the guru.
She said another thing that has stuck with me: “Writers write because they have to, not because they want to.” In other words writing is a calling that, like many other callings, completely ignores what is convenient or polite. Some scribes bolt out of bed at 3:00am and jot down notes, oblivious of the dog who wants out or the spouse who can’t get back to sleep. They edit manuscripts in hockey rinks when they should be watching their kids play or have a short story stashed at their workplace. When they should be enjoying a movie with their families they are reworking plot lines using the movie as fresh ammunition. To the “unwashed public” they are just plain wierd.
My year of wierd was in 1999. I arranged for my two children, aged 9 and 11, to go to the junior golf program at the local resort. I would drop them off at 7:30am and then race back to write on my novel, “Rockets of the Reich.” The summer was a blur and I never realized until August 29th that both of them never cared for golf. In my zeal to finish my U-boat thriller I lost track of time and priorities. I also lost an irretrievable summer in my kids’ lives. When I think back to the ’90’s my clearest memories are of the blue screen of WordPerfect 5.1.
I still write with the same zeal - but in spurts, as I write these blogs. This summer I make sure I don’t drop my kids (I have 11 year-old twins) off any place where I can’t either participate or watch them without scribbling down a plot line. Despite what some purists think you can balance life and your raison d’être.
The guitar I traded my Rickenbacker Fireglow for was a 1968 Gibson SG, with 24 frets clear of the body. It was a great guitar with two humbucking pickups and the standard Gibson tremelo bar. The only problem was that the neck was twisted and there was a constant buzz on the low “E” string.Another musician had a unique guitar with a clear lucite body and a pickup that could be taken out by undoing a screw. The pickguard was basically “mactac” but it sure looked neat. And the musician wanted the SG so the trade was made.
Guitar maker Dan Armstrong brought the idea of a clear lucite-body guitar to Ampeg, the amplifier and sound reinforcement people. The lucite, he explained, eliminated the buzzing vibrations that plagued many wooden models (I could never hear any) but increased sustain. Besides its remarkable see-though look there was a removable pickup system that lets you change between the “Rock Treble” (single coil) and “Modern Drive” (double-coil) pickups. I only had the single coil pickup but I could remove it by unfastening a screw on the back. It just slid out!
It also featured a maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with full access to the 24th fret. And the machine heads were Grovers. The bottom line for a 19 year-old: it looked and felt great. And Keith Richards and Billy Wyman played them - so did John Kay of Steppenwolf.
I guess maybe it was because I couldn’t get another pickup for it that I finally sold it two years later for $400. (The bridge was the non-adjustable one so there was a tuning problem, as well.) I really can’t remember. But one just went on E-bay for $3200.
The guitar has been re-issued this year for around $1100-$1500 US. Unlike mine it comes with both pick-ups. And don’t wear a belt buckle when you play it!
I was an immediate Indiana Jones fan after watching “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the theater. Jones brought Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn back to the screen in the form of - not a pirate - but a rogue archaeologist of all things!
In the third installment, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,”Jones and his father - played by Sean Connery - search for the Holy Grail and are chased by, again, Nazis. His father is shot to persuade Jones to get the Grail to save his life. It is at this point of the movie that Jones is confronted by a wide, underground chasm with no bridge to the other side. If he gets over there he can use the power of the Grail to save his father’s life. Jones then looks into the old note book and sees a man suspended over the chasm. It is impossible.
What happened next is what I’ll always remember the most. Jones puts one foot out and trusts that he will not fall to his death. To his relief his foot hits something solid, a rock bridge that was not noticeable before from his original vantage point. He then throws gravel out and the span becomes clear.
Sometimes we have to trust our instincts that things will be okay when our left brain is screaming for us to back away. A person in a car traveling down the road at night only sees up to the end of its headlights but trusts that there is road past that even though it is not visible. If what we want rings true with our souls even we mere mortals can expect a lift across the chasm. Like with Jones, it may not be what we expected - to float across - but if we allow it to show up differently we may be pleasantly surprised.
Stumble it!