Music Before the Money

Writing is like any other human endeavour: to get productivity you have to get in the zone.

Seclusion

I was really lucky when I wrote Rockets of the Reich in that I had a secluded little house on a river as my writing location. All I could hear was the water and the wind. With no diversions - not even a phone - I could write from 8am until I had to go to work - music gig - at 6pm. Now, this was a one-time event, a whole summer. However, you can find yourself a hole to get into, whether it be under stairs- this has happened! - or letting everyone knowthat you are not to be disturbed during a certain time.

Forget the Facts

On my desk that summer, I had no less that 23 books on U-boats that, at first, I would flip through when I wanted to check out a fact, like how fast a torpedo leaves the tube of a Type VII boat (between 12 and 19 knots. I know stuff!). By putting aside the facts and letting the story flow my gingers went at lightening speed and I was able to do between 2,000 and 5,000 words a day. The fact checking came after the scene was written to give continuity to the later writings.

Speak Like Winston

Remember my blog on Speak Like Winston? Get into character and pretend you are the person you are writing about. Feel his or her feelings . . .but don’t go postal!

Breathing Exercises

Don’t neglect your body. Get up after a certain period of time, stretch have a drink of water and breathe. Read my blog Let’s Breathe.

Writing a novel is like training for a marathon. It is very mental. I’ve never run more than14 miles so I can’t tell you what a marathon feels like but I know people who run them regularly. It’s discipline and training your mind and body to be in the zone. However, there’s no trick to writing. You just do it regularly and, voilà, a novel happens.

In a previous blog I mentioned that Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow and Chris DeBurgh Spanish Train were my favorite story songs. However, somehow I forgot Harry Chapin’s Taxi. This song came around when I was in my first year at the University of British Columbia and it’s sad ending still never fails to move me.

Chapin was one of those characters who could do everything.

The son of a big band drummer - who played with Tommy Dorsey no less - he played trumpet and then banjo in a group with his brothers and after. He studied architecture at the AirForce Academy and then philosophy at Cornell University. After that he made film documentaries garnering an Academy Award nomination in 1971.

But he will also be remembered for his social activism.

To call them charities would demean the man. He truly believed that hunger could be wiped out in our generation and that ours was the generation to do it.

In recording, his Verities and Balderdash album was his most successful featuring the single, Cats in the Cradle, which I still use as a gauge with my own kids. I always ask myself, “Am I doing enough with them?”

Chapin used great stories for his lyrics rather than a rhyming dictionary.

Of course there was rhyming but the feeling and drama of his songs were my big draw. Especially, W*O*L*D*, the story of an over-the-hill disk jockey who comes back to a small market town in hopes of regaining his ex-wife and family.

His Dance Band on the Titanic disk could be the best name for an album ever. 

Unfortunately, Chapin’s own life was snuffed out in an automobile accident on New York’s Long Island Expressway in July 1981. Although only 39 he suffered a heart attack and died later.

I still know every word to Taxi.