A Lyricist Inspired Me To Be a Novelist

                                                                    Photo taken by me. Please do not use without permission.

He got caught up in the passion of the music. He grabbed the note and stretched it out in a wail like the mournful whistle of a distant train. What he did on stage when  the spirit took hold of him was not in any way intellectual. It was pure stream of consciousness and he was tapped into the same source as the angels. We stood in awe hoping that a mere touch of his garment hem would plug us in too.

     I wrote that some time ago on a scrap of paper torn from an envelope. I must have been listening to U2 at the time which isn't surprising since I listen to them a lot of the time. When I found it recently it reminded me of how much U2 inspires me to write, more specifically, of how Bono's lyrics inspire me. Of course the music itself is inspiring. There are multiple books out there already about the inspirational power of U2's music. But what first inspired me to try to be a writer is the poetry that Bono writes that are the lyrics to U2's music. 

     I remember a friend asking me years ago why I loved U2 so much. This same friend had also always encouraged me to write. I showed him some of my favorite lyrics and I told him that to me those lyrics were so beautifully perfect that if I couldn't write like that I didn't want to write at all. Well, that was a stupid way to think of course. How many people will ever achieve that? I'm happy to say it didn't take me long to see the flaw in my logic. So instead of not writing because I can't possible be as good as Bono, I write the best I can. Bono is the standard that I always strive toward. I like to fantasize myself in the middle of a book signing someday. As I'm busily signing away with my head down a book is slid in front of me. I look up with a smile to ask to whom I should sign it and it's the man himself. To write a book that Bono would want to read...I can't imagine a more satisfying achievement. 

     Who inspires you to write? Whose lyrics do you love?

Turning the dreaded Facebook photo tag into something useful

     I have a growing collection of scenes without books to call home. I wrote one last night. See, what I do is when something happens to me or I observe something that strikes me as a good scene for a story instead of journaling about it, I go ahead and write a scene around it. Often it's just a kernel of an idea and writing a scene about it creates something noteworthy out of a moment that usually wouldn't be significant enough to remember for a journal entry at the end of the day. Sometimes these scenes give me ideas to build an entire book around and sometimes they just sit waiting to be fit into some WIP in the future. This is what works for me because journaling bores me and, later down the road, embarrasses me. Nothing makes me cringe more than going back and reading old journals. I want to die of shame just thinking about my angst-filled journals from the teenage years. Which are, by the way, missing since I moved. Oh yeah...THE HORROR. I live in fear of someday stumbling upon a recently-gone-viral website made up of my journal entries from ages thirteen to seventeen.
     Anyway, this is part of my writing process and below is an example which I wrote last night. Enjoy, judge, ridicule...in your own mind or behind my back please. Feel free to comment.


         Man! She felt good this morning. Energized. Ready to meet the day head on. She felt optimistic like....like she'd just had the wind knocked out of her. There alongside her coffee and chocolate croissant, smack dab in the middle of her morning internet routine of Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, seemingly larger than life was an old picture posted by an older friend. In it she stood in a group, smiling, her ex standing next to her. Not just any ex...THE Ex. You know the one. That one Ex that everyone has that they never fully recover from, the "what might have been" Ex. What stopped her in her tracks and held her spellbound was how she was transported back to that exact moment. She remembered everything about it, the crunch of the white rock under her shoes, the laughing voices of the others in the picture, the quip of one friend as they shuffled into position. She squinted at her computer screen as she remembered the sun that day and how she tried not to blink as they waited for the photo to be taken. The content cheerfulness she'd felt that morning passed through her again like fingertips lightly brushing the rungs of a banister as their owner passes by. Then she recalled the joke she'd made to Him just before they took their places, that quip that would haunt her for years wondering if it was the trigger that began their long, slow demise as a couple. How odd it was to remember the exact moment captured in the image. How often does that happen? She couldn't think of a single instance before now. Her "can do" spirit of the morning was shattered and gone as she stared into the distance at nothing. Her memories swept her into familiar reminiscences and the same old questions and yearning she'd convinced herself years ago she was no longer holding onto. The bittersweet ache that filled her was actually a relief. It was so much more comfortable and familiar than the sunny optimism of moments before and the past five years.

Bitter Romantic? Hmm

   
     I'll be the first one to admit that I am a contradiction. I hold equal and nearly opposite viewpoints on almost everything. This may be one of the reasons I felt a career in law was suitable (or it could be because insanity runs in the family or because I have a latent masochistic streak). It is, after all, a strength as an attorney to be able to see both sides of an argument. Too bad I usually found myself wishing I was on the other side of whatever argument I had to make. *shrug* The grass is always greener.
     In any case, now that I'm trying to write, I find myself with a WIP that is a romance novel as well as a pretty much finished book of humorous poems written years ago whose humor stems from the bitterness with which they seethe. Trying to write happily ever after and round out a bitter poem collection with a few more rhyming gems is a bit of a challenge even for me to say the least.
     The bitter poems were written to amuse myself and my coworkers at one of my many horrible jobs overseen by one of my many horrible bosses, a kind of gallows humor if you will. I've been thinking I would use them to test the self-publishing waters. They're just sitting here doing nothing after all and they are so odd I can't foresee traditional publishers beating down my door to publish them. So, why not see what this self-publishing thing is all about by putting them out there myself? I need just a few more to have a robust collection. The good news is, I don't have a horrible job anymore and my only horrible boss is myself. The bad news is I have no well of bitterness readily available to tap into like I did before. I NEED to feel the burn of disappointment and disbelief at the stupidity and awfulness of my lot in life.This is where my contradictory nature is a strength again. I am a cynic so I'm not too worried about finding something that will piss me off enough to wax bitterly poetic again. Until then, I'm open to suggestions of topics.
     At the same time that I'm trying to write these last few bitter poems, I'm also working on a contemporary romance set in the music industry between a female record executive and the front man of a rock band. I'm a hopeless romantic. I want HEA's (happily ever afters) and, honestly, don't deal well with too much angst along the way. I believe in true love and soul mates and all that sqooshy stuff. Wait, didn't I just say I was a cynic? Yes. And now I'm saying that I'm a hopeless romantic? Yes. I am both. I am what I am. It doesn't usually give me too many problems in real life (Or maybe it does, you'll have to talk to my ex-boyfriends about that.) My challenge now is to reconcile these two sides of myself without making my characters crazy. What fun!
     Last night I started two different bitter poems about people who sniff incessantly instead of blowing their noses. I can't decide which I like best. I may post both here when they're done and let the public choose their favorite for inclusion in the collection. Just to be safe I think I'll write an argument scene in the romance novel as a buffer before attempting to write a love scene while visions of sniffers are still sniffing in my head.

Fear of Finishing

     My current WIP was started about three years ago and isn't even half finished yet. It's my WIP because I have the most done on it. I have other partial stories, novels, kernels of ideas that are much older. I can't even remember when I wrote the oldest but the oldest I can remember was written in an English Lit class in college some fifteen years ago.  Fifteen years and I still haven't finished even a short story. I am constantly coming up with new ideas for stories and books, sagas even, but I just can't seem to follow through and finish anything. I enjoy the process of writing once I make myself sit down and do it. There's nothing quite like achieving flow in my writing and looking up hours later and not even knowing what time it is. The feeling I get when I come up with a great line or a great scene can make me smile for hours. So, why am I like this? Why can't I actually bring the story on in? Am I alone in this?
     I suppose I could blame it on procrastination, laziness, or being to busy and stressed from my day job when I had a day job. I don't really think those are the answers though. Now, more than ever, I must be honest with myself. Those are convenient excuses. What I've determined after many hours of conscientious navel-gazing is that I am afraid of what comes after I finish a book. It's not actual rejection that I fear. It's the accumulation of rejection by traditional publishers, lack of sales should I self-publish and the building realization that "it's never gonna happen". If I never finish anything then making my living as a writer remains an attainable dream. If I finish something or many things and no one is interested, the dream will die and then what?
     I'm writing about this and putting it out there as an effort to overcome the fear. I have already squandered too much precious time that could have been devoted to nothing but writing. When I left Chicago and my career behind I told myself it was a blessing because how many people get the opportunity to take time like that to write? And what have I done with it? Not much, not enough, not what I should have done. So, before my time runs out, I must face the fear head on, write and get past it, finish something and put it out there because fear is the mind-killer and a dream kept on a shelf isn't much of a dream after all.