Some of you who follow what goes on here may know I am working on a project. It’s more of a challenge really, from my best friend and nemesis Jeff over at 52 Projects. Originally the challenge was to write a novel–a short European-style novel (whatever that may be)–before I uprooted and moved from New York back to California this summer.
Turns out I’m not moving, but I am keeping my end of the bargain anyway. I would never be able to live it down if I gave up on the book. Plus, I really do want to pound out a feverish book and then wallow in its murky first-draftiness. It’d be the perfect way to spend a humid New York City summer.
What writing project are you working on? And how is it going?
The date was October 26, 2007. In the normal course of my Internet cruising for interesting links, story ideas, and general online ephemera, I came across a webpage being featured as a popular writing-related link on the social bookmarking site del.icio.us
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Seeing the title, I was intrigued. “Words Other Than Said.” It only took a second and I realized I would be writing about this page one day. “This has to be the worst example of writing advice I’ve yet found on the Internet,” I said to myself. And, no, I didn’t blurt, expound, grunt, or warble. I said.
No disrespect intended to the site’s owner, but this is a terribly bad idea.
While this isn’t the only writing disinformation I find on the Web, it was one I had to bring up. The problem, I’ve been mulling during the past few months, has to do with what feels like a more and more blurry line between a long, hard-fought tradition we call writing and the younger, perhaps fresher form of communicating online, particularly blogging. More on that a little later.
In the meantime, do yourself a favor, don’t follow writing advice you find online, at least not without extra shakes of salt.
My friend Jeff has been talking about music, and particularly music while writing. Despite the fact that he brought up the scourge of John Denver, I felt compelled to respond.
Truth be told, I haven’t been listening to much music lately.
What? A black guy not espousing the joys of music to write to? What of the jazz, the bump of James Brown? What the funk has the world come to? I jest, but it’s true that I don’t listen to music all the time. Sometimes it distracts me. Sometimes it diverts my attention.
Given all that nonsense, I do believe there are a few musical things in this world that I cannot do without:
- John Coltrane’s saxophone
- Miles Davis’s audacity (i.e., turning his back to audience, etc.)
- The way Sting says “shock” while playing Police tunes live
- flamenco
- Antonio Carlos Jobim
- Lennon/McCartney
- the funky drummer
- the 12-bit sampler
- All things Muppet
- Mainstream radio from the 1970s and 1980s
As far as what music is good for writing, it changes all the time. I went through a period lately that anything from Erik Satie really set me off into the land of creation, and at the same time I was digging the experience of deep diving into the jazz catalogs of Riverside, Prestige, and Impulse. That’s just one example. One person’s taste.
Music is mutable, maybe more so than literature. If John Denver floats that boat, I’d love to buy a ticket to ride to the other side of the river. Who knows what may come of it?
