It has been noted by some of this blog's more astute readers that the flurry of postings this week might, just possibly, have something to do with my participation on the 'writers who blog' panel at this weekend's Northern Voice conference.
What can I say? I've spent my life as a not-quite-tall person — I'm used to overcompensating for my shortcomings.
… THIS is why I'm reluctant to mess with the schedule.
Pardon me while I try to figure out how to freebase ground coffee.
… before I tumble into bed.
1) I need to go to more concerts. Full stop.
2) Further to (1), there's something about the way the bass and the drums thrum through ones solar plexus at a big rock show that's primal and thrilling and… yeah, I'll leave it at that.
3) There is nothing sexier than a woman reading a book. I think I've mentioned that before. A close second, though: a woman with a fiddle.
'Night all.
… from the lovely and talented Mary Trentadue at Book Warehouse in Vancouver:
The March 30 event is a go!
So I'll be reading from Before I Wake at 7 pm, Sunday March 30 at Book Warehouse's Seymour St. store (552 Seymour St). I'll be on the bill with Vancouver writer Eileen Cook, and we'd both love to see as many of you as can make it.
(Plus, as an added highlight, this is smack dab in the middle of the "Rob follows the Bruce Springsteen tour through the Pacific Northwest tour, 2008", immediately following shows in Seattle and Portland — you should definitely show up, if only to see if I'm actually able to speak!)
Thanks to Mary for setting this up.
To say that I like my routines would perhaps be understating the case.
To say that I'm a creature of habit — also not enough.
Hide-bound and intractable? Closer to the truth.
The thing is, I need my routines, especially when I'm writing (which is, thankfully, EVERY day at this point). I need to be at the desk by 4.30 or so. Which means I need to be in bed early the night before (which is EVERY night at this point). So weeks like last week, with dinners out, and book proms, etc, play merry hell with my routine, and hence, my mood.
Sometimes, though, you gotta take one for the team.
Which means, if you're looking for me tonight, I'll be at the John Cougar Mellencamp show. The weird thing is, I was incredibly pissed off when this show sold out before I even heard about it. I REALLY wanted to go, and I had missed my opportunity. So I made some inquiries, to see what I could scare up. And when I found out a couple of hours ago that I had a couple of tickets, I was almost disappointed… a night out, too little sleep, I could see the repercussions…
But screw it – life's too short. And I'll be at the desk tomorrow morning come hell or high water, so I might as well make the most of it.
I'm doing something that I should probably have done, oh, let's say 25 years ago or so: I'm listening to the Nuggets box set.
Now, let's not even start down the road of how it took the onslaught of several technologies, including the CD (this is, after all, Rhino's four disc expansion of the original 1972 double lp…) and the internet (…which I got on sale for stupid cheap at Amazon when I was buying the last season of the Gilmore Girls), to get me to finally listen to these tracks, all released between 1965 and 1968, on scratchy ol' singles.
Let me instead, just say, that I really wish I had listened to this 25 years ago. If I had listened to some of these songs when I was 12 or 13, I suspect I would have formed a band: after all, if The Shadows of Knight and the Count Five can do it, why not me?
And suffice it to say that this music is making me tingle in my rock and roll bits. (Said bits, by the way, seem to be slightly to the north of the naughty bits, and might have something to do with their proper functioning – the source that through the green fuse drives the flower, and all that).
Okay, enough blather – Farmer John is starting.
A few years ago, I was invited to appear on a panel at BookExpo Canada. Having attended BEC for a number of years, I was thrilled to be invited to be part of the process (and, let's face it, I've never met a microphone I didn't yearn to have a long-term relationship with). Ironically, however, the subject of the panel was co-op.
To explain a bit (which will no doubt be too much): co-op is the process by which booksellers and publishers partner to cover costs of advertising and promotion (for me, it means getting publishers to pony up part of the costs for advertising that their writers are appearing at the store). It's not a difficult process, but it requires a certain amount of clarity of thinking, attention to detail, filing, scrupulous invoicing, etc. If you know me at all, you know that while I'm confident about many of my abilities, the above listed things are simply beyond me.
So, to be invited to appear at a panel on co-op? Yeesh. I did it (naturally, considering my inveterate desire for the spotlight, no matter how little I deserve it), and opened my introduction by saying that I was "the poster child for bad co-op". The audience, many of whom had been on the receiving end of my late, disordered, poorly reasoned and usually badly crumpled co-op invoices and paperwork, laughed heartily.
Which brings me to Saturday.
I was thrilled last month when I was invited to appear as a panelist at the Northern Voice conference, to be held at UBC February 22&23. THRILLED. Another panel, another microphone, another opportunity to woo the spotlight… How could I say no?
The subject of the panel? Writers who blog.
I'll wait while you finish snickering.
Done now? Okay, we'll move on.
As you can see from the panel description, I'll likely be introducing myself as "poster child for bad blogging". I mean, could I be any more outclassed? With other panel members including Meg Tilly, kc dyer, Crawford Killian and Pete McCormack, I'm starting to be convinced that I've been invited as comic relief. And that's in a good moment. In my bad moments, I'm convinced I'm there as the "and here's what not to do"…
Sigh.
And all under the watchful eye of Monique Trottier, the name of who's blog is, I'm guessing, a subtle reference to my being invited… so misguided indeed.
So that's what I'm doing Saturday morning — a little humiliation and immolation are good for the soul, right?
Over the last few days, I've been percolating a blog post about fear, and how acute it can be as a writer approaches the end of a piece of work, especially a novel. It was going to be a good post, too, incorporating the anxiety that had been building within me over the last couple of weeks, the way my writing pace had dropped off as I got closer to writing "The End", the uncertainty over whether I'd be able to do it, or to do it justice. It was going to be a good post, full of personal disclosure, angst and stress – everything one looks for in a good blog.
I didn't write it. Instead, I went the other way (there's that motto again) and just wrote…
And as of 11 last night, I finished the new novel. 900 manuscript pages. About 190,000 words of first draft (which will, naturally, be reduced through editing and revision). An entire self-contained, satisfying narrative. A final marathon day of writing accounting for the last 7000 words or so. Done. Finished. Mission accomplished.
I celebrated with grilled cheese sandwiches and lemon meringue pie.
And on Wednesday, I start again.
You see, the thing about this book (and this is probably more detail than I've ever written about the new book before) is that it's not one novel, but two. Two distinct settings, styles, genres, sets of characters, interwoven and interacting to create a single book…
Sigh.
So, having finished one novel, and being thrilled with it (I got chills in the last few sections, and I got so caught up in the narrative I was unable to resist writing, which I'm hoping will translate to the reading experience), I'm only half-way done the book. Which is a bit of a harsh reality check, I have to say.
The cost of ambition, and the way one's reach should always exceed one's grasp…
So Wednesday morning, after the next few days of Trade Fair (with its attendant meetings, conversations, breakfasts, dinners and opportunities for lost sobriety), I'll be making the 4 am walk to the office again, starting from scratch. Another world to create. Another set of characters to fall in love with. And that's an exhilerating thought. Exciting. Thrilling. But also the tiniest bit heartbreaking.
Today, though, I'm feeling exultant. Celebratory. A feeling I'm going to savour for the requisite time. And then back to work. Because that's what a writer does, apparently.
(Some of the somewhat cryptic nature of this post will make considerably more sense when I can actually talk about the new book in more detail. But that will only come when this next section, this next novel, is safely done – superstition and all that. Sorry 'bout that.)
Plus I'm facing the daunting task of typing out those 900 pages in the next few weeks, but I prefer not to think about that right now. Not when I'm feeling so good…
Despite some evidence to the contrary, I'm fairly committed to my belief that the universe is, in general, a fairly oblivious place. If there are forces at play around us, I tend to think that they have more important things to worry about than incidents in a single life. Or the on-going process of a single work of art.
Sometimes, though, the universe does tend to weigh in.
One of my pre-writing rituals is The Walk. Since taking on an outside office last summer, my day begins with slamming the alarm clock off, pulling on some clothes, and walking down the street. Going To Work. All caps. My two companions on that daily pre-dawn walk? A flashlight, and my MP3 player. I know I've mentioned before just how important music is to me and to my work; the songs-while-walking thing serves to help separate me from the real world (the one where there's a warm bed and a warm wife waiting for the slightest wavering of my will), and to put me into the right mood for getting to the work.
Sometimes it's more than that, though. Take one day last week.
I was into my third day of revisions on Lost Boys, the long story I wrote last summer, which I was preparing for submission for the Malahat Review's Novella competition. The revising was going well, but there was something… off about the story. Something I couldn't put my finger on. Until the universe provided…
How else to explain The Waterboys' rendition of Yeats' poem "The Stolen Child" (from Fisherman's Blues, easily one of the finest albums of the last 25 years) coming up at that precise time? Sure, it might simply have been the Shuffle function, but there it was, exactly what I needed. The right song, at the right time.
And within the first few lines, I knew what I needed to tweak in Lost Boys. I knew what was subtly, ineffably off about the story, and how to remedy it.
And I did.
Like I say, sometimes, that universe… it's there when you need it.
"Come away, o human child!
To the waters and the wild…
For the world's more full of weeping, than you can understand…"