The notion of writing and recording original music has been on my mind since I was 14. The interest I had in heavy music meant that I was going to seek out a band and my lack of personal confidence and knowledge of how to manage my introversion properly meant that I would gravitate toward a role in said band that was usually relegated to the background: the bass guitar. My years of classical training, along with my familiarity with music theory and my background in cello, made the move seem natural. I did it well, to boot. I played a few shows, earned some money, even recorded professionally in a studio—I’m still proud that I did my parts in just one take because it made me feel like a natural.
One problem with bands is that they’re often highly volatile and tend toward breaking up before any important events like going on tour or recording their original music happen. This is of course what happened to mine. My focus then turned more toward academia and my general success there (along with steady and continued practice on my guitar) slowly increased my self-confidence to the bare minimum I needed to convince myself I was capable not only of writing music I liked but that it would be worth listening to, as well. Writing four guitar pieces I considered worth writing and worth listening to was no easy task and I could say the same for all the rewrites. Still, I got it done and will get more done toward completing these pieces, toward getting them recorded and making my musical presence known to the world after having hidden it away for what now amounts to most of my life.
What does real progress look like here? Complete the aforementioned pieces and ready them to be demoed. Demoing can expose ways in which I might improve the songs and reveal more about the path leading me to making my debut record.
Out of all the creative pursuits on my mind right now, I think poetry probably came to me earliest. I remember writing a poem about an out-of-body experience at my own funeral for a homework assignment sometime in early grade school. That was back when I knew nothing about what I was doing or the structure of poetry. I knew I liked when some words rhymed and when the rhythm felt “right” in my head. Shakespeare and his use of iambic pentameter probably had something to do with that. What poetry I wrote after that was often emotional vomit expressed with an imagistic vocabulary. Later, after I discovered Plath and Bukowski and Frost and whoever else, I started noticing the ways reading seriously good poetry affected me and realized more concretely why structure mattered and had the effect on me that it did. Finally, I read Martin Heidegger’s piece “What are Poets for?” and latched onto an interpretation of what it means to be a poet that I’ve held onto since.
Lots of the poetry I wrote was bad and I can say that because I was the one who wrote it. That isn’t to say it’s beyond salvageable; much of what I wrote can be reworked or reinterpreted to reveal a framing of whatever moment it was I was experiencing at the time that might lend itself to artful consideration—whatever that means. I admit that phrasing is partially self-deprecating because it sounds pretentious, but seriously good poetry does lend itself to consideration of the human condition the reader hasn’t encountered before and often provokes novel thought. I can’t promise myself to get every piece I have to such a level, but I do know quite a bit more about what I’m doing now and revisiting some of my earliest pieces did already give me some insight as to where I was trying to go and where I might want to take them.
Again, what does real progress look like here? First, obviously: rework the poetry! Get some poems polished and recite a few of them on Instagram or YouTube or other social media sites. If I get some attention going for my work, I can let the opportunities come.
The record and the poetry have been covered, but what about the novel? I have probably made the least amount of progress there. I got into the habit many months ago of writing 300 words on any day off I had. What you’re reading now is being typed on a laptop that has probably around a dozen starts to stories of varied length. The exercise at that point was to remind myself that I could make something up without a problem. I did that. I was successful! I didn’t finish any of the stories, but I did make things up. I already knew I could do that because I’ve had some short stories published along with a novella. I declared once that I would write a novel by “this time next year.” That didn’t pan out, but I did get out a good 8,000 words or so before I stopped knowing where to go with it. One encouraging thought is that I went back to a short story I had written after having attended UC Berkeley and, having acquired an entirely new appreciation and understanding for the way language functioned, discovered just how much of that story I hadn’t written! That story became my novella. Who’s to say something can’t be done now with the novel-that-was-to-be?
At the same time, I’m taking a cue from Ernest Hemingway: start out writing one true sentence. If at the end of the day the rest of what I’ve written is trash, I will still have that foundational one true sentence. Keeping this in mind, I’ve been taking the time lately to write one true sentence per day. I won’t yet say what it’s about, but these sentences are seeding something that could easily conjure at least 300 pages from my fingers. I won’t dare speak for other aspiring novelists, but knowing beforehand that I already have so much material is a Hell of a comfort. The question is: do I work on the already-established 8,000 words or do I work a bit more furiously at the potential goldmine? I suppose I’ll make that decision after I revisit the 8,000 words and see whether or not I’m immediately inspired to continue. If not, the decision will be easy.
Once more, what does real progress look like here? Well, considering a novel is typically about 100,000 words (NaNoWriMo apparently requires exactly half of that), this will be my biggest challenge simply because I have the least to work with here. If I’m lucky, I imagine maybe I’ll have a solid first draft by year’s end. Faulkner claimed to have written As I Lay Dying in six weeks and I don’t dare expect that level of expediency or efficiency, but it’s nice to know that it can be done. I suppose it depends on which novel I choose to write. I’ll shoot for 100,000 words of raw material.
Well, let’s get the year going right.
With care,
~ Grigori