It is nearly 7 a.m. on this Sunday morning. I have been up for close to ninety minutes. This is my schedule. I have come to the conclusion that sleeping in is overrated. This is my day off and one hears a lot about how others relish the chance to “sleep in” on their off days. I can’t, even if I try, I can’t. So, I get up and make coffee. Or, I simply warm up the leftovers from the day before and get to work. I always, always, always have a cup of coffee near me when I write.
This brings me to Stephen Fry. I read once that when he was working on a screenplay for Peter Jackson he could not get going on it to save his skin. It took him awhile to find the reason but it struck him that at the time he was working on the screenplay his was trying to give up smoking. Smoking energized his mind while at the same time the ritual calmed and rewarded him. I feel almost exactly the same about my cups of coffee. This morning, I am wondering if I could have written Tripio without coffee?
One indisputable answer is no. No coffee, no Starbucks. No Starbucks, no Tripio. Starbucks did not invent coffee of course and I drank plenty of coffee before Starbucks was available. In Tripio, Jay even refers to a coffee house where he was working before he moved to Chicago, the long gone Oregon Street Coffee House in Dayton, Ohio. Even after Jay is working at Starbucks he often goes to favorite coffee house that “sat on an alley under the El tracks”. As you can see, I come by my love of coffee honestly. Hey, I loved coffee before it was trendy and pricey.
The point here, however, isn’t how cool I am. I was thinking as I started this post that it could be a bad thing that I believe I have to have a cup of coffee within arm’s reach anytime I write. I sometimes know that I will not drink the contents of the mug but that I have to have it close regardless. If I were feeling somehow inadequate about myself for not be able to write without coffee near, I arrived at the conclusion to stop it. One reason is that I am in good company with Stephen Fry. The second is that I would have never responded to the Starbucks want ad if I hadn’t already loved coffee. For proof I refer again to Tripio and Jay thinking to himself as he prepares to answer the want ad for Starbucks, “about the only real qualification I have is that I’m a coffee lover.”
And I am not alone! The spectacular growth of Starbucks and the interest in a coffee culture it begat, confirms this. If you are reading this blog with a cup of coffee nearby, then drink up! If you are reading this and nodding your head in agreement, then I have done my job with this post.
This post’s first bud of spring appears way back when I first began contemplating direct-publishing Tripio. To be clear, the idea of publishing Tripio came way after the origin thought of writing it. And way, way, way after I kept the journal entries that became the novel, Tripio. Just two years ago, I did not have a blog, shop Amazon for books and only used Facebook to keep track of my kids. Just to be clear and for context and perspective (however unpopular those are these days), Tripio’s direction was always inward. I mark that staring point with tying on the green apron for the first time, in the fall of 1990.
As for the two years ago, that is when I found myself taking a class at the Indiana Writer’s Center, called Publish your Memoir. Since then the information and advice available on and around publishing Tripio has been staggering. A tactic for dealing with all that information, advice and insider know how is to let most of it pass by you. What you need will come back to you over and over. One item that kept coming back to the top of the pile was the selection of the right category for Tripio. Here is where I feel it is important to refer back to the prehistory of Tripio. If I would have known it was so important, I could have written Tripio with a category in mind and directed it’s plot, characters, it’s very soul into the correct and ultimately profitable category. Ah. Hell. No.
In order to sell on Amazon at all, a book needs a niche, a genre, a category. As far as Amazon is concerned, the category is your book’s sacred ground. Plant your book in the correct category and in just a few weeks a dispatcher at Brinks will call you and set at time for the truck pull into your driveway with money to unload.
I realized the importance of it all, but finding a category for Tripio came and went on the priority pile. I think one reason I couldn’t get closure on this was that there is no simple answer. As you may know, Tripio has three distinct but collaborative story lines so it is a hard novel to grab hold of and define. To me, this a sign of something special and unique. To Amazon, that is a problem. Since I “had” to choose, I placed Tripio in the “historical fiction” category. That just didn’t feel right. I felt like I had picked a major going into college just to keep my parents happy. That choice was made over a year ago. Life went on. But for the past several months, sales have stagnated, which may or not have anything to do with category choice, but one never really knows. It was enough motivation, however, for me to find myself contemplating the right category for Tripio yet again. Category choice had once again found itself near the top of the pile of things to do.
Which brings me to yesterday. For the better part of an hour I considered a category for Tripio as I drove to Elwood, Indiana. All options were in my mind. Was Tripio a romance? Literary fiction? Maybe contemporary historical fiction? I was back to the same thing that had kept me from settling on a category in the first place. In and around those thoughts was the hope there would be coffee shop somewhere in this small town. I love that type of coffee shop. They are usually found in an old bank or pharmacy. They are roomy but carry a sense of gravitas and history, not of transaction. Once my business was done, I asked an Elwood local and soon enough I found myself at the Gypsy Soul.
The gypsy soul is indeed a coffee house. I chose a cappuccino for the ride back from Elwood. But the Gypsy Soul is also part a salon and another part boutique. A “women’s dream” the barista told me as she steamed away at the milk. The cappuccino she made was quite good. I almost bought some hand cream. I regretted that I didn’t have time for manicure.
As I drove home later, I was thinking of the Gypsy Soul. It would make a great coffee shop on it’s own with it’s high ceilings, long wooden bar, and view of Elwood’s old streets. The other elements were there but,for me, Gypsy Soul was a coffee house. My next thought was that Tripio is a coffee book with a coffee title, which mean it belongs in a coffee category, right? In order to stand out yet at the same time feel “right” to me, Tripio belonged in a coffee category. I already knew there was a coffee category but it was for the business end of things, or for making mochas at home. I took my visit to the Gypsy Soul as a sign of good fortune however. If you can’t believe a Gypsy fortune, who are you going to believe? I decided that I would dig deeper into the category selection on Amazon when I made it home.
The Gypsy was right. She told me to keep searching and I would be rewarded. There was a category on Amazon called Coffee Shop Fiction! This is where Tripio belongs. Such a relief. This is a category that would also work for Back outta the World and Altonstreet & Philpatrick, both of which take place in and around actual coffee shops, ( Brazilia in Columbus, Ohio and Oregon Street Coffee House in Dayton respectively). I can rest easy now. The category was not large which also means Tripio will be easy to find among Grounds for Murder and Bikini Baristas. This gives me hope that I will one day “own” the coffee shop fiction category. I can finally cross the category search off my list. I can now tune out the background noise in my head that had been buzzing around for over a year. This means that I can spend more of my valuable time actually writing. Time to get started! But not before I order my copy of Bikini Baristas.
“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility”
I wrote that
I take this blog seriously. I know I have come to use humor more frequently as the blog goes on. However I believe that is an indication of growing confidence in the blog itself. The humor, mostly self-deprecating, is an attempt to create an enjoyable, unique experience for anyone reading the blog. I feel responsible to put out a good post even if it is read by a single person.
But this week, I have devoted the mental energy usually spent writing the blog to the countless other details required to sustain and maintain a published novel on Amazon, the moving forward of novel number two, following up your posts and the housekeeping required to manage it all. As such, last night arrived and I found myself without a topic in my head for today’s first draft. It is the end of the week, the time when I usually begin work on my Monday post. Mildly panicked, I did glance over some books I have around that I sometimes refer to for inspiration. They provided none.
Earlier this week I had met a fellow ex-Starbucks barista. We exchanged battle stories and favorite coffee drinks. An unexpected encounter that made my day. I promised I would drop off a signed copy of Tripio when I returned next week. Tripio was in my head more than usual since then. As I wondered around the house searching for content, I remembered Letters to Theo, I knew where it was. I went upstairs to retrieve my copy, brought it downstairs and did nothing further with it. At this point, I was past writing but knew I would find something in Letters to use.
I remembered Letters to Theo because I have called it “the best book on creativity I know”. If you google Van Gogh you will discover he was, the letters to his brother aside, a painter. If you read Tripio, you will find the book mentioned by Jay, the main character:
“One must not wait till it reveals itself. By painting one becomes a painter.” That must be from Letters to Theo.”
Jay isn’t trying to become a painter. But he is sure that he can apply Van Goghs’s wisdom to his own life and write. Jay will just write and not worry so much about anything else. Did he do the right thing by taking Van Gogh’s wisdom to heart? Did he write and forsake the promising career he had in front of him at a new and growing company called Starbucks? Did he write, reveal his true self or did he become a millionaire simply by showing up to work at Starbucks everyday and steaming milk? More importantly, what would you have done in a similar time and place in your own life?
As for today’s post, Van Gogh provided the inspiration again. This morning, after brewing my de-rigueur pot of coffee I picked up that same, beaten up copy of Letters to Theo. I opened it. Then, I am not making this up, I turned to and read the paragraph containing the quote:
“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility”
And the canvas, as you have read, is no longer blank.
I have two chive plants in my herb garden. I have a sage, oregano and thyme which all have returned this spring. And, for you climate change doubters out there, my rosemary plant came back this spring. I have had a rosemary plant every summer for ten years and each winter it has died. This year, I checked it and saw new growth. It has survived the mild winter in the Midwest for the first time ever.
It has occurred to me that my advocacy of the use of “using your mind garden to produce your own unique story” may come down to money. What doesn’t’? I find it works not to outsource your creativity, process, inspiration, validation in order to to write, in order to find your way as a writer. I primarily use my own mind, which is free and always open. It works for me. It may or may not work for you. Although, It may work for me because I have had not a choice but to make it work.
Over the course of my writing, starting just out of college in the mid 80’s until now, I have not been able to spend a ton on money on it. I could have, but my kids needed to eat. So, I think out of pure necessity I had to devise my own belief system, which aligned to life as a whole. I did not have the time or money to take seminars, workshops or fly overseas to retreats. I ain’t pissed. If fact, the years that I am referring to when I was raising a family produced a human being who has something worthwhile to share. I did occasionally get back to writing short stories and always kept a journal, but was nowhere close to being able to plan a couple hours a day “writing”.
How do my chives figure into all that? Well, they are green, like US dollars. The lack of which left me recently without the ability to hire an editor, which had temporarily halted my 5 novels in 5 years plan. A plan that I hope ultimately produces some more green stuff, and I don’t mean chives. For the first time since post college I had time to write but felt stuck due to lack of funds and direction. Then it occurred to me to practice what I preach. I had written a series of short stories called Altonstreet and Philpatrick. Like the herbs in my garden, I could use them for free. So I headed to my garden and got to work.
Once used by Altonstreet
Here is where I brilliantly tie it all together. I wanted to make pesto earlier this week, partly to feed 2 of those adult children I mentioned. I could not afford to pay to go to a weekend writing seminar i.e. buy pine nuts. I had no way to get to Italy and be inspired at the grave of a dead Italian poet, i.e. my basil wasn’t’ ready. So, I found a recipe for pesto using chives and toasted walnuts i.e. I began a short story using my old characters, Altonstreet and Philpatrick. The chives were already in my garden and the walnuts way, way cheaper than pine nuts. I used what was at hand, what my mind garden had ready and waiting.
The pesto with chives and walnuts was quite good. The short story is titled “Altonstreet & Philpatrick receive a letter” and made me laugh out loud a couple time, which is good because that was my intent with the story. So, I took my own advice, fed my mind, body and spirit on the cheap. And this years’ garden is just getting started!
“Just as a piece of land has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the mind of the pupil has to be prepared...”
I was on my front porch drinking coffee, vibing to the start of the weekend and reading “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg when I came across the above quote. The book was of great interest to me in regards to writing. I knew that I used habit to help me write. Not with the pen or at the keyboard. If you read this blog regularly you know if I believe if you start writing at that point it is already too late.
My example: When I was in the early stages of creating Tripio I was also taking a ninety minute drive three times a week. By this time I had already spent several years trying to understand my mind, how it works and why it was sometimes my worst enemy. I had hacked out a rudimentary understanding of the subconscious mind and would put it to work on these drives. If you don’t mind looking foolish for just a moment, raise your hand if you think that driving is an exercise is habit….OK, put your hand down.
I began to use the habit laden 90 minutes of highway driving to access my subconscious mind, to ask it to deliver the names and events I needed to populate Tripio. As I checked my speedometer, checked the rear and side view mirrors, sped up or slowed down, my subconscious mind delivered what I needed. From there all I had to do was remember what it had provided.
I learned from The Power of Habit that the habit formation and execution takes places in the basal ganglia. I was confirmed, validated. Even though I knew what was taking place, it was nice to know I can use the words “basal ganglia” to anyone I was talking to about my writing process. This bit of gratifying news came near the start of Habit. The above quote was near the end. The quote is from Aristotle, not me. Though I can understand if you are confused. Because, in the quote it sounds like Aristotle is describing the “Mind Garden”that I am going on about in many of my posts. I do not claim to have invented the concept behind “Mind Garden”. I am sure it has been used before. Again though, it validating that I can now refer to Aristotle when I am talking to anyone about how I write.
I believe writing starts before you pick up the pen or click on your laptop. I have seen, felt and came to know that clearing and preparing the mind and letting the actual writing come to you works for me. Don’t go looking for your writing, it isn’t out there. If that sounds a little weird but you can see some seed of wisdom, I’ll take it. However, if you find yourself thinking about the post, (miracles do happen) or even talking to someone else about it (I’m being serious) then you can say “Aristotle said that”, which will make you look smart. Which we all like. That, in turn, may lead you back to this blog in order to find more ways to make you look smart. I am not saying you need any help looking smart, but I hope that coming back to this blog becomes a habit anyway.
So much out there. So damn much. Too damn much. If you are reading this post then you have come to it by deciding to pass up millions of other blogs. First let me congratulate you on how wisely your are spending your time.
It isn’t easy to navigate once you click and fire up the internet. Like nearly all bloggers and writers, I am looking for ways to improve what I do. I do have regular blogs that I access for advise. They show up in my mailbox. I try to keep them to a manageable amount. But more keep appearing. They all sound appealing. I could improve my blog, my fiction, and even my mind by reading them. I have, I fact, achieved all three simply by doing what you are doing now.
I am well into the second year of this blog. I am going to publish my second novel this fall. Put some of those keywords into a search engine and the response would make War and Peace look like flash fiction.
So how do you know what works? Of course, you never know. You think, suspect, consider what may work for you and your book or blog. But you never know. That is because that writer of that post sent to your email box doesn’t know either. I say this now because I’m one of them. Earlier today I responded in the comment section of another post. I left sound, confident and useful advise that has worked for me. An hour or more late, I am suffer from “comment box remorse.” I think I just made that condition up. Possibly not. My comment sounded good, and more importantly made me sound like I knew what I was talking about. As of a few hours after posting my confidence is waning, my courage fading, the caffeine wearing off.
Like I said, my comment box response was something that had worked for me on my journey. There is wisdom in it. This particular comment included advice to ignore most the “static” out here in the blog sphere. To look at it from one angle, I am advising the author of the post to ignore my own comment.
What does does mean to you readers of this post? I’m not sure. I don’t know for sure. I think it is an indication I am an the write path though. Even a single senescent in a comment box should mean something, should come at some cost to it’s author, right? Yes, because true giving is giving from need. So it follows that real advice, or “static”, from your heart must produce a feeling of loss, or it’s not worth writing, clicking and posting.
A look back on the one year anniversary of this post
It is school day morning and my teenage son just asked if he could stay home today because he couldn’t get to sleep last night. He was asleep at dinner time and I tried to wake him up. I had made a good dinner, creating something we would both like. I mention my son because he is a motivation in the more practical aspects of the attempt to direct-publish Tripio.
Simply put, I would like to make a little money from it. I need some income to continue to feed him, even if he sleeps through dinner.
Having said that, I did not initially create Tripio as a revenue stream, even if that is what it may become. A year later, it is a revenue drip. In order to achieve said revenue I have had to do many things that I had not envisioned when I decided to direct publish Tripio. One of those things was marketing the book. Marketing is a word which can be defined, I suppose, almost anyway you want it to be. I define it partly as the process of acquiring positive blurbs to be placed on the front and back covers of Tripio. I did receive great blurbs from two Starbucks legends, Howard Behar and Kevin Knox.
That process has gone surprisingly well so far. Based on that, I am beginning to ponder a price point for the sale of Tripio. One which is now higher than originally planned. I am considering lowering the price to spur a bump in the sales of Tripio. It is currently as low as it’s ever been.
It is worth repeating that I do have hopes for monetary gain from the publishing and selling of Tripio. The current pandemic can’t be helping this goal.As an example, the previously mentioned son is at home from school doing e-learning and e-eating. This has been most obvious in the weekly grocery bill, whose amount has risen way faster than income generated from sales of Tripio.
Today
The original post ended here. A year of posts later and I feel I have learned so much about blogging. One lesson is reflected in the headline to which I added “doesn’t matter”. I do have several more posts on Tripio that explore more existential, creative and benign reasons for self-publishing Tripio. What I want from these posts is to share my experiences with all of you in a concise, entertaining and useful way. That sentiment reflects what I now want from Tripio. I maybe am a year richer in wisdom, if not in the wallet.
In times of uncertainty it is useful to remember that better days will come. I had created this light-hearted post about a year ago. Even though it is self-effacing I am holding myself to it and I am happy to see, upon looking it over now, that year one has been a success for the proletariat. I studied Russian and Soviet history. Hence, I framed my plan in Soviet Russian speak. The wisdom embedded here is that we are free to use whatever device our own tool box gives us in order to get things accomplished. In other words, there is no one size fits all solution for anything in life, especially in a creative process.
The purposes of the Glorious Five-Year Plan, as set forth by responsible officials at Moscow with party approved input by comrade writer Jerry, are the creation of more literary raw materials for development and the introduction of more efficient methods of gaining revenue from said production, including consistent revenue streams on cooperative lines, which in turn will initiate prosperity.
* The development and heightened visibility of the “red apron” logo via “red apron recipe”
*The revision of Back outta the World and concomitant selection of editor for same.
*Write new segment(s) for Altonstreet & Philpatrick
*Begin the process of leveraging the success of Tripio to include audiobook etc.
Year two of Glorious 5-year plan, 2020, will see:
*The publication of Back outta the World
*The revision of Ironjaws and concomitant selection of editor for same.
*Write new segment(s) for Altonstreet & Philpatrick
Year three of Glorious 5 year plan, 2021, will see:
*The publication of Ironjaws
*The completion of Altonstreet and Philpatrick and concomitant selection of editor for same.
*Research commences for Our Ship
Year four of Glorious 5 year plan, 2022 will see:
*The publication of Altonstreet and Philpatrick
*The revision(s) of Our ship and concomitant selection of editor for same.
Year five of Glorious 5 year plan, 2023 will see:
*The publication of Our Ship
Means of production will occur during late fall and winter months. Selling and distribution will occur during the late spring and summer. There will be neither on April 22nd in order to observe the birthday of Comrade Lenin.
A funny thing happened to me yesterday on the way to do my grocery shopping. This was after I went back inside to find my cloth face mask. As I drove off with my mask in the car I was singing aloud to an old Funk Compilation CD that I have been listening to recently. Take a moment now to say a gratitude that this is not a podcast.
But seriously folks… Just before I left for the store I had checked my sales graph for Tripio. The arrow was pointed downwards with a vengeance. Hmmm. Was this confirmation that Tripio sucks? Sure, if I let it be. Maybe it was also confirmation that I should keep up my writing. You are curious why I should keep it up exactly when the arrow points down, the arrow that bestows approval and validation on Tripio and by extension me, is telling me to quit?
Since you asked, I was filled with song because my reaction to the arrow was confirmation of what I always claim; that I ain’t in this writing for money, fame and rankings. So, sleep soundly, James Patterson, I’m not coming for you.
Come to think of it, like James, I slept in yesterday. To clarify, for me that means 6:30 a.m. That night’s rest had a significant part in boosting my spirits. I had nothing urgent to pull me out of bed to the keyboard. When I was in the process of revising Back outta the World for the last time I would be pulled out of bed by the need to get it finished. Sometimes that meant my eyes would open as early as 4 a.m. My physical body was pissed, but got over it soon after I had my morning doppio. ( never fear-I have an espresso machine at home). My emotional,spiritual and mental bodies were in charge then. Now with Back outta the World done, I decided to give myself a break. After some contemplation, I decided to halt the search for an editor and take a break from writing. Well, I am still blogging and working on a short story or two. My four bodies had come to an agreement and I was able to sleep in.
So here I was, singing along to “You dropped a bomb on me” on the way to the store yesterday morning. I was happy that my sense of self, my intention for all this writing had been confirmed. I have said all along that writing is merely one of the results of a well-tended Mind Garden. My singing proved me right yesterday. I am as good as my word. Which is pretty important if you are a writer.
A troubling thing has been happening since I published Tripio. I have been getting asked quite a bit the question: “What is a tripio?”
This question was first asked me at a class on memoir writing at the Indiana Writers Center. No one in the class with me knew what a tripio was. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I knew what a tripio was since the fall of 1990 when I started at Starbucks. Actually, I had worked at a couple independent, hippy coffee houses even before that, so the word was part of my personal vocabulary so long I assumed everyone knew what one was. Also creating my false sense of security was the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of Starbucks on this earth. Surely, everyone who’s visited a Starbucks has ordered a tripio…right?
I’ll break the silence and continue. In Tripio, the book, Jay describes his tripio, the drink, as “my crutch, my momentum and my solace”. I’m sure that helped clear things up. If it didn’t, I will define a tripio as three shots of espresso which is usually consumed immediately after it is brewed into pre-warmed cup. It is then often consumed with sugar or whatever one wants to add. In Tripio, the book, Jay always drinks his tripios over lots of ice in a plastic cup. Jay needs the caffeine from the three shots and the ice keeps the drink alive and refreshing as he goes about his work day.
The author
Of course, I did not choose to title the book Tripio based solely on the fact that the main character drank lots of triple espressos over ice. There are three plot lines that intertwine and collaborate as Tripio goes along. Jay has three life options facing him as he goes about his increasingly complicated days. After reading Tripio, you will be asked to decide if the option he chose was the correct one for him. Or better yet, you have put yourself in Jay’s place. Even better you recognize a situation in your life that you can compare to Jay’s and consider that situation in new context.
In order to read Tripio you will first have to buy it. Before you do that, you will examine the cover and see that subtitle includes a partial definition of the word tripio. Which brings me back around to the class I mentioned above. I was helped a great deal in choosing that subtitle by the instructor of that class. Thankfully, he was one other person in the room that day who knew what a tripio was. And now, I hope you do as well.
Coffee Novelist 
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