Let’s keep it that way
Drinking some coffee and listening to the river. Silence is the mother of wisdom.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/marcus-5c532d8e46e0fb0001be5ee6.jpg)
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The word decide is often used in business, or football, or while shopping. He decided to sell the stock, or he decided to punt the ball on fourth down. I decided on the yellow scarf and not the blue one. I decided on the Alfa Romeo and not the Volvo. I decided on the apple and not the oranges. I decided on the Taco Bell instead of McDonalds. I decided on Dunkin’ instead of Starbucks. All this before we even log on to our computer at work.
Nobody is making me write. I’m deciding to do it. I don’t think there is such thing as a muse. Is sounds romantic and poetic but calling it that is, to me, a form of external attribution. A way of giving your ability to write or not to someone or something else. Hell, no. It is a decision only you can make.
Sounds simple. I decided to write two novels. But the word I want to focus on is time. Time. You see, if it doesn’t take time, it won’t be worth doing. It may feel like it but that is a delusion to keep people clicking away to the next delusion of accomplishment, and the next, and the next. This is best performed phone in hand on the couch via Instacart, while the fridge is empty.
The time given to us is the price we pay to create a lasting physical, mental and spiritual impression on our lives and selves: a feeling of accomplishment. Time cannot be cheated. Don’t think it can be. It is taking its cut of every decision we make and always, always wins.
Not trying to sound morbid here since I’m referring to day-to-day life here. I’ll be the example. It takes time to anything. But time takes back. And that is the reward. The time given us, used, gives back the enjoyment, satisfaction of what we do with it. It is the price we pay to get something out of our day-to-day lives. I think this blog began last night as I settled on the couch after a long-ass week and day at work. I found that I was grateful to be able to do that. Not for the week, really but for all the years raising four kids and hardly ever getting to settle down on the couch. I still appreciate the ability to decide to do that.
That doesn’t mean I’m wonderful person, it just means time makes the rules, and if you leave it all on the floor, and time sounds the buzzer, you will walk off the court happy, win or lose.
I decided to write the two novels I blog about. Well, I decided to write my novel called Back outta the World. And a YA novella called Ironjaws. And I have my third coffee novel completed and awaiting revisions. I revised Back outta the World at least three times. Tripio at least that many times. And on and on. It all took time that was given to me. It cost me something I’ll never get back. But it was time very well spent. I know because I feel a bit of loss in saying that, but I should.
Dude, try Jasper or Grammarly.
“Why don’t you write about meadows or something?” Asked the Headmaster, played by Stephen Fry.
“I‘ve never seen a meadow,” Replies the student, played by Hugh Laurie.
“What do you think the imagination is for?” Responds the Headmaster.
I was reading a post on writing historical fiction when I came across the line, if you can do research and have a good imagination then you can write historical fiction. That is true. But I would replace historical fiction with any damn thing you want.
I remember telling myself that I was having fun doing research and reading books and articles for The Trier goes to London. Sure, I like reading and drinking coffee. And drinking coffee while reading. However, I’ve done those things will filling out Income Tax or FAFSA forms and renewing my driver’s license. The other night, while watching the Fry and Laurie skit for the 43rd time, it occurred to me why writing TGL was fun.
It was fun because I was using my imagination! Yes, it was not stuck in closet somewhere in cardboard box next to my 8th grade report card. I was using my imagination and having a blast! Making up stories, creating characters, and having fun things happen to them. All in a world I imagined! I was making it up as I went along.
Maybe that last line scares adults. When we make stuff up as we go along in our adult lives, things do not usually go well. It is fine to make up a world, set the rules of that world, stick in on your laptop and sign off when things aren’t going so well. You can always pick up again tomorrow and try again. I am sure that is the appeal of writing- the imbedded belief that you are in control of something for a change. Even when creating your own world. However, I wonder if that is true?
The freedom lies not in gaining control, but in releasing the illusion that universe, or anyone in it, is taking any notice of us at all. There is great joy in acceptance, in not trying to be the smartest person in the room, in not writing a book, but letting yourself imagine one.
Why? Because writing can be as difficult as you make it. One hears a lot about how hard it is. Yet, I feel like a lot of that is the writer telling the world that they are wonderful, courageous and brilliant for doing something so challenging. Hey! Look at me, I’m a hard-working adult suffering to produce a novel. One’s imagination is more likely to draw something like a fish carrying briefcase, and just keep going with that, see where that leads, not accepting, rejecting or judging. Not seeking to separate via the ego.
The imagination is a less stressful place to be, and a wonderful place to be when you are using your mental energy to write. It can be coffeehouse in London in sixteen seventy-five, a meadow or anywhere you want it to be. And you can get there anyway you like, at any time, along whatever path you care to take.
What would happen if just didn’t pay my taxes this year? Would anyone care?
In order to finish the first version of the second book of my Trier series I had to start the third. There’s a lot going on in that one short sentence, not the least of which is that it sounds like the start of a word problem from high school math class.
However, I did the same when I finished the Trier. I felt like I needed to see how it “landed”. It worked for me. I discovered that I had my work cut out for me in the opening of the second novel, which I’m calling The Trier goes to London. The first challenge was making 20th century Probat commercial coffee roaster a time machine. Then, I realized that in the book, The Trier goes to London, that the trier doesn’t actually go to London. It stays in the hands of the 800-year-old Ethiopian goat herder named Kollo. But that is what will make the revisions fun.
An inconvenient booth
One other opportunity presents itself when writing a time travel series based on the energy of coffee is that you can chose to put the next novel anywhere you like. The first two novels were set in the history of coffee. I began reading Uker’s classic The Romance of Coffee in order to dig up to a spot for the fun to take place. There is no shortage of options since the history of coffee as we know it goes back 800 hundred years, spans the world and is filled with greed, commerce, rivalry, slavery, discovery, lies, lust, and deceit. Almost too good to be true.
I had almost too many choices. So many so that I looked into placing the next novel in the future of coffeehouses.
Except there may not be one. Our consumer centric society seems so intent on mining people’s mania for ego-separation and instant gratification (by the way, there is no such thing- sorry, I don’t make the rules), that we may no longer have very many spaces where we actually have to tolerate other people. No place will exist where we have to cooperate, assimilate or defer to each other, even for a moment. No way I drink the same coffee brewed for the guy in line in front of me, or the woman behind me. The horror! No thanks, I’ll sit in my car, on my phone, and be pulled somewhere else while doing so. Why go inside and sit near anyone, hear a bit about their lives from the booth or table nearby?
Why form even a momentary connection to someone when I can be told by Instacart that I’m too important to even think about feeding myself? Me, eat every day? I’m way too important to scratch out a grocery list.
Why are drive-thru only coffee shops suddenly popping up all over Louisville? (yahoo.com)
A coffeehouse for cars
The growth sector in coffee these days is coming from drive up chains like Scooters, Dutch Brothers and 7-Brew. I spend a lot of time on the road for my job and can confirm this with my own eyes. At the same time, I cannot deny that my favorite coffee house is a spacious one, with enough space and tables for me to get away and read or write without having to hear people talk. Yet, I find there is a certain energy that I like to be a part of that is generated by people in coffeehouses. It is a way to connect to the personal and universal at the same time. That is a good thing for coffee novelist, at least.
I may be a little dramatic here, but there is just not enough room for a cast of characters, fun plot twists and dashes of humor in the passenger’s seat of someone’s Chevy Gratuitous. It just does not seem to be a very good location to set a novel based on the type of community coffeehouse’s have always been known for. Or am I missing something?
I will hopefully always be able to sit down at an inconvenient booth, open the laptop and write about a time when we had to tolerate each other, gather for a few minutes, and drink the same coffee as everyone else. Did we all enjoy that option? Not all the time, no. But I think we are rewarded more than ever these days for mistaking the easiest thing for us as being the best thing for us. Something to ponder while waiting for your next coffee to arrive via DoorDash.
I hope my coffee is still hot when it gets here.
The goal is to commit to a structure that can take on a life of its own, instead of creating only when the mood strikes. – Rick Rubin, music industry superstar.
I am a system. – James Harden, NBA superstar.
I am not sure if there are a lot of similarities shared by Rick Rubin and James Hardin, except for they both sport beards. However, this morning I am getting them acquainted just by writing this post.
You see, yesterday I finished my novel, The Trier Goes to London. I know I did because I found that I became a little emotional, my eyes getting wet with mix of sadness and joy and a lot of other emotions to boot.
This morning, I am doing the same thing, only there is no more to do on TGL. I know that is total nonsense of course. It is more accurate to say I finished TGL for the first time. A revision awaits, but I’m postponing that until it gets warmer. I can do that in a different environment, my front porch. Plus, it will give the manuscript time to hang out with my subconscious mind and work out what needs to be done. In a month or so, I’ll be ready to access all that.
But for now, I am a structure.
There was not a single morning in the writing of The Trier, or of TGL that I sat around and waited for the mood to write to strike. Ah, hell no.
I am just guessing here, but I think I got up and wrote 300 mornings and maybe missed a dozen. My muse, if I had one, would have given their two weeks long ago if I asked them to put up with that schedule.
The structure is built on pillars that have nothing to do with writing as found and defined in Dreyer’s English. It is wonderful book for writers. I found it funny enough that everyone who picked it up would enjoy it. But it would be of limited use to read without a structure around you.
Years ago, I went about building structure. It took time, trial and error and attention to detail. The pillars are captured on a chalkboard hung in my garage. I have visited these so often over the years that I do them these days out of habit. These are the pillars of the structure I built that I sit in now, that I sat in the past 300 days, and wrote another novel. I committed to them and in return, I sit contented within their walls and write, a novel, blog post, or an email or two.
The books or blogs are really just the sofa and coffee table within the structure that I built. And, I have a lot more room in here.
Shopping for a recliner.
“There were none of those thousand sources of irritation that the ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity.”
Herman Melville from Typee
I found the quote in Lapham’s, before I found the cartoon.
Everyone now and then I think about revising my first novel, Tripio. I’m guessing that I am not alone in this, especially on one’s first novel. When I actually voiced this over a phone call to my book producer, who I worked with on the Trier, his response was that a lot of authors do feel this way. He told me what was involved from a technical standpoint in order to, as he put, “re-pour” the book into print. He also said make sure I don’t do all this work just to change happy to glad.
I have not been visited by the same urges with The Trier. In fact, as I write this post, I dare say that I never have wanted to go back into it. I may revise this post later, but I can’t think of that thought poking at me since the Trier came out last summer.
I am writing this blog post before I begin work on the follow up to The Trier, whose working title is The Trier Goes to London. It feels like I just started it. But it is coming to an end, not by my choice, or decision or plan. It began when I had my main character sit in a chair with his back to a fireplace. It was the beginning of the arc that will conclude TGL.
It isn’t that I have had no idea what I was doing. I am a dedicated “pantser’, not a plotter, but I’m not crazy. I have had the dramatic ending of the novel in mind for months now. It has just been waiting in my subconscious mind for a chance to jump out and say “now”. That did sound a bit crazy, I guess. But then again, not a crazy as spending a small fortune to change happy to glad.
The word happy appears 31 time in Tripio.
Meet me in St. Louis? I took the cold winter months off touring to work on the follow up to The Trier, which went really well. But writing the follow up doesn’t help sell the first book, so I’m hitting the road again. Can’t wait to get started on The Trier Tour ’24.
Coffee Novelist 
You must be logged in to post a comment.