I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.
I was thinking what I usually think about when I write: what the next word should be, whether my character should be an emu farmer or a wallaby farmer, the searing pain in my right temple.
From about ninth grade on, I knew I was a writer at heart. I had fantasies of being a great novelist, but I thought that seemed like an iffy way to try to make a living. So I tried journalism while in college, and really liked it. But even in journalism, I've always pursued ways to be somewhat literary, whether writing a column or writing books.
As I've picked up more responsibilities in life, I've found nearly every one of those extra burdens drains me in a way that makes writing more difficult. That may not be the case for everyone - I know plenty of writers and artists who seem to have energy in abundance for all the facets of life; but are they producing anything worthwhile?
Energy seems to be the more critical of those two variables, because if I'm really feeling the push/pull to write, then I'll make the time.
You know, there are those writers who work at writing every day. I'm not one of those guys. I tend to work at varying levels of intensity, based on the amount of time and energy I have available.
It all depends on what I'm working on and if there is a deadline involved. Anything that's headed toward a magazine or newspaper is hacked out on the computer; that's a matter of efficiency. I write longer pieces of prose on a typewriter because the act of retyping it for the computer is a useful tactic for revision. Poems tend to be written longhand.
I didn't write poems for a number of years after graduate school because the criticisms of other students in the workshops wouldn't quiet down in my mind when I tried to work.
What I need to write is a complicated equation. Maybe if I knew I'd be one of those writers, one of the steady ones. I rest upon my assertion that there has to be some balance of energy, or, failing a balance, a focused intensity of ALL energy. I've experienced both, I suppose.
I suppose most writers are following Twain's advice to tackle what they know, and my own readings habits drew me to writers who seemed to be writing honestly from their own experiences, whether they presented it in the guise of fiction or not.
I view my stories as sexual or personal. Curiously, I don't. When I was writing those stories I thought of them as comedy pieces in the vein of performance monologue, such as you might get with Richard Pryor, or Lenny Bruce, or George Carlin. So I don't feel vulnerable because I know the line of demarcation between "Writer Kevin" and "Narrative Kevin."
I tend to work most often from the method of ignoring any ritualistic writing for long periods of time, and then I'll spend three straight weeks writing for 12 hours a day and just going through the motions with my worldly business because the compulsion to write descends upon me like a kind of madness. I don't mean to be dramatic, but it feels that way when it strikes.
At the time I was first writing the stories/essays that appear in Oedipus Wrecked, I was still under the impression that people would be delighted to see their name in print. I overlooked the fact that I was writing about intimate matters, and people are a bit touchy about airing their private lives in such a public fashion. Especially when it's done without their consent.
I write flawed characters. Ones that do not always make the best decisions and are driven by ambition or lust. They are not black or white, they are in the large space that exists between.
My total year's income from working as hard as I possibly could from writing went from like $30 one year to about $70 the next year. And it made me realize that maybe you couldn't really pay the rent that way.
It was like there was a pile of kindling that was in the back of my imagination just waiting there. Once I lit it, it just flared up and I kept getting ideas and ideas.
For a feature in next month's issue of Prog magazine, the photographer spent many hours setting up a photo shoot of me with part of my music collection in my writing office. Since I do most of my writing outside in nature, we felt this shot was most representative.
My wife and I are involved in writing/publishing/promotion twenty-four/seven. It isn't a day job; it's life.
We wanted to write the first prequels as a story that anyone could pick up.
As soon as we try to write the simplest sentence about God, we find ourselves in anxious perplexities, but when we stop trying to write about God and talk with God, God is there and we can talk with God.
Often poetry, especially the sort of poetry I write, is concerned with looking at the borders between the sensual and the spiritual and seeing them as divided, equivocal, that mystery somehow can break in to the ordinary. And we read poetry I think in part, to gain a sense of that intimacy with things that we can't understand that are unable to be understood but that buoy up our lives.
I wanna produce, write, and direct my own projects, and eventually fund them. I wanna be a mogul.
Every poem that I write is, in a sense, trying to find adequate words for this unspeakable word, around which my entire life turns.
I have about four different endeavors I'm going after right now. They all excite me in different ways. I'm all about keeping as many irons in the fire as possible. I'm writing music, trying to write a book (aren't we all?), putting a festival together, speaking... It keeps life interesting.
I will always write myself a part. It will never be number one or two on the call sheet, but it will be number five through ten. That way they won't kick you off after you sell it.
