I suspect this is no way to go about writing a book. No, let’s take that one step further: I am absolutely certain that by any normal measure of such things, it’s an insane way to attempt such a thing. Books are written in private, right? You toil away for months or more likely years on end, researching, scribbling out draft after draft… mountains of paper pile up, you rewrite and edit, rewrite and edit some more, all alone (darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there!)… and at the end of it, somehow, is a finished thing, which finally you can unveil to the world – which for some reason is supposed to care. Yes, the final product is public, but the actual writing of books is not a performance art, right?
Actually I confess I have very little idea of how one is ’supposed’ to go about it, beyond the above romanticized and likely quite silly caricature of the process. But I am pretty sure that however it works for most writers, it’s not this, not what I have set out to do here. Which is what exactly? To write a book in public. No, it’s more than that: I am trying to do something innovative, something novel with the novel. I don’t think that what I’m doing here has ever quite been done before, this kitchen-sink combination of writing, composing, improvising, blogging, videoblogging, podcasting, tight-wire-walking… Well OK, the tight-wire-walking is metaphorical (just like the cliffjumping!) – but I think the comparison holds. But for some reason I am also sure that, as crazy as it is, on so many levels, it is the right way for me…
What the hell am I talking about? ‘Symmetricity’, my new project, my crazy leap into the unknown, my impossible journey in search of my own Holy Grail: a total synthesis of everything I am creatively and artistically.
Ok. Back up. This is sounding pretty crazy. Where is this all coming from, and where is it all going? And why should anyone be interested?
Well… I am a creative person (I think I can say that at this point), a musician, with a thing for improvisation. I like creative freefall, I thrive in it. It feels natural and comfortable to me to not know what I am going to do next… it relaxes me to know that anything is possible, that I am not tied to a particular outcome. Just be open and respond without overthinking things (at the same time, I like to overthink things too, so there’s a paradox for you!). I do solo piano concerts that are totally improvised, where I have no idea what I’m going to play at all until I start playing it. This is a very exposed thing to do, and the results are often surprising, and these surprises are some of the most satisfying things I have done musically and creatively.
So I have this idea for a novel, see, and it’s been percolating away in my brain for a few years, and it won’t let go. I believe it’s a good idea, possibly a great one, likely the biggest and best idea I’ve ever had, incorporating everything I’ve been interested in over a lifetime of creative curiosity. It’s a thing that seems to want to be done, and I have decided to pursue it.
Now, this will not be flat-out improvisation like the piano concerts; far from it, actually. I’ve done tons of research, tons of conceptual and structural development, set out characters and plotlines, and generally assembled a pretty good rough itinerary for the journey… but the thing still needs to be written. And like I said, I like to improvise in public, more than I like toiling away on my own with no feedback. So I’m going to serialize it, and write it on the fly. I’m going to throw the entire creative process open, and blog about it here. I told you it was a crazy idea.
Actually, it’s quite a bit crazier than that. The novel also has a soundtrack, and I’ll be writing that too, as I go along, and producing it and releasing a track with each chapter. And I’ll be recording audio podcast-style readings of each chapter… and video, in locations around Berlin. And releasing it all in multiple formats through websites that I’m building and maintaining myself, and attempting to publicize it through extensive and creative use of online resources.
Yikes. If it sounds overwhelming and scary, imagine how I feel! I’m not even really a writer… or a web designer, or any kind of marketing or business person. In fact, for the latter two positions, I have always considered myself profoundly unsuitable – tt’s almost been a point of pride that I have no business acumen or aptitude at all. One of the things this project is about is trying to change that.
Am I overextending myself? Is this an insane set of goals to set? Almost certainly. But I keep telling myself that many things that are worth doing start as crazy ideas. Yes, I am setting out to do all of this, and do it in public, because this is how I function: I like impossible tasks. I like to bite off more than anyone should really reasonably be able to chew. I do well when confronted with insurmountable workloads and deadlines. It brings out the best in me. In fact it’s pretty much the only way I ever get anything done, which is one of the reasons I’ve made it the overarching theme of this blog: be Fearless. Take the plunge. Dive in. See what happens.
I realize that some of the above might come off as arrogant, and even though I am actually by nature a fairly humble person I think there is always a pinch of arrogance about the artist’s position: the assumption that others should be interested in the musings and meanderings of our frequently chaotic minds. Having said that, I sincerely hope that people are interested, and it’s part of the experiment for me to try to learn something about communicating and, yes, I’ll say it, marketing these ideas and the products of this grand creative adventure in a way that people can relate to and get something out of.
So I’ll be maintaining this blog as a kind of journal of the whole process, both the creative development and the marketing and publicity side of it, which I hope that some people might find interesting, alongside the chapters of the book itself in their various forms. I have a lot to learn, so I’m not likely to run out of material anytime soon…
