Music

Spotify and Country Music Narratives

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This entry doesn’t have much to do with writing, but it is about narrative, sort of, so.

I’m giving Spotify a test-drive this month. I used to use Rhapsody, back in the day when I had a desk job and listened to music at my desk all the time, but now that I’m a student and freelancer, I spend less time listening to music while sitting, which is what Rhapsody, and probably, to a lesser extent, Spotify is good for.

I’m also using Spotify as a potential upgrade from Pandora. Pandora stations do tend to get repetitive, but I like that you can put more than one song or artist in as a seed. Spotify only allows one artist or song, or you can listen to their stations, which can be interesting, but over which you have less control. And I haven’t put together my own playlists yet, because I’m lazy.

Which brings us to: I was listening to Spotify’s 2013 CMA country station/playlist. Now, I like country, but I like a particular subset of country: country sung by women, or the occasional mixed group like Lady Antebellum and Gloriana. I tend to prefer female voices in almost all musical genres.

And I forgot that I definitely, definitely, definitely prefer the types of country songs sung by women. It doesn’t matter if it’s classic country, crossover, blues, or bluegrass, the songs that women sing are much more likely to have subject matter that doesn’t seriously annoy me.

Because country songs that men sing, especially current, popular songs, seem to be overwhelmingly about proving the singer’s bona fides as a country man. He doesn’t want to take you out to dinner! He wants to take you out in the woods and catch you some catfish! And bang by the fire! He’s a redneck! He doesn’t hold with cities! He’s all about his truck! And if it weren’t all the time, it wouldn’t bug me, but so many of the songs seem like culture war sallies. There’s almost no difference between the message of “That’s My Kinda Night” by Luke Bryan, “Boys ‘Round Here” by Blake Shelton and even “There’s A Little Bit Of Redneck In All Of Us” (which is at least funny, so I mind it less). But they’re all about drawing lines between “real” Americans who are rednecks who like trucks and everyone else, presumably latte-sipping, sushi-eating, city-dwelling liberals.

Women’s songs are more often about love and girl power and leaving home and more universally human things, even if they are in a country setting. I want to hear the men sing about their woman left them and their dog left and they lost their job, like they used to. I want to hear them tell specific stories. Give me Allison Moorer’s mournful ballads, Taylor Swift never ever getting back together, Bonnie Raitt’s everything, Emmylou Harris going from Boulder to Birmingham, or Mary Chapin Carpenter feeling lucky. They have individual personalities and stories.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying the songs from the TV show

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Hobbies, Writing

Writing and Knitting (and Lifting Weights)

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Last night I went to a reading/conversation at The Center For Fiction for Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, edited by Ann Hood, who read her essay, and in conversation with one of my favorite teachers from NYU, Elissa Schappell.

The book, from what I understand, uses knitting or learning to knit, or family members that knit, as a jumping off point to talk about other things, for the most part, rather than being about the intricacies of knitting. No knit snobs allowed.

But how can you be snobby when someone learned to knit to give their hands something to do when they mourned the death of a child, or said goodbye to a dying parent? The book contains a variety of perspectives, stories both funny and poignant. I definitely plan to read it at some point.

ETA: My mother-in-law is getting this book for me for Christmas/Hannukah! Awesome.

Hood and Schappell talked about if writers write like they knit. I’ve often thought that knitting a sweater bears some similarities to writing a novel:

1. They are big projects that take a lot of time and patience

2. They are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

3. Sweaters/novels stand on the shoulders of those that have come before, and do well to follow certain rules, but can also be formed in many different ways.

And then me as a knitter/writer:

1. I like to do research first, putting together stitch patterns and a sweater pattern, never following any pattern exactly, but always having a moderate plan.

2. I am ambitious. I am not a swatcher, a hat-knitter, or a short story writer. I like to knit beautiful, intricate sweaters on small needles. I write long historical novels. So far, anyway.

3. I knit mostly for myself. At least when I’m knitting sweaters. I write and plan the books I want to read.

4. I am impatient, and begin before fully planning, and do my planning along the way.

5. Successes and failures are big and dramatic. I can work for months or years, slave over something, and it may not be usable, wearable, readable in the end. Or it might be a sweater that every time I put it on, I think: this might be the most beautiful sweater in the entire world.

But as a somewhat serious strength athlete, there are ways I think writing is like getting stronger.

1. You have to trust the process.

2. There is a lot to learn, and you have to do some things that don’t seem that helpful but actually do help in the long run.

3. You have to be patient. You’re lifting things and its only getting slightly easier, but then months go by, and if you keep doing it, at the end, you are stronger, and you have the word count for a novel, if not the structure yet.

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Books, Movies

Why I Loved Villains in My 20s (And Don’t So Much Anymore)

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Actually, it started earlier than my 20s. Darth Vader was the best. Of course, the Alliance had to win, and I would have been pissed if they didn’t, but Darth Vader’s redemption arc was the most interesting thing to me about the original Star Wars trilogy. (And let’s not talk about the other movies. I like to pretend they don’t exist.)

But I also thought the Empire had sharper uniforms, and much better ships, and the Imperial March is by far the cooler theme music.

I think when you’re a kid, or a young adult, and feeling fairly powerless, fictional villains can be very attractive. Villains don’t give a shit. Villains will use the force to choke you if you’re incompetent. Villains get the best outfits. Villains are pragmatic about getting what they want, and don’t care what other people think of their methods. Villains refer to themselves in the 3rd person. “Pain is a thing for lesser men. What is pain to Doom?”

Villains also have tragic back stories, usually, if they’re good fictional villains. Imagining one’s self as a villain leads to all kinds of enjoyable, self-pitying wallowing. If you feel misunderstood, imagine how misunderstood Dr. Doom must feel. But he has Doombots. He probably feels better when he can deploy those. Plus, the people of Latveria love him. Can I move to Latveria?

However, if you delve into the construction of stories with really great villains, you start to notice that the villains either get a redemption arc, or they are constantly defeated by the heroes. A villain is only as good as his enemies. Dr. Doom, no matter how much I love him (and I still do), has his stories hamstrung by some of the most irritating heroes in the Marvel universe. Ugh, The Fantastic 4. Especially Sue and Reed. Soooo boring. And the fact that Doom can never defeat them makes him a little boring too.

You also start to notice that the best villains are only sort of villainous, and mostly just have their own agenda. Doom, sometimes, Magneto, all the time.

And finally, you start to notice that real life villains are either really pathetic, evil in a totally unpleasant/deranged way, and/or privileged, careless people, people who were born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple. Which is to say, then the Bush administration happened. Darth Cheney is a funny joke, but in real life, he is a guy who loves power, and had a totally unrealistic view of how the world works, and forced a whole bunch of people to die for that power and those beliefs. There’s nothing interesting there. I don’t care why he is the way he is, I just don’t want him in charge of anything ever again.

You also might read things like Eichmann in Jerusalem

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Writing

Some thoughts on writing novels

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Part 1 in what will probably be an infinite series.

I’m taking a novel writing class at NYU this year. It’s not the first time I’ve taken a novel-writing class–I did one at Gotham Writers Workshop, and it’s always interesting to see people’s processes, to see people figure out their processes, and it always shows me how hard it is to do novel-writing in a class. Many published writers say that your first novel teaches you how to write a novel, but also, that each novel demands its own process.

I think if I taught a novel writing class, and could do anything I wanted, I would try to meet each individual writer and project where they were, rather than trying to impose any kind of process on them–not that this class imposes much of a process, but it does have three workshop submissions of 25 pages each, and that is not up for negotiation.

For the first submission, I’d have people bring in the first 20-25 pages, and as much of a synopsis/plan as they can possibly share, as well as their own assessment of where they are with the novel and what they need help with. I do a mix of planning and just writing and seeing what happens–no plan survives contact with the enemy, e.g. the blank page–but it’s still important to have a plan. I would definitely encourage students to figure out where they think their novel is going, what the end will be. I know it’s not true for everyone, but for most people, it’s almost impossible for writing to go anywhere if you don’t have some idea where it’s going. That end point will certainly change as the novel goes on.

Then some people might never submit again during the semester, or they would only submit the pages and information they wanted feedback on. Maybe they’d submit an entire manuscript up to the point where they got stuck. Maybe they would only submit ideas that they wanted to discuss. Maybe they would talk about what they had trouble with and then I, the fantasy professor, would ask them to bring in certain things to share and discuss, character studies, a particular scene, an outline.

Or the writers might just need some hand-holding and encouragement to help them feel like they aren’t alone with the struggles of writing a novel, in order to help them through the process of creating a rough draft.

In the class I’m taking now, the 25 page submissions are not provoking the sort of discussion that might be helpful for me, if there is such a discussion. I wish right now that I could write the whole novel and do a round of edits on it before workshopping more of it.

Some of that is self-protective. I know it will be better later, and I know I can get it there, so I’d rather not expose half-formed things. I want to impress people–don’t we all? Some of that is because I have completed a novel, and am preparing, with help, to try shopping it to traditional publishers, so I’ve traveled this road before, for longer, while most of my fellow students haven’t.

And part if it is also that I don’t even know enough about this novel right now to have questions or things I want addressed by my fellow students. I have some very certain ideas, which I do not want feedback on, because I’m not going to change them based on other people’s suggestions. I will have to write into any change to them. And I have some vast uncertainties, big questions like “How do I do this?” which no one can answer.

I’m looking forward to this semester being over because I want to have time and space to bang out a rough draft of this novel, and have the raw material to shape into something I actually want to show other people.

 

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Life, Writing

A Rather Disorganized Surface Pro 2 Review

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I am writing this from my new Surface Pro 2, which was a present from my parents, and a much needed upgrade from my Asus Netbook.

Netbooks have served me well for a while. They are small and portable, which is good when I’m carrying a computer around New York from freelance clients to classes and back home. Netbooks also have huge hard drives, generally, which is good if you like music and movies.

But they are very under-powered, which is bad if you actually like to play music and movies. Or edit the occasional graphic. Even GIMP, which is not as demanding as Photoshop, took minutes to do anything. It couldn’t play iTunes movies even in Standard Definition. Netflix, Youtube, and Hulu was very dependent on the laptop’s mood for the day. The screen was tiny, so if I needed to do a lot of rearranging of text, or compare two web pages, or anything like that, it didn’t work.

So, I wanted to upgrade my computer. I wanted something I could watch movies on. I wanted something I could still do a lot of word processing and typing on. I wanted something that wouldn’t choke when I had a bunch of tabs open. I wanted something very light. I didn’t want a Mac, because I like Windows and I’m used to it.

For me, the Surface Pro 2 is a very good answer to those issues. It functions as a full computer, and can run any Windows program.With the Type Cover 2, I’m finding the Surface Pro 2 a very good computer that can also function as a tablet. It is definitely a better computer than a tablet.

The mouse/touchpad isn’t quite as good as my Asus, but with the touch screen, and the stylus that comes with the computer, it works better than the mouse/touchpad alone on the Asus. If I just want to move around the screen, I can use my finger or the keyboard touchpad. If I want to select and move text, I use the stylus, because it has the most precision.

The Surface Pro 2 runs Windows 8, which has desktop mode and app mode. The apps are definitely one of the weaker

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Books

What I’m Reading Wednesday

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What I’m Reading Now:

I’ve started reading Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov for my class with Mary Gaitskill on description and imagery. She is very devoted to Nabokov, and after reading a number of his short stories this semester, and re-reading Lolita, I understand why. He is a master of description and imagery, and there is a virtuosity to his writing that can be admired, but not imitated. One never sees him struggling.

I’m also still reading Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which is incredibly entertaining, but also very slow going. Full of figurative flights of fancy, interspersed with hilarious low humor, all in a very challenging to penetrate 18th century pastiche. He is also a master.

One of the things M&D does that is of interest to me as a writer is create a rather preposterous frame, and execute it so well that it doesn’t matter that it is preposterous. The story is ostensibly told by a Reverend to his nieces and nephews, but the Reverend is so close to Mason and Dixon that he is often inside their perspectives, and only rarely his own. There is no way that someone could actually tell a story this way.

Since I am currently writing a novel that is a letter/confession/memoir, I need to learn how to do this. I don’t care that the narrator of M&D has implausible knowledge and recall, because the story and delivery itself is so good. The preposterousness of it is part of the charm.

I was warned that this book would contain hilarious anachronisms and in-jokes, and so it does. Among other things,

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