Tribe
Humans are tribal by nature. Our first tribe is our immediate family; from there, our tribes spread out in overlapping circles of connection and mutual interest: extended family, friendship, community, work, hobbies, music. A band is a tribe; so are their fans. So is a baseball team—or as it is sometimes more aptly called, a club. All of the above has been lurking on the edges of my consciousness over the course of the last several weeks chez Warburg, a period during which I’ve done no actual work on the new book, but an awful lot of processing and storing...
Read MoreWriters and Baseball: A Love Affair
“You think you know, but you just don’t know… How about this trip around the bases for this guy? A lifetime minor-leaguer, and he gets a walk-off, in front of this sell-out crowd, in one of the best rivalries in sports.” -- San Francisco Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, 5/4/13 Almost every writer I know loves baseball. Looking back at a game as memorable as the one I witnessed last night from section 325 of AT&T Park in San Francisco—site of two key chapters of Believe in Me—the reason for that seems obvious: because in every single game, there are so...
Read MoreOf Book Signing and Bungee-Jumping
The other day I was telling a friend about the book signing that I’ve just agreed to do—details follow below—and expressing my discomfort with the prospect. At which she said, “Look, you’re not someone who runs around drawing attention to themselves, so you should just be yourself and enjoy it.” Good advice, which I’m now repeating to you on my blog, which is, among other things, a vehicle for drawing attention to myself. See how this stuff can make your head spin? Anyway, I was glad to hear that my friend doesn’t think I’m a boastful person, which is rather...
Read MoreLove Song for a Locomotive
Given that I’ve been writing about music for much of my adult life, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to consider the parallels between the two disciplines. And as writing fiction has evolved for me from fantasy into reality—incorporating some of my musical obsessions along the way—I’ve come to appreciate those parallels more deeply. All of this came to mind the other day as I was listening to a new album that I’ve just reviewed, by an artist I’ve mentioned here before, Big Big Train. The album is English Electric Part Two, the second half of a double LP that’s among...
Read MoreDevil’s in the Details
They say the devil’s in the details—and I might tend to agree, in most contexts. In the context of writing fiction, though, for me the details are almost always more fun than work. They also take some of the sting out of one of more tedious parts of the process: rewrites. The part where I try to fix everything that went wrong on my first, thrashing, headlong race through a chapter, when I’m just trying to get the story down on the page. At first it’s all about characters and plot: does this feel right, ring true, respect (and entertain)...
Read MoreThe Bookshelf Diaries (an occasional series): Macan, Walker, Townshend, Chabon
“If you want to write, the first thing you need to do is read.” In the current lull before the next big push on the new book (which is fated to have a labor lasting many months), here's what I’ve been reading lately. Rocking The Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture by Edward Macan is a surprisingly—at times aggravatingly—academic tome about that great hoary beast, progressive rock. Skirting the stupor-inducing sections about music theory and harmonic structure, as well as some of Macan’s more esoteric digressions, I thankfully emerged with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for a genre...
Read MoreTim Green Will Return
Well, we made it: welcome to 2013. New Year’s Day is the perfect time to talk about the future with one eye on the past, and that’s definitely the agenda for today. First up is a minor housekeeping item. Every post I’ve made on this blog from the very beginning has featured as its title a song title or lyric fragment. This has been a fun game to play, but as the post count has risen, it’s come to feel somewhat limiting. So, it’s time to move on and let the post titles say what they need to say, whether...
Read MoreSecret World
The more Michael Chabon I read, the more I’d like invite him to lunch sometime. That semi-delusional sentence is not in fact as absurd as it might seem at on first read; I only live 90 minutes from my Pulitzer Prize-winning imaginary friend Michael, and we do have a fair bit in common. Between progressive rock (and jazz), comic books, baseball, Jewish roots, an acute awareness of our own shortfalls as fathers/husbands/human beings, and, oh yeah, that whole making-stuff-up-and-writing-it-down thing, there would be plenty of conversational ground to cover. So, I really hope I’m not screwing the chances of that...
Read MoreEnglish Electric
I have a love-hate relationship with a number of things. Technology. Grammar. And today's adversary: research. I love research because I get to learn new things (no, really, it’s that simple). I hate it because it’s a huge distraction, often dropping me down Internet rabbit-holes from which I only emerge hours later with a heap of semi-useless information and no actual writing accomplished. In recent weeks I’ve taken to posting tidbits from my research forays over on the Believe in Me Facebook page (like it, won’t you?). For example: “Stolichnaya vodka comes in at least 21 different varieties, including white...
Read MoreThank You (Again)
On a day for giving thanks, I'll start with these two: Thanks to Riffraf Magazine and Richard Fulco for your faithful support, including the fresh post about Believe in Me that went up today as part of Richard's "Writers and Music" series. Thanks to you, the readers, for your comments here and over on the Believe in Me Facebook page, for continuing to spread the word across the vast empty spaces of the interwebs, and for, well, giving a damn. It means a lot. Here's a gift in return -- a link to the post I ran at Thanksgiving last...
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