I think the day I first realized I was a writer was in the fourth grade. It was in Shreveport, Louisiana, and every Wednesday they brought us all to the auditorium to watch films. It was the best day of the week, and the room was packed. During one of the films a teacher remarked that songs had rhyming words. I was spellbound! I got home that day, put on record after record, and it was true. Every song was a poem. This measured order of the words was a real "aha" moment for me. At this time I couldn't write poems, but I could read them, and that was enough for me.
About the sixth grade I began to do something once a month or so. I would take my Big Chief tablet (remember those?) and systematically write from 1 to 1,000. My teachers wondered why I did this, and I couldn't explain it, but it had something to do with order. As the numbers flowed onto the paper a feeling of great relaxation came upon me, and the universe was put in order.
I loved film day as much as the other kids, but there was something I discovered that I could do that they had no concept. When I saw a movie I remembered it. Every scene, every line, everything. Our black and white TV never worked right, and even when the signal was there it would pop a streak about one-third of the way across the screen and someone would have to go and strike it on the top. Sometimes the streak would go away, sometimes it wouldn't. To compensate for this I would lie in bed, close my eyes, and run a movie from my mental data base through my mind, and I remembered them all. After a while I began to "edit" these films where I thought I could make them better. I noticed that there were a lot of films that were alike. They had different characters, but I could always tell how the story would end.
By the time I got to high school I began to write a book each year. I would use a thick composition notebook, and when the notebook was full, the book was done. I actually got into trouble when I wrote a thriller about a bomb threat in a school. The perpetrators perfectly timed it, the characters were diverse, and it had two through lines. Only problem was my bomb worked! I devised a bomb with gunpowder, an old fashioned alarm clock and a lantern battery. Principle freaked out and called the cops. They were really irritated that I had distributed about fifty handwritten copies around the school and had a high school best seller, even if it was free. And this was in 1968!
That scared me off for a while. Over the next few years I sent a few letters to the editor through the local newspaper but didn't try to write very much. During this time I learned to play the guitar. They old fascination with rhyming words came back and I tried to compose songs. They were awful. I was reaching for the rhymes, and didn't even worry about what the song was really saying so long as it got to the end.
After my first divorce I began to pick up my guitar again. Without pen and paper one night I plucked a few simple chords, and some words rolled off my tongue.
Rogers taught me train songs
And Williams taught me blues
But Don Curry taught me how
To sing the pain out of my soul
But someone had to put it there
So I left that for you
Now singing out the pain's
About the best thing that I do.
I simply sang what I meant. The melody was plain, but the message was direct. After that I wrote one song after another, and eventually did one man shows in bars in Texas. I would do three hour sets and never sing anything but my stuff. There was two sides to my brain. One very depressed and serious side, and one very humorous side that didn't takes anything serious. The humorous side fed my wallet, the serious side fed my ego.
When I arrived in Nashville my manager, Michael Lee, told me to pick out a hit song that I liked, sit down, and write it out on a tablet. He told me that would let me know how it feels to write a hit. When I wrote an original he would take it and tell me to take each line and write another song based on that line. He said that would take the lazy out of me. Every day I had to write, produce and record a song, and take it around Music Square to leave it at all the publishers and record companies. My only problem was, while my songs were smooth, had good style, and melody, folks like John Anderson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings were writing better than me.
One day Michael came up to the studio where I was living. He asked what I'd written that day. I lost it. I asked him who could write under these conditions? He lit a cigarette, looked at me, and said, Kris Kristofferson, in this very room! He told me to write a song about being in the music business. He left, and when he returned I picked up a guitar and sang a rock-a-billy tune that said. . .
Since my baby left me and I had no place to go
I took myself to Nashville and I got myself a show
I headed up to Music Square and found a whole lotta shaking going on
Yeah, I was ready for the guitar picking country music world or rock and roll!
I like them Texas ladies, man you know they sure are sweet
But I don't like that child support and can't STAND that Texas heat
So I loaded up my pickup truck and hauled my ass down the road
I was headed for the guitar picking country music world or rock and roll
That Friday night, at Pennington's lounge, across from the Opry, I did nothing but funny songs. We sold albums at the concession and ate catfish at the Nashville Palace when the show was over. But, I could never get a contract. Roy Acuff ruled Nashville back then with a Baptist stick and my stuff made Richard Pryor look like an altar boy. Now, I wasn't as bad as some rappers today, but when you mount a stage in Nashville Tennessee, and open your show with 'F' You Texas RCA didn't exactly beat down your door!
I cut an album at Universal Artists Studios. No, I didn't have a contract. John Brandt, my engineer was doing some work there so we slipped in one night and used their stuff to do the album. You don't get much more outlaw than that! Eat it Willie! I had a good cut, I was fed up with Nashville, and Roy simply would NOT die, so I came back to Austin. Distribution was hard. We sold CDs in bars. I went into Real Estate and hated it. We made a fortune, and I hated it even more.
It was during this time that I purchased a computer. It had a word processor on it. Holy smoke! One day I sat down and just started writing a book. Balls to the wall. No idea where I was going with it, but came up with an idea and wrote Sharon. My wife discussed the story with me and we put both our names on it. Then we wrote two more, CigarBox, and Dobbit Dö.
I had movie plots in my head, and when I wrote prose I had a sense of meter, and a way of circling to the end. Then Steve Jobs came up with iTunes. I no longer needed a distributor, and Roy could go to hell. I had SALES!
And now I've discovered blogging. I didn't have much respect for blogging at first. I thought it was a poor man's self stimulation for a no-talent writer. Well, I've been wrong before, and I was wrong now. I've never met a more talented, kind, helpful bunch of people in my life, and I began to notice that they addressed issues that everyday people were interested in. Everything from recipes to philosophy. And they did it because they LOVED it. Like they say, you gotta sing like you don't need the money.
I haven't got this blog thing completely bucked out yet, but I have ideas, and a whole lot of people willing to guide me. I do have some rules. They're simple, and I paid all the dues for them so I'll let you have them for free.
Don't write until you have something to say. Let the well fill, it will come. I read the news every morning, and when something strikes me, I write.
Don't ramble. Stay on point. I call it circling. You have a good point, state it, explain it, and then circle back.
Read out loud after you write. If it doesn't roll off your tongue it will hurt your reader's eyes.
Be original. Don't let anyone tell you to be like this, or like that. You are you, and no one can write like you but you!
Don't be lazy. If you get tired and want to finish a blog, go make some coffee. Read what you've written out loud. You'll be amazed.
Don't write a blog with a preconceived idea. Open your mind. Let the blog talk to you. Sometimes the conclusion will amaze you.
And finally, enjoy. This is not work, it's love. Someone, somewhere out there will read your blog and it will touch them, and at that moment, you become one. A lot of people never feel that. And I have a saying about that, it ain't sex, but it's damn close!
Happy Blogging
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