On watching your fingers

Once upon a time in my wild(ish) youth, I loved music so much that I wanted to be it—that's really the only way I can describe it. I wanted to breathe it, wear it, live it. So I taught myself to play guitar, because making music seemed as close as I was ever going to get to becoming one with it, so to speak. Plus, my ultimate goal was to be Bono or at the very least Natalie Merchant, and wear things with fringe or waifish skirts and twirl rhapsodically around the stage while long-haired boys played instruments around me and gazed rapturously at me from the audience.

And so I approached learning to play guitar the way I approach most things—by diving right into the middle and hoping I would never need to swim back to shore (so to speak) to learn all that tedious beginning stuff: Music theory, the names of chords, stuff like that. So I learned the names of the strings; I watched my brother play, and saw how he made shapes over the fretboard with his fingers to make chords—diagonals, triangles, a sort of rectangle (those would be bar chords) and I copied him. I knew how to play piano a bit, so I at least understood some music basics, like scales.

That was enough, I decided. I was off: I starting writing songs.  And I don't think I'd ever felt quite so powerful—imagine, music was spilling out of me (well...sort of). And they weren't half bad, those very first songs.  They were a little odd, granted. And short. In a burst of enthusiasm, wrote a lot of very short songs. LOL. And of course I eventually needed to swim back to shore for things like the whole concept behind bar chords, which I learned from my friend Dave's drunk uncle, who was sleeping off a bender in Dave's garage while Dave and I were out there with our guitars stumbling over a song by The Jam. (Dave didn't know the names of chords, either.) His uncle rolled off a garage shelf, startling us (we didn't know he was out there), grabbed Dave's guitar from him, and snarled, "It's like this, you idjits. Like a scale.  F follows E, F# follows F..." his hands traveled up the guitar fretboard, demonstrating. Then he handed the guitar back to Dave, climbed back up on the shelf and went back to sleep.

It was perhaps the most useful thing anyone has ever taught me about guitar. 

So that was a milestone in my career as a guitar player. And another one, an earlier one, was learning to play without watching my fingers, because that's when you're finally free to express the music, to interpret it, rather than just play it. And there comes a point when playing is so automatic that looking down at your fingers while you play can completely throw you off, will cause you to lose your place in a song. Your fingers know the song; they don't need to be watched.

I was just pondering these things, because I was mulling the vast vocabulary, the jargon, that surrounds writing, which is in some ways similar to music theory. I never knew any of it until after I'd sold THE RUNAWAY DUKE and met other romance authors who knew this language.  I didn't know what "H&H" meant; I didn't know what a "dark moment" was; I didn't know what an "arc" was. None of that stuff. I just wrote the book.  I imagine, like musicians, that some authors feel more comfortable arming themselves with theory before they embark on writing; others throw themselves in.  I remember a guy I knew in college who was a theory genius—I could splay my fingers in any imaginable way over the fretboard of a guitar, and he could name the chord ("C minor suspended fourth inverted etc. etc."—" but he never once wrote a song. I, in fact, can barely recall seeing him play guitar. I think he thought he needed to know every rule there was before he could allow himself the pleasures of playing.

Some musicians use theory to help them craft masterpieces; others are like Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, who says, "I’ve always rebelled against theory. Guitar playing for me is a compulsive activity. I'm not against learning technique, however, and I'm certainly not against acquiring new knowledge. I don't have any favorite keys that I play in. To me, different keys have different colors, different qualities, so I like playing in lots of them."

I guess I'm kind of like Mark Knopfler as a writer. :) As I wrote more books, I acquired writing jargon cautiously and judiciously, and I'm still deciding how and if it serves me as a writer. Some of it has helped, but I still think I go at storytelling rather instinctively. And of course it's awfully useful to know what an arc is, etc., but for me it might be best not to, metaphorically speaking, watch my fingers too much as I write, because too much examination might just throw me right out of the story, the way watching your fingers can throw you out of a song.  Mostly I trust that once I get rolling, my fingers will (usually!) know the story.

Speaking of getting rolling...ahem. Revisions are singing their siren song to me. :) Have a fabulous weekend, kittens. And if you're a writer reading this, tell me a little about your writing process if you feel like it. :)

Comments

[Ranurgis]

Have you ever tried to analyse how you walk? I'd imagine that's sort of the thing you mean. I don't think we'd get very far walking if we had to analyze all the steps. I'm pretty certain I'd lose my balance and fall.

You're right: a lot of things should not be analyzed. For some people that's all right but analyzing books in that way--especially French classics--bored me to tears, quite literally--because I just couldn't do it.

I know writers who have story arcs all mapped out and their books are great. Now I can't talk about yours yet but I do think I'll really enjoy them as well. Will it make any difference as to whether I enjoy one more than the other? I very much doubt it. And even the author I have in mind deviated from her original arc when it was necessary. Her arc was more for planning how to best write the books in a whole series.

[Isabel]

Hi Julie,

Off topic here, before I forget I wanted to let you know I'll be reviewing To Love A Thief on Sunday, July 23rd at Romantically Inclined. It's RITA nominee review week at RI and I picked your book for my review. I hope I can do it justice, it's an awesome read! :)

[Julie Anne Long]

That's a great analogy, Ranurgis—analyzing how you walk. Or...thinking about breathing. But some writers use charts and spreadsheets and color coding to map out their stories, and I'm in awe of these techniques, as I'm basically a pretty analytical, technical person, and I happen to love charts and spreadsheets. LOL. It's just my creative process that defies any sort of attempt to impose that kind of structure upon it. It's kind of wonderful how different we all are as writers. And I imagine our processes evolve.

YAY, Isabel!! I'm so glad you enjoyed TO LOVE A THIEF! Thanks for reviewing it at R-I, too. Can't wait to read what you have to say!! I'll be sure to look for the review. :)

[Haven Rich]

I had thought of doing the review for RI but then I figured let Isabel do it to get a different opinion on it. *since I've already posted my review on amazon* But I agree it was a wonderful book and I'm looking forward to Ways To Be Wicked (hehe and I can think of a few).

I'm a full wind type gal. If I feel passionate about something I give it all I've got. When I decided to write romance I didn't know a fig from an arc but I gave it my all. Of course, I don't know if I could do a spreadsheet or not. I do know I'm not very good at outlines. I tend to give too much detail.

See you at RI Julie, Isabel posts her review on the 23rd.