Pictures Of A New Book: Part Thirty Five

I love this quote from author Jodi Picoult, "I've always called writing successful schizophrenia. I get paid to hear those voices." So is the business of Radio! For thirty four years my on the air performance has been the physical act of turning invisible voices into objects that move wandering people. Through lecturing I'm given the incredible opportunity to meet the next level of Radio players vowing to reinvent the two speaker stage. In every gathering there's always a cast of vocal grinders that have been told, "You should do radio!" Really? Does the world think the voice in a Radio person's head is cut from a sack of gravel that sounds like its sucked down three gallons of whiskey ten minutes ago followed by three packs of cigarettes? Walking up to a Radio person using a fake Radio voice is like a New Yorker trying to pull off a Southern accent. I'm currently in the center of a two month tour featuring sixteen Radio Broadcasting lectures. The goal is to pop open the imagination of the future talker. To rid their mind and body of what they've been trained to believe. It's a trick I used while traveling the Barnes and Noble writing circuit for nearly three years. Tell me what you think it's supposed to be like. Dipping your dreams in a touch of unflavored chocolate. The real process of growth takes place when what you are livin is what you envision. Getting to know the first voice is a discovery! Radio or writing... without that voice you're just another Howard Stern copy. As an elementary/middle school writer. I needed a stage. I found it in radio. At the ripe old age of fourteen. The problem with Radio. The voice changes all the time but the on-air performance sounds just like it did ten years ago. The writing voice is given permission to sprout new leaves. What I hear today could be the layout of a new character. I hear the voice but never see the face. It's my job as the writer to give him, her or it a life to live. Jodi Picoult says, "Characters seem to pick their own paths. They have an agenda that I as the writer never know. Until the conversation or plot begins inching its way across the typed page." I'm not like most writers that demand a private layout for word dumping. My favorite place to write books is inside a Radio station studio. There's an energy present. Vibrantly available for anyone to tap into. Use it wrong. The next step is a collection of mood swings incapable of keeping your mouth shut. Writing voices want to be heard. They'll piss you off to point of knocking your head up against the wall. They'll embrace you to tears. Pick you up. Tip you over. Then spend the rest of the night laughing about it. Jodi Picoult claims to know the characters of her books better than anyone else. She's emotionally invested in them. My first wife was the same way. She'd be introduced to a new character in her writing and for weeks that person would be invited to dinner, take a Sunday bath and have popcorn and ice cream on Wednesdays. Everything we lived was based on how that character came to her in the book and each scene was in fact something we had lived. I'm just glad she didn't write murder mysteries. How do you know if you have a writing voice? Two questions: Were you born on the planet earth? Do you wonder, wish, fear, feel, fool around with or fuss at yourself when nobody is watching. You have a voice. Only you can give it a stage. What's stopping you? Oh that's right... Other people's opinions. The best way around that is an itty bitty Arroe-ism I developed a couple of decades back. In a very casual situation. In front of family or friends. In the core of a great conversation. I softly say, "If you do anything that might bring injury to my creative self. The next time this event takes place I'm gonna make so much noise that they'll be forced to invite me to go home first. That's ok because you'll be stuck having to explain."