Pictures Of A New Book: Page Forty Seven

Julia Cameron calls it: Painting a room. Take your writing instrument and bring to life every corner. Give off the scent of so much description that no matter where you're reader's are living... they can see, feel, hear and smell the essence of expression. It's that technique that kept my eyes dipped in buckets of paint while walking through New York City. I refused to jump into impatient yellow cabs. I couldn't be hustled through the transit system. For me to grasp the invisible. I had to become part of it.

My latest book Scrambled Eggs sits on the benches of cluttered streets overrun by business minds and wandering dreams. 832 Broadway shook the nib almost off the instrument. Seconds before arriving. Nearly 11pm. I could've been watching the Presidential debate but found myself inside a comic book store instead. Had I known at the time that the universe was handing me a book to write.

I might have paid closer attention to the busy needs of Super Heroes and cartoon characters. Once within the thin pages of strips and cabinets of plastic figures. I realized the importance of mirrors. Finding my way to a corner. To watch late night New Yorker's. The essence of a dance fed the eyes of the storyteller's lyrics.

Picture Of A New Book Page Forty Six: Shattering Glass

Today. I broke a rule. I promised myself to stay focused. To not stray away from. To become weak. To sell out to being what I've always been. A perfectionist. The writing of my new book. People think words fall from the sky. If that's the case. May I buy a case of buckets? Stay focused. My battle cry. Keep from having to revert back to new beginnings. It will be there when you are finished. But did I listen? I chose instead. To recognize. The guy I am. The writer inside. Wasn't within the same rhythm and tone. Shared those days. When words were spirits having flown. Gone! Gone! Gone! First the simple words. Gone! A sentence. I reconstructed a paragraph and got high. High off the challenge of getting to redesign. It took me thirty five years to publish the book that kept me in school. I kept changing ideas. Layouts were boring. I stumbled and fumbled. I no longer could see eye to page. So I elected to change. And change. And change. It's not good that I went back and reshaped the landscape of the first in chapters. Melodic might be my rhyme. But the timing is way off. I have until February 2014 to break this book free. Editing isn't free. The expense is common sense. I love what I rewrote! But how will I feel in sixty to one hundred days. I broke a rule. I didn't stay focused. I chose instead to bring a knife to the computer screen. Cutting loose what could've been a readers most favorite part. What do I know? Except the moment. It fell from the sky.

Writer's Reinvent Language

I would love to see what the book authors, poets and music makers in Syria are setting free. Writer's fear nothing. Be it a jotting down. A mental expression or conversation. Storyteller's express because they weren't born to keep it in. How many writer's in Syria have been ordered into silence? Trying times multiply the minds ambition to put print to work in the world's eye. Writer's get creative. Making paths visible by developing the guts to cut through everyday language to make up another. Like Irish Limericks. Where are the writing instruments and pads of paper in Syria? You can't text there! It's being read by rule makers turning book authors, poets and music makers into rule breakers. Do the windows of the soul equal the stories being told? Who then is documenting the paragraphs so that other generations can learn from it without passing the fear for living forward? Writer's cannot go without speaking. Hidden. The path. So it be challenged. But human skin cannot hold in. Experience and survival. It has to be flowing freely somewhere. Is it being written then quickly ripped into shreds of nothingness? Put in the frames of homes then covered by photographs of a past that will never return again. Is it wrong to think? A writer's greatest gift is to guarantee a link. Between he. They and all who'll one day gather. To hear of the tale. The struggles versus victory. Starvation dulled by an inner core of motivation that moves the innocent toward beams of security. Writer's don't release to feel championed. Books may sell but it's a story we do tell. A masterpiece like that of a painting hung above a fireplace mantle. A passing thought from yesterday. Led into an area of nonexistent. Without book authors, poets and music makers. The sights we see would only be dreams.

Don't Text While Writing

Remember when putting puzzles together were the hot American trend? Classic family time was spent searching for rounded chunks of blips and blobs that would mysteriously make their way into becoming a brilliant portrait. My family being of Montana mud and existence always chose forested scenes or bridges across roaring rivers. If Gene Simmons of KISS had been around ten years earlier there might have been some edgier pieces parts made available for growing teen boys. The lack of Rock in puzzles had to be the reason why I took up writing! What is a single word but a puzzle piece. When you put enough of them together the background lights up the imagination, "I'm almost there!" I still have 100,000 more pieces but wow this is so much better than yesterday!" Writer's tend to be perfectionists. That being said. A puzzle can instantly go silent if what's being painted onto the surface of a table doesn't make sense. As far back as the second grade Mrs. Keefe constantly reminded me, "Beginning, middle and end." Hard to digest is how the writing world has changed in the center of series of adventures. Tweets are abbreviated words. Face Book might connect to readers but what drives them to want to follow you to the next page? Radio and TV commercials are every reason to tune out. Books are digital and never in my life did I think there would come a time when having every page at my fingertips was the perfect way to digest what the author was attempting to sell. It's not just 100,000 puzzle pieces of one writer. Digital books make any number of authors available at any given moment. Just like Radio and TV...readers are tuning out. And there aren't any commercials!!!!Just a bunch of sentence that connect readers to everything. Oh we eventually get to it. After answering emails, thumbing through Amazon and blanking out trash advertisers attempting to make perfect your unwritten life. I spend a lot of time on college and broadcast campuses educating tomorrows communicators. Where are the published authors doing the same for writers? The world will always be ready for a new book. Getting it into the hands of an interested reader is the difficult challenge. The playing field for creative minds changes by the hour. How we maintain the level of upkeep required drains from the imagination everything once thought to be the protective shield from perfectionism. The reason why writer's don't offer their services to other thinker's...is because everybody is their own writer and nobody whats to be compared. Mark Twain couldn't survive in 2013. I believe Harry Potter would have a tough time as well. The 1990's were a different time. Shades of Gray has become popular because women finally believe that porno doesn't have to be pictures but rather images set free in the imagination. The writer's edge inside a world fed by a wealth of knowledge dulls the tip of the most brilliant sentence. And yet...we continue to write. Believer's in the passion to put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard find themselves shying away from chasing a dream and relying more on answer the calling.

Writer's Fighting In Bathroom Mirrors

Nobody is harder on the opposite side of a creative mind than the self paying the daily rent. Which is why I take the time to answer "The Doubter." Every question! Why if the industry has failed its performers do I spend so much time chasing radio dreams? Friends or my worst critics. Hate your new book Scrambled Eggs because of the style of writing chosen. Why can't I start over and become liked? How can you be so busy and have nothing to show for it? 1. Radio performers haven't failed the industry. Non-radio people banking on advertising dollars have tipped the stage upside down. True Broadcasters are turtles. We lay on our backs pretending to feel the self proclaimed Master's in control tickling our tummies. As long as they're footing the bill. I accept all change. Digital wouldn't be without there being a connection between deep pockets and a need to make money. It's the greatest time to be in Radio. Show me a decision maker that can do a show, produce commercials, sell advertising and attend community events while keeping a thumb print on the pulse of where music and performance is versus isn't. Radio works if you let it. 2. I went into writing Scrambled Eggs to answer a mission. The sentences and paragraphs are completely all my own. Delivered my own way. It's how I think. I study word formation. I listen to how normal people speak. I watch great engaging conversation completed inside thoughts shared. Why aren't newspapers and magazines writing this way? Why are books thick? And in return I'll get a billion answers. But none will satisfy the hunger to write...my way. I truly don't care if not one book is sold. I don't care. Nothing comes close to the incredible pleasure I'm getting in bringing these characters air. 3. Life isn't supposed to be a business. Life is about living. Learning to live is a subject that two people will never agree on. I'm extremely busy living life. I've been invited to the most fascinating places noted as common and find its spirit to be a truer blue than the sky. When your choice in life is to live. The journey begins. Accept the good with the great while dipping your toes in the bad and very ugly. Peace in my soul is rubbing noses with my sixteen year old Maltese named MJ. A rescue that was horribly treated for five years in a situation that should've claimed his life. To stare in his eyes is my Jazz. To take a writing instrument and write about it...is no different than Paul McCartney penning out Hey Jude. He got the world to listen. All I want to do is thank God for giving me the chance to live another day.

Writing In Different Font

Daily writing isn't meant to be the constant act of word dumping. During a process of locating self trust. The inner core of a soul spits out art in any shape made available. Three years into the realms of expression. I began to pay attention. Not to the un-perfected circles and uncut squares. But to the air. By no means do I believe such puddles of creative saliva are brilliant displays. The beauty of art is the story. I locate it inside the development of lines finding air on a single sheet of paper.

Pictures Of A New Book: Page Forty Five: The Cover

You can't judge a book by its cover. Nor can you predict a story through its suggested style. Part of the adventure is being part of the cover design. I'll never forget working on the first book One Mans 1021 Thoughts. The artist was two thousand miles away yet each time I tapped in, "No." on the email...I could hear him scream my name in the worst of ways. While on the Barnes and Noble writing tour during the late 90's. One of my challenges to writers I didn't know was to race through the lanes searching for a cover that influenced them to want to read. The majority of them would return with crazy Murder Mysteries or a Sci Fi. I'd ask, "Is that what you've penned out?" "No! I just liked the cover." Scrambled Eggs has endured two cover design changes. I wanted the first to embrace the story of music. The deeper I got into sharing the lyrics of the book. The more I realized. This book isn't about musicians. Its about a woman that loves her man so much. She's vowed to wear paint on her face to make memories last longer than yesterday. My first wife Sande would spend hours laying out the covers she'd use for her books. The moment she'd agree to disagree. Her imagination would bump into other ideas. Deciding on a book cover is tragically difficult in the way that it means more to the author than the reader. Marketing means well but don't lie to your reader with a cover that speaks a completely different language. Put thought into it. But don't be a perfectionist. Live the journey. Let the colors flow while keeping the story inside the most important part of the sharing. Never settle on the first cover. Challenge the artist to bring out the book not hide it between the pages. The artist has no clue what you poured out of your fingerprints. Make sure you protect the value of creative flow. The most important part of the writing puzzle is staying true to the reader.