Pump Up The Nourishment: a sort of journal on my writing process

(delivered to students at the end of my English 1301 class on May 1, 1992)

I wanted to bring our class to a close by responding to the last assignment that I gave you. This is not to show you how I wanted it done, but my small way of thanking you for sharing your thoughts with me this semester. I found, in reading some of your responses, that we often approach a writing project with similar strategies. I see now that while writing a review of the album Galactic Cowboys, I experienced some of the problems and anxieties that you have told me about this semester. I think I even experienced the same feelings of victory and pride.

I think one of the biggest helps in writing is to experience the subject as much as possible or look as closely as possible at the experience one is writing about. If I wanted to write about the day my daughter was born or my first asthma attack, I would go over that event in my mind a lot (making notes, of course). Since I was writing an album review, it made sense to listen to my CD several times.

Repeated listening serves another important function for me as a reviewer. How many tapes do you have that you loved when you first heard them, but now don't listen to? I was impressed by Galactic Cowboys when I first heard it, but I wanted to make sure I would feel the same way months (perhaps even years) from now. I look for the quality of timelessness, in other words.

I talked about the album a lot with my friend Brad. He and I share similar tastes in music, but not always in art. For example, he liked the Chagall Guevara album I reviewed earlier this semester, but not as much as me. He thought that musically, the album was not as special as I believe it to be. Anyway, bouncing ideas off him (even in an argument) forces me, again, to think more about my subject.

When I had procrastinated sufficiently the actual writing of this review (about a month), I sat down to compose. Then I found myself in the throes of a dilemma: I had a lot to say, but I couldn't say it. I listened to the disc again. That didn't help. I re-read an interview with the band and some other material concerning the album (lyric sheet, a more brief review than I was planning to write, some stuff not printed in the interview where the band explains the lyrics). That only gave me more to say and more frustration at not being able to say it.

I decided to jot down some informal notes about what I wanted to tell my readers. Under main points, I wrote "good," "humorous/serious," and "never boring -- good hooks, harmony, tempo changes." Then I wrote "King's-X meets Metallica" under some indecipherable scribbling about my decision to buy the album. Then I wrote the titles of my favorite songs.

Next, I made a loose outline. In fact the outline was so loose that I put a question mark by the word (outline?). This skeleton had three main points I wanted to cover: how I was introduced to the music of the Galactic Cowboys, a short evaluation of the album, and my favorite songs on the album.

Well, I now had my thoughts down in a slightly more organized form, but didn't have a review written. I stared at everything for a few minutes feeling more and more aggravated. "I'm a writer, damn it! I teach freshman composition. I tutor people in English all the time. Why is this so hard?" I told myself. I continued to berate myself: "500 lousy words! I can throw that together in no time. What's wrong?"

Of course, I knew that I didn't really want to "throw it together." My subject and my writing are all too important to me to take so lightly. I decided, however, that I was getting nowhere by fussing and cussing, so I made a mental note to do some freewriting the next day, and settled on the couch to watch M*A*S*H and for a little while I forgot the Galactic Cowboys.

What I did the next day was not freewriting in the same way we have done it in class. I divided my outline into two parts, narrative and evaluation, and decided to write (on the computer) anything that came to mind on the subject. In this class, you could stray from the subject and weren't expected to write grammatically correct prose on freewriting exercises. As I typed, I did pay attention to mechanics and punctuation, and I stayed on topic for the most part. But no idea pertaining to my subject was rejected.

By the way, as I wrote, I listened to my tape of the album on my Walkman. I wanted to keep "experiencing" my subject. As I write this though, I am listening to a different metal album. Brad has my tape.

Anyway, I titled the pieces of writing "Fragment #1" and "Fragment #2" and saved each to a different file on my disk. "Fragment #1" is the story about when I bought the album. It includes my surprise at finding a competent clerk at Sound Warehouse and my anxiety at having that clerk change the music on the in-store sound system from new age/light jazz to heavy metal. "Fragment #2" is my evaluation of the album. It consists of one incomplete paragraph that sounded later like something I'd written in another review, four paragraphs about the songs that I liked best, one short paragraph about "fun and quirky moments" using two songs as examples, one paragraph about Sam Taylor's production, and one paragraph that was sort of serving as a conclusion until I could find something better to say.

I printed these "fragments" out and walked over to the Journalism Building. Because it was Friday and I was afraid that I might lose my byline by not having the complete project in on time (this happened to my Chagall Guevara review -- sort of) I wanted to show Brad (the A&E Editor for The East Texan, as well) what progress I had made. After scribbling some unreadable note, I took my folder full of materials (fragments, outline, notes, photocopies of the material I mentioned above) home to incubate.

I had intended to take a good look at what I had and the massive amount of work I had to do before giving the finished product to Brad. Later that night, I determined that almost all of what I had in "Fragment #2" was worth keeping. That made me feel pretty good because I had around 500 words already in that piece.

"Fragment #1" was another matter. I wanted to introduce my topic with a narrative, but what I had was too long and strayed too far from my point to be useful for the purposes of The East Texan. I eventually took about a sentence from all but one paragraph and formed an introduction I was reasonably pleased with. I wrote it out by hand on a yellow pad and played with it until it sounded like the opening flowed nicely into my analysis. The last paragraph, only three sentences long, I decided to work into my conclusion. The sentence I had originally was alright, but it didn't have the kind of kick I wanted to leave my reader with.

My intention was to put all this together on the computer the next day. However, I had another project to work on (one that was "more important" because it was graded) and my family was clamoring for my attention. I had to leave the Galactic Cowboys until Monday. This posed a small problem. If I could get a decent draft to Brad earlier, then he and I could kick around changes and problems in plenty of time. By waiting, I had to make sure that what I gave Brad was as close to a finished product as I could, because there would be no time to make any changes that might prove embarrassing to me.

After teaching class Monday morning, I planted myself in front of a computer in the Communication Skills Center and began to make the changes I previously mentioned. This complete, I looked over the document (saved in a different file from the fragments) on the screen, made a couple minor changes, and printed it out. I wrote "Draft 1 1/2" at the top of the paper and proceeded to proofread.

I found ten things I needed to change, including the addition of a sentence about the way the lyrics were printed that I wrestled over for a long time and which I am still not satisfied with. These alterations complete, I printed the review again. I asked Vickie Casper, a tutor in the lab, to go over it for me. She said that my review looked fine to her, except that "frightenly" is not a word. I changed it to "frighteningly," saved the document, and printed it out.

Then I walked over to the Journalism Building and left the review on Brad's desk with some sort of threatening note about how, since I went over the prescribed length by about 75 words, if he edited my fine work, I would be forced to hunt him down and do some unkind act to his person. I was going to go home and rest and eat lunch, but I discovered that I didn't have enough time for that. So I decided to walk over to Brad's apartment and talk with him about the review.

Not only did Brad read and comment well on my writing, he also fed me lunch. Which brings me to Uncle Mike's advice for would-be professional writers: If you can, find yourself an editor who is willing to feed you once in a while. Anyway, he read the article and passed it to Stephen Murray, writer of the "Out In Left Field" column and a personal friend, and the two of them discussed a change I agreed with, but thought too insignificant to worry about. Stephen is a walking thesaurus though, and his suggestion to change the word "tackle" in the second paragraph (third in the published version) to "confront" was met with approval. I let Brad copy my file to a disk for his use (so he would not have to type in the whole thing), and I left feeling really satisfied.

I awaited publication. I was anxious because I wanted to see my work in print and I was considering using this review as an example of my writing for semi-professional reasons. A magazine I read publishes reviews like mine and had advertised that they needed some writers. I thought I'd send some of my stuff to them and see what happened.

Wednesday night. I got out of class at a few minutes before eight and picked up a few copies of The East Texan. On the way home, I stopped at the library to turn in some books and decided to glance at my review. It had been EDITED! The length was the same, but Brad had decided to change more than the one word we talked about. More shocking than that, almost all of my long paragraphs had been chopped in two. Oh, the sense of violation! Actually, I wasn't that upset. I trust Brad enough to know that he wouldn't do something that he didn't think necessary, but I was trying to figure out why he had to hack my beautiful paragraphs.

When I got home, my wife informed me that Brad was coming over and bringing pizza. "Damn right, he's bringing pizza! After this, he better have it made out of the finest pepperoni." I thought. However, after a moment, I remembered that notion about editors who will feed you. Besides, I had a headache that I knew was caused by the stress of having to give an oral presentation only a few minutes before. The TV was up too loud and the cats were mad because I'd come in and didn't feed them right away. I turned down the television, fed the cats, and took some Tylenol. Then I sat down on the couch and waited semi-patiently for the real medicine: pizza.

When Brad came, he was more interested in talking about the budget he was going have to work with in the fall as Editor-in-chief of the paper. But I couldn't wait too long. "You edited me, man," I said. "What happened?"

He answered that he didn't change all that much. I mentioned my well-sculpted paragraphs. He replied that long paragraphs don't look right on the newspaper page. "In journalism, there are no such things as real paragraphs." he informed.

That pacified me. I accepted that he knew what he was doing (as I already knew) and that the problem was not a problem, only a bruise to my inflated ego. We ate the pizza, a food I believe God created solely for college students, and discussed the Rodney King case and other mysteries. We laughed a lot and talked about the weekend. The Galactic Cowboys were already in the back of my mind.

And so, after a good night's sleep, I find myself here. I hope that people will be influenced to buy the album because of my review. But that is less important than the other things I'd like to change with my writing. I'd like to stop things like what happened to Rodney King from happening. I'd like to convince a messed up world that the love it thinks it needs is not love at all, but is an aberration of the Love that I, too, find difficult to understand. Most of all, I'd like to change the small corner of the universe that I live in by providing something valuable to hang on to, even if all that something turns out to be is a story that entertains for a few, miserable moments. But I have discovered that in attempting to change the world with my words, something greater happens: Michael Morris is, little by little, transformed into not just a different writer, but hopefully a better human.