The Bookshelf Diaries (An Occasional Series): Rachman, King, Hill
This one didn’t come easy, in part because it doesn’t hew to our normal format of four discrete book reviews. Instead it only covers three, and two of them are closely related—not in style or subject matter, but, well, you’ll see. I’ve often admired the discipline of short story writing, despite the fact that, dating back to my first attempts at fiction in high school, I’ve written exactly two of them, neither one particularly satisfying. This made me that much more curious to dive into Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, a novel in the form of a series of short stories,...
Read MoreThe Power of Story
There’s something you should really know before getting in a car with me: if classic rock is playing, you’d best prepare yourself for an unsolicited history lesson at some point on the ride. My wife Karen has long since learned to tolerate this obsessive-compulsive need to share musical trivia of all kinds, having been paired with an amateur musicologist since the year Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in the aisles of Wuxtry Records. The other day the trigger was an appearance by the otherwise innocuous tune “Rock And Roll Band” by the group Boston. “Rock And Roll Band” describes in...
Read MoreDancing About Architecture
“Writing about music,” Elvis Costello once famously said, "is like dancing about architecture.” His point being, don’t review my work, because you’re wasting your time, and by the way, you look stupid doing it. Love you too, Declan. An interesting discussion popped up the other day on Facebook about music writing, which is, after all, something I’ve devoted a chunk of my life to for close to 20 years now. The case in point was an acid-tipped review of the new EP from the Pixies, a band I respect but don’t follow. I feel no particular stake in how they...
Read MoreThe Bookshelf Diaries (an occasional series): Fountain, Sedaris, Connelly, Caillat
After a recent outing to Bookshop Santa Cruz, the stack of books at my bedside grew to resemble Jack’s beanstalk. There is only one solution to this problem: read, man, read. On our book-shopping adventure, I found myself gravitating to literary fiction, novels that have won both awards and the praise of the sort of critics who usually reserve roughly the same respect for genre fiction that they do for the crud under their fingernails. An experiment in understanding the American literary scene’s psyche? An attempt to improve myself? Maybe a bit of each, sure, but I would say it...
Read MoreThe Person Who Gets It
My friend Mark Doyon of Wampus Multimedia wears many hats: writer, publisher, producer, singer-songwriter, record label head, marketing communications guru. Lately I’ve taken to adding my own particular descriptor to what it is that he does for fellow artists: he’s a creative coach. In my case—and it’s probably different with every one of his clients, but I can only speak to my own experience—Mark is like the pitching coach who comes out to the mound in the sixth inning when the starting pitcher has temporarily lost the strike zone; he talks you down, gets you focused, and reminds you of...
Read MoreTribe
Humans are tribal by nature. Our first tribe is our immediate family; from there, our tribes spread out in overlapping circles of connection and mutual interest: extended family, friendship, community, work, hobbies, music. A band is a tribe; so are their fans. So is a baseball team—or as it is sometimes more aptly called, a club. All of the above has been lurking on the edges of my consciousness over the course of the last several weeks chez Warburg, a period during which I’ve done no actual work on the new book, but an awful lot of processing and storing...
Read MoreWriters and Baseball: A Love Affair
“You think you know, but you just don’t know… How about this trip around the bases for this guy? A lifetime minor-leaguer, and he gets a walk-off, in front of this sell-out crowd, in one of the best rivalries in sports.” -- San Francisco Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, 5/4/13 Almost every writer I know loves baseball. Looking back at a game as memorable as the one I witnessed last night from section 325 of AT&T Park in San Francisco—site of two key chapters of Believe in Me—the reason for that seems obvious: because in every single game, there are so...
Read MoreOf Book Signing and Bungee-Jumping
The other day I was telling a friend about the book signing that I’ve just agreed to do—details follow below—and expressing my discomfort with the prospect. At which she said, “Look, you’re not someone who runs around drawing attention to themselves, so you should just be yourself and enjoy it.” Good advice, which I’m now repeating to you on my blog, which is, among other things, a vehicle for drawing attention to myself. See how this stuff can make your head spin? Anyway, I was glad to hear that my friend doesn’t think I’m a boastful person, which is rather...
Read MoreLove Song for a Locomotive
Given that I’ve been writing about music for much of my adult life, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to consider the parallels between the two disciplines. And as writing fiction has evolved for me from fantasy into reality—incorporating some of my musical obsessions along the way—I’ve come to appreciate those parallels more deeply. All of this came to mind the other day as I was listening to a new album that I’ve just reviewed, by an artist I’ve mentioned here before, Big Big Train. The album is English Electric Part Two, the second half of a double LP that’s among...
Read MoreDevil’s in the Details
They say the devil’s in the details—and I might tend to agree, in most contexts. In the context of writing fiction, though, for me the details are almost always more fun than work. They also take some of the sting out of one of more tedious parts of the process: rewrites. The part where I try to fix everything that went wrong on my first, thrashing, headlong race through a chapter, when I’m just trying to get the story down on the page. At first it’s all about characters and plot: does this feel right, ring true, respect (and entertain)...
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