I’m pretty certain that this will be what I spend the rest of my life doing.
I like doing it. It challenges me.
It costs next to nothing.
Except time.
I’ve been playing around with this idea since I was about 40.
I got kinda serious about it in 2019.
And, wrote something that wasn’t bad for a first try.
It was a good start. Terrible finish.
As you might imagine, for my own purposes, it has to be a story I like.
There are plenty of things that like … that I don’t know about.
Which isn’t a bad thing. You can find out almost everything you need to know from the internet. But, it takes time.
The biggest problem, for me, is coming up with a good story idea.
I found one that I like. But, I don’t like it. Not completely.
So, I’m trying to come up with another one that I’ll like better.
I haven’t found one.
But, what I need to do is write one that has all of the bells and whistles so that I can get the process down pat.
Once you get the process down … you’re on your way.
Except, I’m terrible at what most readers (maybe) want.
What I’m the worst at is dialogue. I hate writing dialogue.
I’m worse at descriptions.
It’s kinda like my saying I want to become a professional golfer, but I can’t putt.
Or, that I want to be a professional basketball p[layer, but I don’t have a jump shot, and I can’t dribble.
But, before I got arthritis in my hands, I couldn’t play the guitar worth a damn, and I didn’t let that stop me.
What the heck …. I say.
Life is too short to worry about the small stuff.
I’ve gotten serious about writing in the last 6 months.
There are a blue million books on how to write fiction for novels and movies.
I’ve half-ass read 25 of them. At least.
This is how my brain works.
I like to taste a lot of stuff before I get serious about eating it.
I’m very close to the eating part.
A book is going to get here on Saturday that’s about writing comedy.
I’d love to be able to write comedy.
It would be fun.
The book I’m getting on Saturday looks really good.
What I do this weekend depends on whether Tiger makes the cut.
In my mind, it makes good sense to write a bad book, and then, try to fix it.
If you try to write a perfect book from the beginning, you’ll never finish it.
This is true about most everything.
To write a good story, you have to get in the story.
For me, it takes a while for this to happen.
I have to warm up to it.
Readers don’t want to wait for the writer to do this.
The one thing that completely blew my mind about Bob Shane was that we could be having a conversation back stage….talking about cars or something, and it would be time for the show to start, and he’d go out there …. Running at 100 mph. from the start. This was what set the Trio apart from all the other groups. They gave it 300% from the beginning.
I was listening to Dave play the banjo on a song…Dave could finger pick, frail, and strum in the same song. There may be some banjo players that could/can do this … but, I don’t know of any.
In a story … you’ve got the hit the reader right between the eyes in the first 3 pages, or he’s going to put your book in the garbage can. Unless he’s bored silly and hasn’t got anything better to do.
Coming up with something that will do this isn’t easy.
There’s a guy who died much too soon, that wrote books on how to write fiction, and his thing was … Save The Cat! On the first page of your book, your protagonist has to get up on a roof top, and save the cat. By saving the cat, people will like him.
Do you remember how Vertigo began? Jimmy Stewart fell off the roof.
He broke his leg in Rear Window.
A few months ago, I came up with an idea for a Kingston Trio novel.
It’s all about that Silver Bell banjo that Bob played Tom Dooley on.
Based on record sales, I think it’s THE most valuable banjo …. Ever!
Don’t know. Which sold more records? Dueling Banjos? Bonny and Clyde?
See if you agree with this.
https://higherhz.com/best-most-popular-banjo-songs/#:~:text=1.,Dueling%20Banjos&text=%E2%80%9CDueling%20Banjos%E2%80%9D%20is%20possibly%20the,on%20banjo%20and%20guitar%2C%20respectively.
So, where is this banjo now ????
This is what my story is about.
Recently, I watched two movies that got me in the mood for writing this story.
You can watch them free on the internet.
If I can capture the essence of these movies …. I might have something.
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