The Quiet

““You should really write a book. It’s like you’re the king of everything.””

— First Born

This is what my first-born said as he wrote his own Snoopy adventure story a few weeks ago. And in that moment, he summed up artistry in that brilliant, succinct way that only a six-year-old can seem to do.

You see, artists are notorious control freaks. In creating art, there is a space where the creator has complete dominating control over their creation. But that feeling of power while creating, sometimes leads to a feeling of powerlessness when dealing with the real world and its laundry lists of mundane problems.

And that’s where I find myself right now.

There is a stillness that settles over my brain when a book is done. Not that first draft done. That induces a flurry of panicked energy that, quite frankly, I rather enjoy. But when I really know that a book is complete; that all that’s left to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s and make sure that all those pesky commas are in the correct location, that’s when the Quiet comes.

And for me, the Quiet arrives around the same time as the inevitable let down from the realization that I must start again on a new project. I stand in the Quiet, admiring that giant mountain I’ve just conquered with a sigh of accomplishment and look ahead to see another equally large mountain I must climb. And in this same moment, all the voices in my head – Q’s, Ben’s, Sanger’s, Derek’s – turn on radio silence and I am alone with my own thoughts and feelings without theirs to keep me company.

And it’s lonely.

It’s lonely not to hear Q and the boys sing silly songs so I can hum along with them. It’s lonely not to hear Ben’s big, booming laugh when I see something that would make him smile. It’s lonely not to see Sanger’s shy grin flash at me when I close my eyes. It’s even lonely not hearing what horrible pick-up line Derek will use next.

These voices of mine, they keep me company and it sucks when they’re quiet. And the Quiet hurts. So, I can’t enjoy it.

But it’s a necessary part of the process because sometimes you have to pay the bills. You have to Kosher the kitchen for Passover. You have to make a fucking diorama for a first grader. You have to figure out how to use Instagram and make book trailers for your newly finished book and catch up on your reading. And in between, you have to face that great big scary decision you’ve been pushing aside and do something about it. And you have to take action, otherwise you’ll just sit on the couch paralyzed.

Action is easy when you’re the master of the universe. That’s what my son was getting at. When you write a book, you are the ruler. What you say goes. Not so much in the real world. In the real world, no one has to listen to me or do what I want and that total lack of control sometimes leaves me spinning and scared and alone in the Quiet to which I’m no longer accustomed.

If Derek were speaking to me at the moment, he’d tell me that I’m not really powerless in my real life, no one is. He’d make me say his mantra (which maybe one day he’ll want to share with the rest of you, but not just yet) and then he’d remind me that real change is fucking hard. Real change takes will. Real change takes strength. Real change takes determination. And real change takes resolve.

And that’s the problem I face: Change is coming, both in the world that I create in my books and the one where I actually live my life. The fact that I stand at an astral crossroads where I must do something disagreeable both in the world I control and in the one I do not, is not a coincidence. I think I planned it this way on some level.

In both worlds, it’s for the best. But there’s no way to predict how an action is going to ultimately end up out here in the real world.

And I hate not knowing the ending. As soon as I’m emotionally invested in a book, I read the last chapter before continuing. I’m one of those people.

Don’t look at me like that. I told you 600 words ago I’m a fucking control freak. And if you’ve read just one of my books, you already know I write almost exclusively about people like me: Q’s a control freak, too. So, is Derek. So, is Sanger. Yvie’s worse than all of them combined. But not Ben.

Ben doesn’t need control to feel powerful and it is beyond frustrating. His ability to just let things go. Hell, he even let Q go, once. I’m trying to think what Ben would say, if he was talking to me at the moment. He’s being stubbornly silent, which is why I’ve had to take a break from working on the next Clementine Toledano Mystery. Hard to rewrite a lame-ass first chapter when the character that should be doing most of the talking isn’t talking to you.

But there’s a certain level of powerlessness that even Ben isn’t willing to accept. And maybe that’s who’s been whispering in my ear to take a break from writing and get some real tangible things done in my own life. Q is the dreamer. Ben is the practical one, after all.

The Zeroing Out

It’s springtime, which means one thing in a reasonably practicing Jewish home: cleaning. Like obsessive, Silkwood level cleaning. Every nook. Every cranny. Every closet. Every drawer. No exceptions.

The desperate search for every trace of leavening, or chametz, to prepare for Passover.

The psychological metaphors for this search are so multifaceted that it’s hard to imagine even the least self-aware Jew on the planet not getting something from this exercise in humility.

Removing that which puffs us up. Searching the narrow places in our homes for it. Working like a slave to remove it. Creating a blank slate.

Now that I live a grain-free existence, this cleaning is really more metaphoric than necessary. If it wasn’t for my love of shellfish and pork, I’d keep Kosher for Passover year round. Not by choice, mind you, but since my body decided that corn, wheat, and dairy are the enemy, and rice and beans are really more frenemies than friends, I’m locked into a new way of eating. If I could kick my love of traif, I could keep Kosher without any effort at all. But I do love me some shrimp, y’all.

When I did have actual, real chametz to remove from my home, I have to admit, that I cut a few corners. Three, to be exact: my studio, my vanity, and my sock drawer.

The remnants of my music studio were a dusty disorganized mess and cleaning it meant facing the fact that I no longer make music. That was not a fact I wanted to face, so I simply closed the door on the first day of Passover and didn’t open it until it was over. A perfectly halachically acceptable practice. That it allowed me to avoid the self-reflection cleaning that hot mess would have caused, allowed me to avoid a very narrow place in my life.

But last summer, without warning, and without contemplation, I announced to my family that we were remodeling the studio over the Fourth of July weekend. We took everything out. Ripped out the carpet. Installed a new tile floor. Painted the closet and turned it into a reading room and a library. I wired up all my gear. We pulled the foosball table out of storage and, by the beginning of August, the narrowest place in our home became a functional, usable space for the entire family.

And I faced those years of ignored chametz while grouting that fucking floor.

I’d taken the day off of work to do it. And while I was on my knees, pushing the rapidly drying grout into all those nooks and crannies and feeling lower and less accomplished and more of a failure by the minute, someone knocked on my front door.

My dad. In his work clothes, with a bucket in his hand. My mom had brought me another bag of grout in the middle of my rapidly compounding failure and told him his daughter could use an assist. We finished the floor in about an hour, silently working on the last third and cleaning up all the stains I’d made.

Post-renovation music studio

When you hide from a narrow place full of darkness and so much bad juju for so long, sometimes you need help to finish pushing out the darkness and letting in the light. And when it was done, this marvelous thing happened, I felt better. It was as if making that physical remnant of my old life whole again, made me whole again and I was ready to face the other narrow place in my life: my not-so-narrow waistline.

I stopped drinking alcohol. I cut out dairy. I did the Whole 30 diet and I worked out four times a week. And now, here we are, seven months and forty pounds later and it’s time for the search for the metaphoric chametz to begin. And this year, I started with the corners I used to skip.

I cleaned my vanity this weekend. Organized my necklaces and creams and tossed old lipsticks I don’t wear. Spent an afternoon untangling all the things I use to puff myself up and make myself feel beautiful on days when I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. And it was while I was untangling the dozens of necklaces that I rarely wear that I realized how I’d been cheating all these years. How I’ve been honing denial and avoidance into an art form even while cleaning for Passover.

And it stops. Now.

Q had the same problem. Still does, to a large extent. Sometimes I’m working on a Clementine Toledano Mystery and I think nobody could be this obtuse. Then I remember the closed door to my music studio with a sign that read ‘Do Not Open during Pesach’ and I realize that most of us are exactly that obtuse.

In That Old Devil Sin, Q avoids telling Ben that she’d been raped ten years prior until she absolutely can’t avoid it any longer. She describes how it changed her, like this:

“You know, it’s a funny thing, when something bad like that happens, it changes you so fundamentally, it’s hard to recognize the person you were before. I remember that girl. I do… She was fearless, so fucking fearless.”

I wrote that four years ago and it’s taken me until this past weekend to realize that I was writing about myself. The bad thing that happened to me wasn’t as dramatic as an attack, but it hurt me in ways that I refused to admit.

Losing New Orleans to Katrina and losing my band at the same time.

That’s what I used to think pushed me to the brink. But that wasn’t the bad thing: it was the crushing disappointment of failure.

Not the failure itself. The loss of potential. The weight of knowing that future that I envisioned for myself was never going to happen.

In audio, there is a term for starting over: Zeroing Out. When you zero out a piece of gear (usually a mixer), you return all the functions to their default state so that you can start a new mix.

And that’s what the search for chametz does. It resets your home. Resets your mind. Resets your disappointment and your frustration and reminds you that every day is a chance for a new beginning. You can’t avoid the narrow places in your life, they will always find a way to bring you to your knees eventually.

Tonight, I'm tackling my sock drawer.

Like a Newborn Screaming

Writing is a lonely business. 

I know I’m not the first author to write those words, much less think those words. Before I wrote my novels, I thought that this phrase referred to the process of writing being lonely. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, your talent, your vocabulary, your research. I mean, the process of composing music is devastatingly lonely, so why would writing words be any different?

But writing, for me, isn’t lonely. Especially not when I’m writing about Q and the boys. They keep me company. Sometimes, they’re more real than the people I encounter every day. And even when I’m drafting manuals or technical articles, it’s not lonely either, because I’m imagining the person reading them. What they’re most interested in learning. What worries they may have. How I can make their day just a little easier.

So, no. Writing, in and of itself, is not a lonely business. But writing is just the beginning. It’s the gestation, not the birth. Release a novel sometime, and you’ll understand why newborns scream bloody murder when they come into the word. Because you see, the business of writing is a cold and lonely hellscape of desolation.

Why? Because that, my friends, is where only your intestinal fortitude holds you upright. That is where you must say you did something good. Something to be proud of. Something worth all that time and energy you spent doing it. And guess what? Most days, you and only you are the person validating your work.

Don’t believe me? Most of my friends have not read my books.

Let that sink in for a minute.

My husband has not read a single one of my books, blogs, or articles. (And it’s an ongoing point of contention in our marriage, but still, not a one.)

I’ve often wondered why that is. And I don’t have to really think that hard about it. I know why. They are all terrified of being the only person in my life to look me in the eye and say, “Your books suck.”

That is how much the people in your life love you, folks. They’d rather hope that maybe you have a ton of talent and are not, in fact, wasting your time on an art form you should abandon, than actually find out for themselves that you don’t have a lick of talent and be forced to tell you that you should quit or, worse still, smile politely and lie to your face. 

The logic goes something like this: I’ll tell this person whom I love that I’m proud of them, but I won’t read the book, just in case it sucks.

Still don’t believe me? I used to live in terror of having to listen to my friends’ albums. I still do. I’m picky. I used to be a professional audio engineer, and it makes me hear things all funny. For example, a friend sent me his new track a few months ago, and it had a terrible phasing issue (if you don’t know what that means, trust me, you’d rather not know, because then you’ll hear it, like all the time); and I debated for ten solid minutes before I erased my text that read, “hey, the string part is out of phase with the bassline and that breakbeat is about 1/32 out of time for half a measure at 1:38," and replaced it with “Love it!!!”

And it gets worse. I literally ranted about how poorly one of my friends’ last albums was mixed to my coworkers for twenty minutes one afternoon. "The guitar solo is always the loudest thing in the mix!! How could they be doing this for so long and so successfully without learning that one little thing? Who the hell mixes a metal record without automating levels? Seriously, what in the good fuck is that??"

And did I say that to their faces? Hell, no. I told them the new record was great. Because it was and it was too late to fix it anyway, I mean it was already out there. And besides, it wasn’t their fault their engineer has his head up his ass. And I can’t tell them that either because they love him and I’m sure he’s a lovely person if they love him so much they don’t care that he can’t mix their guitars properly. And that would make me the bad guy. And I don’t want to be the bad guy. 

You see what I mean? Terror. Absolute terror. 

So, I get it. I truly understand why only the bravest of my friends reads my books and, even braver still, tells me where I fell short (I’m looking at you, Heather and Jim. You’re both god damn warriors). Unfortunately, it also means that, by and large, I am the only person in my life that reads the words I write and knows that I should continue. And that’s ok. Because, in this particular endeavor, it’s my talent that keeps me up at night. My talent that tells me to wake up at five in the morning and write, even though it’s hard.

Because, even if one of my friends told me my books were terrible, it wouldn’t matter. Because I don’t do this for them. I do this for me. It was the same with music. And, looking back on the things I recorded, I can see where I fell short. But I can also see where I succeeded. And that’s a great feeling. 

“I am creating” is so much more powerful to me than “I am succeeding.”

I succeed when I create something I am proud of. Something that I want to share with the world. Something that gives me so much inner joy that the people who love me most are terrified to read it and tell me otherwise.

But the joke’s on them. Because they’re missing out. Don’t believe me? Click on this link and find out for yourself.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is NOW AVAILABLE.