Writing a book is a lot like writing a song...

Anyone who knows me well knows that my favorite band is The Smashing Pumpkins. I remember the first time I heard Bullets with Butterfly Wings, it was like a switch flicked in my head and wires ignited. Billy Corgan, I'm still convinced, is one of the best pop composers of the last century. The scope of the music he's written and produced is staggering.


My first band, The Smoothies. That's me, 3rd from the left.

I was a band for the majority of my teenagehood. I wrote songs, sang, and played guitar. I was hugely influenced by The Smashing Pumpkins. You might think that my songs weren't half-bad, being influenced by such a greatness. Actually they mostly stank. Now I that I'm writing a book I think I know why I never wrote great songs.

Let me back-track and play a track by The Smashing Pumpkins. Of all their excellent songs, I think that Tonight, Tonight may be their best. That orchestra, the pounding drums, the guitars; it's a grand song. I dreamed of writing a song so able to sweap the listener away.

Listen to it here and you'll see what I'm talking about:

Tonight Tonight. Final Version

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But the song didn't start that way. One of the b-sides that the Smashing Pumpkins released was the original demo of the song. The one that Billy Corgan recorded on a tape deck right after he wrote the song. Listen to it here:

Tonight Tonight. Original Demo.

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If I heard that song I probably wouldn't ever need to hear it again. His voice is off-key in a few parts. The production sounds like he recorded it on a tape deck. His guitar is out of tune.

But it's all there! The structure, the chords, the melody. The song was completely written except Billy Corgan was the only one who knew what it was going to be. Listen to it, it's just missing the pounding drums, the violins and the intesnity.

That was my problem. I thought that great songs were made up of violins and dynamics so I tried to write songs that had those things. But I really just needed to sit down with a guitar, forget about all those sweeping grand sounds, and write a good melody, with a good stucture, and a good chord progression. I was trying to build castles without laying a foundation.

After Billy Corgan wrote Tonight Tonight, he went into a studio and perfected it. He rehersed it with the rest of the band until they found a drum beat that worked and guitar lines that meshed; and then, at some point, they decided to bring an orchestra in. Then they finally spent weeks in the soundroom, mixing it to perfection. But the core of the song never changed.

This all really reminds me of writing a book. When I think about my story, my head is full of grand moments! climaxes! dispair! romance! music! But I can't write a book about that stuff. I need to sit down and, line-by-line, write a first draft that's good enough. I need to lay the foundation of my story. I don't need to focus on the minuta of sentance structures or finding the perfect metaphor. In other words, I need to stop dreaming of orchestras and just put together a good song.

Billy Corgan sat down and recorded a song that only he understood. One year later, after a lot of hard work, the rest of America understood it.

Right now I'm focusing on writing a story that I understand. In later drafts I'll (hopefully) make it into a story that other people can understand. If you read it right now, you'd think it's a mess: Plot threads are completely dropped, dialects change, motivations reverse. But I'm clearer on it than ever.

Hopefully I'll be able to see it through.