The stuff that happens

Almost two years ago, I had an idea for a book.  It wasn't the first time this has happened to me - I've written many books, published six of them.   Each idea presents itself differently.  This one niggled around the back of my brain for many months.  I wanted to write a story that showed what can happen to very talented young people when they are taken on by the wrong mentor.  As a teacher in a college, I've seen this many times.  The results distress me, and I wanted the story of these young people told.  But the idea wouldn't take any more form than that.

What followed was months and months of false starts and attempts at character development, and, finally, a central character began to emerge:  Samuel Joseph.  I didn't know much about him at the time except that his profession had been stand-up comic.  I was thinking, at that point, that this could be a fun book to write.  I read biographies of different performers, past and present, watched documentaries, trying to get a take on what working in that industry was like.  I knew that Sammy (as I began to think of him) not only was a comic but he also sang, so I focused my research on musical comedy acts.

As I worked on Sammy's voice, it became clear to me that he had lived and worked in the sixties, and that there was another great love, other than performing, in his life.  After more character development work, it became clear to me that this great love was flying, especially hang-gliding.  So I began to research hang-gliding, sky-diving, flight school, etc.  At this point, the characters in Sammy's family, and the people he worked with began to take shape, especially the character of a good friend of his, and a fellow performer he worked with closely:  Whip Charles, a gospel singer.
Sammy's life was beginning to take shape, but the story itself still remained vague in my mind.

Then Davy Jones died.  In my teen years, I had been a Monkees fan (though it wasn't 'cool' to be one at the time), but in the intervening years since their cancellation I hadn't really thought about them at all, except for the occasional time I would hear Pleasant Valley Sunday or Daydream Believer  playing in a cafe somewhere.   On the death of this man (who I hadn't even thought of in years) I reacted rather strongly - I cried.  More than I would have thought, as I have never been "that" kind of fan - of anyone or anything.  So I began to wonder about that.  Here was a musical comedy act, and a wonderful talent, who had simply disappeared after the height of their fame.  So I began to research, not only the Monkees, but dozens of other musical comedy acts of the 50s and 60s.   I read biographies and autobiographies - Martin & Lewis, Ozzie & Harriet and Ricky Nelson, Dwayne Hickman, the Smothers Brothers, and more .... and more and more.   As I read, I also was brainstorming, drafting, developing Sammy's voice and his story.  And then, really quite suddenly, the whole story came, and Samuel Joseph began to speak on the page.

What followed were months of high creative energy, the first draft falling onto the page like I was writing my own diary.  The daily life, the childhood events that formed his character, the challenges that happened when a degree of fame came, the fall from grace.   In the end, the story was more about a man whose main passion in life was shunted aside in favor of opportunity than it was about talent with the wrong mentor - though that element is in the story.  But what struck me here was the process -  Samuel was his own character, certainly reflecting elements of all of those I researched, but unique in and of himself, so different from all of them, but sharing parts of all their stories.

This book - now in its ninth draft, has taken more research than anything I've ever written, and has come closer to my heart than most.  Samuel feels like someone I must take care of, so I want to get his story right.  Therefore, I've taken risks with this story, and stretched and changed my own writing process, more than I ever would have dared to, before.  As I've been posting occasional updates on the process of writing this book on Facebook, I've repeatedly gotten comments about how fascinating people find it, along with questions about how elements of the process work.  So, I've decided to explore it here.  

So, the purpose of this blog is to explore process, and to share those explorations.  This first post is mostly for myself - to give myself permission to share my own process - something intensely personal to me - and perhaps to help others have the courage to explore their own.