…I learned playing the violin.

The violin and I have a love-hate relationship.  I started playing at age 4, and have continued on and off for over 25 years.  Some of the time this was by choice, other times… not so much.  After all, how much choice do you really have when you’re 4?  It scares me a little to think that, with the exception of maybe my parents and siblings, I’ve had a longer relationship with this instrument than I have with most humans.

The “hate” part of the love-hate relationship is what comes to mind first.  I hate that from the minute I started school until today, everyone thinks of me as “the violin kid.”  I mean, sure, the violin was an important part of my formative years, but it’s not like I was born with the thing strapped to my arm.  Another thing is that I can’t hear a car horn or an elevator “ping” without thinking: d minor 7th chord, or seeing the note in my head.  Most people listen to music to “check out” and relax but I listen to music and my fingers start playing air-violin.  Oh, and the next person to make a violin-hickey joke is seriously going to get smacked.

But for someone like me, playing a musical instrument was probably the best thing that ever happened (even if I hate having to admit it).  I will admit that I’m really shy and playing violin taught me how to get up in front of a crowd.  Today, in honor of my Thesis reading (which is tonight) I’d like to share the…

Octave of Things I Learned About Public Reading from Playing Violin

1. Practice.  There’s this old violin joke…
   

   Q: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
   A: Practice, practice, practice.

   My violin teacher used to say: “You practice 120% so that if you mess up 30% at the concert, you still get it 90% right.”  I’ve learned that the best way to prepare for reading in public is to read the piece over and over to anyone who will listen.  Read it so many times you practically have the thing memorized.

2. Pick a piece that shines.  If the goal is to wow the audience, selecting the right repertoire is key.  In particular, try to pick a piece that shows your work in its best light.  It always drove me crazy that I’d play a difficult baroque solo sonata and the audience would snooze but if I chose a short, easy, flashy piece I’d get a standing ovation.  It’s ridiculous, I know, but if all you get is one chance to stun an audience, sometimes short/easy/flashy is the way to go.
3. Remember: the audience is on your side.  Unless you’re defending your thesis in front of a panel of professors or you’re a lawyer giving your closing statements to a jury, chances are are the audience is not there to judge you.  They’re rooting for you.
4. Don’t worry about mechanics.  The fastest way for me to mess up a violin performance is to think about my bow hand, or my posture, or my feet.  The minute I become hyper-aware of some mechanical detail of playing all bets are off and I start making mistakes left and right.  The same is true for reading.  If you start to think about the actual words or grammar, that’s when fumbles can happen.  Which brings me to #5.
5. Hear the story in your head.  Whenever I feel myself focusing too much on the mechanics of what I’m playing, I force myself to hear the music in my head.  Same is true for writing.  When I read, I try to get caught up in telling a good story, rather than the minutia of my writing.
6. If you make a mistake, just move on.  Don’t stop or go back.  Pretend it’s part of the piece.  After all, who’s going to know that it’s not?  Especially if you’re reading something that’s not yet published.
7. Don’t make faces.  This is a corollary to #6.  I’m queen of face-making when I play.  If I’m playing something difficult, I snarl at the fingerboard.  When I make mistakes, I mouth swear words.  I know this because my parents have oh-so-graciously captured all these moments on tape.  My point is, if you act like you’ve made a mistake, everyone’s going to notice that something’s up.  If you just keep reading, no one will ever know.
8. Smile and have fun.  Even if you think this experience is about as enjoyable as getting a root canal, smile at the audience.  If you pretend you’re having fun, chances are, you’ll find yourself enjoying the moment and the audience will respond.

I have hit the wall.  Actually, “hit the wall” would imply that there is something in my way that is stopping me from writing but that’s not quite the case.  Instead it’s the nothingness, the absence of writing momentum that is keeping me from getting back into my daily-story discipline.

It started last week, when I stalled in the middle of a story.  Then with my thesis and other obligations in the way I decided to give myself a few days off.  Big mistake.  That’s the thing with writing; it’s all about momentum.  Just as writing can lead to more writing, not-writing can cause inertia so bad that it would take a volcanic explosion of creativity to get out of it.

Of course, the worst part about not-writing is that it can be a hundred times more painful than it is to just do the writing in the first place.  Between the guilt and the endless rationalization, writing usually ends up being the easier path, even if it’s not the one of least resistance.

To that end, I’ve come up with a few small tricks I use to cheat myself into writing when I don’t want to do it.

1. Set small goals.  I force myself to sit and write even if it’s only one paragraph or ten minutes.  Usually once I get going, the momentum kicks in and I’ll write much longer than I originally planned.
2. Write something easy.  I start with the easy scenes or mindless assignments first, leaving projects that require more planning and thought for when my mind has loosened up.
3. Write first.  The days I’ve been successful with the Story A Day have been those when I’ve done my story first thing in the morning.  With the story out of the way, I could then get on with my day and get on with my life.  If I let the story hang over my head, it inevitably doesn’t get done.

Anyone else have some good tips on how to break out of writing inertia?

Today I’m going to deviate a little from my blogging schedule because I have something on my mind.

On Saturday, I attended a huge celebration commemorating my school’s 125th anniversary.  I went to this school for eleven years–from second grade through senior year–and in many ways, this school has shaped who I have become as a writer and as a person.

Perhaps the thing that most impacted me at Saturday’s event was that I ran into my eleventh grade creative writing teacher.  While my eleven years at that school taught me to write, it was Ms. T’s creative writing class that made me into a writer.

Looking back, there wasn’t a lot of craft or deep analysis involved in that class.  Instead, there was acceptance, encouragement and permission to take risks, all of which came through in Ms. T’s calm and nurturing demeanor.  In college, when I took my second creative writing course, I was so used to this creative freedom that I had no problem taking plenty of risks and writing things that were a bit… unconventional.  Unfortunately, my professor and classmates did have a problem with this and that semester every ounce of creativity got squelched out of me.

For years, I didn’t touch pen to page.

But slowly, Ms. T’s docile voice started talking to me from the back of my memories.  “Don’t worry what comes out.  Just write,” she’d say.  And that’s what I did.  Ms. T’s quiet insistence saved me when I went through that period of creative drought. Wwhen I saw Ms. T on Saturday, I gave her a huge hug and told her that I’ve always remembered everything she taught me and that it’s made me the writer I am now.

Her bashful reply was a quiet: “Oh dear” followed by a smile.

My short story It’s All Been Leading Up to This is being featured in the current issue of Clever Magazine: The Ezine for the Neglected Demographic.  This story, which was previously published as an advice-essay has been republished now as short fiction (which is what I had originally envisioned).