In case you don’t recognize the phraseology in the headline, it’s from a song in the musical Sunday in the Park With George by Stephen Sondheim. The George in question is a French artist named George Seurat, a pointillist, who, instead of painting with brush strokes, did so with thousands of tiny dots of color. It’s been close to forty years since I saw the play, but as I recall, someone looks at one of Seurat’s paintings and asks him how he goes about doing it. He replies that first he starts with a bit of sky, and then, bit by bit, the rest of the painting comes into focus.
That’s a lot how writing books works, too. I start with a tiny piece and gradually—one scene at a time and one page at a time—the story comes into focus. When I shut down the computer last night the manuscript stood at 42,360 words or 44.55% of the book. How do I know that? The book is supposed to be around 100,000 words, give or take, because twenty books with that number of words fit in standard-sized shipping boxes. That means I count the words every day. That’s how I can tell that I’m making forward progress.
The encouraging thing about being at 44% is that I’m that much closer to 60%. In my experience, that’s usually the beginning of the banana peel when, the road to the end of the story is all downhill and fairly smooth sailing.
The book remains Unnamed Joanna #22. I come from an era when no one knew what baby would be until he/she arrived, so I don’t have a name for sure yet, but one is niggling away at the edge of my mind. I’m thinking about End Game, but I’m not sure that’s going to make it to the finish line.
But the fact is that when I sat down to write this, the first thing that came to mind was that song. My head isn’t full of what Professor Henry Higgins would call “cotton, hay, and rags.” It’s full of songs and lyrics, so many in fact it’s a wonder there’s any bandwidth left over for writing. (Wait, did I just use the word bandwidth in a piece of casual correspondence? Maybe after forty years of being married to a now-retired electronics engineer, some of the double E lingo has rubbed off on me.)
Some of the songs rattling around in my head are the ones our mother sang to us, ones my kids, grandkids, and greats will never know, including this tear jerker:
Oh, they cut down the old pine tree
And they hauled it away to the mill
To make a coffin of pine for that sweetheart of mine
They cut down the old pine tree.
But she’s not alone in her grave tonight
’Tis there my heart will ever be
Though we drifted apart
Still they cut down my heart.
When they cut down the old pine tree.
When I’m lying awake in the middle of the night, some random, long-ago song will turn up out of nowhere and I’ll spend the next hour or so trying to recreate the words. Night before last the one that kept me awake for a while was Patti Page’s 1953 hit, How Much is that Doggie in the Window. Most of the lyrics turned up in good order, but the one that stumped me was the two syllable word for the pet alternative she didn’t want in place of a dog. It took a while, but I finally landed on the right answer—BUNNY.
Sometimes it’s an old Girl Scout song:
Oh, Mr. Johnny Quebec how could you be so mean?
I told you you’d be sorry for inventing that machine
Now all the neighbor’s cats and dogs will never no more be seen
They’ll all be ground to sausages in Johnny Quebec’s machine.
If you think that one’s politically incorrect there’s always:
Please Mr. Custer,
Please don’t make me go.
Please Mr. Custer,
I don’t wanna go.
There a injun waiting out there
Just waitin’ to take my hair.
A coward I’ve been called,
But I don’t wanna end up dead or bald.
And if you think that one’s bad, how about The Battle of New Orleans?
We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with cannonballs and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off the gator lost his mind.
PETA would definitely be up at arms about that one!
But now that I’ve exposed you to just a tiny bit of the junk that’s rattling around in my head, you’re probably as astonished as I am that there’s still room enough for me to write books, but there is, and it’s time for me to go back to my real work and continue putting it together, bit by bit.
In the meantime, I’m wishing you all a happy Friday and hoping I started your day with a smile.
As I was doing one final check of my email before bed last night, at 11pm, your blog post showed up! It took me a while to remember what day it was! I then went to sleep with “How much is that doggie in the window?” rattling around in my head!
Every Friday when I read your blog I smile. Well, except for last Friday. I had surgery to replace my right knee. And I didn’t realize I missed your blog until I worte that statement. Now, a week later, I’m up and about, with another smile on my face having read your Friday blog.
No matter how scrambled my brain might have been, it’s okay now that I’m back reading your blog. Thank you SO MUCH!
In June of 2008 Bill had bilateral knee replacement. Six weeks later he was Driving Miss Daisy on a book tour. And this many years later, his now relatively new knees are still fine.
I’m so glad to read so many success stories about knee replacement. Of all the joint replacements, the knee is the toughest for the first day or two. But staying on recommendations treatment leads to success.
Yes, you did (smiling). 🙂
The lyrics of some of those old songs are truly gross. Kinda like fairy tales. ?
Great blog this week, as usual.
Blessing to you and Bill.
You brought a smile to my face and a nice Friday chuckle. Thank you!
I’m loving all the references in this blog and previous ones to Girl Scouts. I was raised in Scouts as was my daughter and became her leader. Then I became involved on the State level as a National Delegate. I am a lifetime scout. In this day and age when girls are Boy Scouts and high school age girls don’t want to acknowledge they are a Girl Scout is sad. Girl Scouting offers so much. I watched my own daughter develop a capstone project to base her dissertation on using the steps taught to do Awards, Projects, and Badges in Scouting. It was second nature to her and she didn’t even realize she was using those steps to develop her project. No where else are girls taught this type of project development. My daughter had her doctorate at 25 and was invited to present her capstone at different professional conferences. Thank you you GS and Thank you Ms Jance for not being afraid to mention Girl Scouts.
Girls Scouts was an important part of my life and my three brothers were all Eagles in Boy Scouts.
Thanks for an informative and fun description of your creative process. It was good to hear others also have an unconscious mental presence like the one I call my “internal disc jockey”, replaying a lot of music which is sometimes barely relevant, as a running commentary on life. The mind does seem to be a “tangled web” of associations–not only for those “who practice to deceive.”
The Georges Seurat mention may have helped speed my “aha” moment with today’s crossword puzzle featuring his painting genre.
When I hear that Johnny Horton song, I think of Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte, the New Orleans pirate, in The Buccaneer. Such a swashbuckling film, it came out about the same time as the song.
When I hear that Johnny Horton song, I think of Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte, the New Orleans pirate, in The Buccaneer. Such a swashbuckling film, it came out about the same time as the song. I think I was in sixth grade, and going to the movies cost under fifty cents.
As usual, great blog. I’m amazed you remember those songs from your youth. Amazing memory.
This has really been a fun blog today. I’m trying to remember if the boy scouts had any songs, but I can’t think of any. One of the songs I can remember from1950 about, is Sweet Violets, by Dinah Shore. Here’s the first part:
There once was a farmer who took a young miss
In back of the barn where he gave her a lecture on horses and chickens and eggs
And told her that she had such beautiful charms, a girl that he wanted to take in his washing and ironing
And then if she did, they could get married and raise lots of sweet violets…
And so on . I was 11 or 12 at the time and thought it was hilarious.
And as things would have it, in today’s pickles comic, Earl couldn’t remember his four digit pin, but was saying he could remember all the words to Chattanooga choo choo.
Today has been a good day. Thanks for your part in making that so, Judith.
That was one of our mother’s favorites, and at our folks 60th wedding anniversary, the last one before my brother Jim passed away, we “kids” sang the whole thing in three part harmony. As we were leaving the venue, Bill turned to me and said, “How did you all learn to sing in harmony?” I replied, “Doesn’t everybody?” Turns out Evie taught us.
Thanks for the chuckles 🙂
I listen to a channel on Sirius XM radio called “On Broadway”. I have heard “Bit By Bit” many times.
Glad you are making progress on the next Joanna book!
As for the song “Battle of New Orleans” – I consider it to be one of those novelty songs that came out back in the late 1950s that just makes me giggle and tap my foot to it.
Hope you and yours have a nice weekend.
Thanks so much for your thoughts in this blog, JA. Smiling all the way is a wonderful side effect. ?
Best to you and Bill
<3
You are amazing! Thanks for starting my day with a BIG smile!
Kathleen
Love it!