"Now it's time to be your ideas."

Under the Pressure

TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

Morning, fuckers. It’s a foggy, foggy morning in Nashville. 732 a.m. Feels like 632 since the time change was just... just happened. I'm gonna take a photo of this fog. Hmm. Here we go. Okay, I haven't done a... sort of off the cuff voice memo in a minute, and my brain's going in circles, so I'm just gonna try to talk some shit out and see if it's worth posting.

Okay, my wife said that the past few days, she’s sensed that I've been irritable, which is a huge problem, late, uh, recently, when I was, like... fucking depressed and irritable and angry and shit. Damn, look at that sun. hold on. Fog is crazy.

Anyway, uh... Yeah, I've been irritable and... Or I was irritable, and she said lately it's happened again the past few days, and it made her scared. She just looks sort of like, I think, nervous that I'm going back into being bummed, which I don't think is happening. Because I don't feel depressed and angry and stuff, but I think the irritability is coming from anxiety about what's about thinking about what's all the shit I want to do coming up to put my novel out in the world. Which is now on a real timeline. So, I'm trying to think about how to get my shit in check, so I'm not freaking her out. It's okay to be anxious, but maybe there's a different way it can manifest if I put my head to it.

Okay, so good morning. Um, there's a novelist, a writer that I love who I heard talking last year, saying they had like been in the bunker, working thinking reading, kind of solitary. Stuff that writers do and and then they were talking about how the work was done. And the ideas on how to say things and do things were baked. And so, the quote was, “Now it's time to be your ideas.” And I almost had to pull the car over, and I thought it was such an amazing challenge. It's time to be your ideas. And I've had like a shitload of ideas the past few years about what a book, how to do a book, how to do my book. And I think I've got them organized now and now it's time to do them. And so, I'm moving forward with getting ready to publish this thing.

I've also been listening to a shitload of The War on Drugs. The novel, I've been doing one last revision, and as I get a chapter done, I send it to a proofreader who sends back their stuff. And through all this, I've been, in particular listening to the 2 live albums that The War on Drugs put out over the past few years, and then that's also taken me back to going to listen to some of the studio albums. I haven't listened to them in a long time. And I'm just realizing that they're, how they're like one of my favorite bands. Um... I don't love the production on their last two studio albums. And actually hearing the live songs, I'm like, fuck, I wish these could be rerecorded. There's just something about them that isn't, it doesn't, like, it kicks me out. I don't have the technical language to talk about production, to see why, but or to say why, but, uh, I wish, well, whatever. I've got the live records. I'm not a big live record person. I don't really give a fuck about live records, but these 2 are insane. If you're a fan of The War on Drugs, or live rock and roll music, I'd say check them out. It's called Live Drugs and Live Drugs Again. Different songs on each one.

Um, so yeah, I've been listening to War on Drugs and going through my edits. My last revision, and then these edits from the proofreader. And trying to reckon with being done with the book. I think I've revised it 8 or 9 times now. And even now, if I sat down with one of the chapters, I'm sure I'd put a bunch of red ink on the page. And I just, I'm not sure where that line is, where you are revising, and it's improving, or you're just, maybe you're taking away some of the spark. But anyway, I've decided I'm fucking done. And I think the book's gonna be ready this summer. But as I think about how to be my ideas, I am realizing some of my limitations. Um... I gotta keep taking, I wanna take, keep on... These pictures of this fog. I hope they come out good. The sun is coming up. It just looks so cool.

Okay, anyway. Yeah, I've been thinking about whether. This is my 3rd book. I wrote 2 books when I was younger, right out of college, when I had my 1st little underground publishing company. The 1st one was like a collection of journals and essays, and nah, fuck, I don't think they were essays. Journals, stories, poems. Very much like a zine in book form, I think. And then the 2nd one was a novel. And, um, I self-published them through my little company and toured and, um, and all that, and now it's been forever. I think the 2nd book came out in 2003. So it's been over 20 years since I put out a book. And so I've been wondering if my 3rd book can be my debut. Not that I'm not proud of those books, and they don't count, but I feel like a very different writer now, and I've read primarily the main difference is I've read so much more, and it's almost laughable how little I had read back when I was writing books. Like, it was a ballsy. position to be like, hey, I haven't read that much shit, but I'm gonna write a couple books. Now I've read so much, and even while revising this book, I would, over the course of one revision, I would read, you know, several other amazing novels, which would change my brain, rearrange my brain, and how I think and write, probably as well. So, I feel like a new writer from when I was doing books earlier. So yeah, maybe this 3rd book is my debut. There's a lot of similarities too about how I wrote and revised and, um, how it felt to write a book and how the ideas were, how they coalesced, feels very similar to 20 some years ago, but the difference this time is how many times I've revised, how much more patient I've been, how much more, I guess, curious I am to push myself further and further with the books or with the book compared to those last ones. So. Yeah.

What was I saying about limitations? Oh yeah, so my limitations. Um, Obviously self-publishing. creates limitations, but I like those. And I think the reason I'm back when I had the publishing company and basically was self publishing before, it was because, well, there was a lot of reasons, but a big one was, I didn't have patience. As a young college graduate, I was impatient. I didn't want to try to learn how to do the publishing world, and I was a punk who had watched punk labels and DIY bands and labels do their thing, and I was like, I'm just gonna do it that way. And now, as a middle-aged writer, I am still incredibly impatient. So that's a big part of it again. But another thing is that I, as I've like learned about publishing again, since the pandemic, when I kind of started thinking about this stuff again, seriously, um, I just saw things about the world of publishing that seemed weird and potentially dangerous for me. After having kind of burned out on music, I was like, man, this could easily be that again. And so, In some ways, I'm trying to sidestep that shit.

Uh... And, of course, there's a part of me... self conscious, self doubting part of me that's like, maybe you're just a chicken shit. And you don't want to put yourself out there and try in a real, the quote unquote real world publishing, but whatever. I’m not doing it.

But my limitations are that I'm a one person publishing machine, and I'm realizing, not, I've always kind of known this. I'm not good at social media. I've been on social media since it became a thing and keep being on social media and, um, but I'm always just like, mediocre at it, I guess. If there's a measure of what's successful on social media, I'm not successful. And I don't really know the way to be so. And then when it comes to like marketing and promo and shit, which is what a lot of social media is, it's just not my strong suit. And so I'm thinking of ways like, how do you, if you're going to self-publish this without, without the publishing world, how do you? How do I answer those issues? Damn, this fucking sun. So cool.

Yeah, how do I fill in the gaps of stuff I can't do on my own? And, um, so yeah, if you're a good, if you're a social media genius, and or... a clever copywriter. Uh, I'm throwing up my help wanted sign. Help wanted, Copywriter and or social media star, colon, extremely part time. Qualifications include being smarter than me. Funnier than me. Uh, maybe... more well read than me. And have as much heart as me.