Joe Taylor
If I thought about the 60,000 words I had to write to legitimately make it a book, as a singular effort, the enormity of the task would have overwhelmed me. I approached writing my radio book the same way I had learned to produce promotional campaigns and radio feature series that I have created…incrementally. It helped that I envisioned the book to be a collection of vignettes about people I’ve worked with and stations I’ve worked for, and individual pieces about various aspects of radio that I believe listeners are curious about. Realizing that hitting that 60,000 word bar that Jess Weible had set for me, to call it a book, didn’t have to be pounded out non-stop, but rather in segments, made the task less daunting, more doable.
Thanks to Jess’s insight and insistence I had written four rather lengthy “radio stories” for my failed first book attempt. The decision to use them in this new book was a no brainer. In reading through the original collection I found another half dozen pieces that included significant mention of my life in radio. I had a few more stand alone pieces that referenced some of the characters I’ve worked with in radio and remembrances of particular situations I’d experienced during my career. When I added up the words of the dozen pre-written pieces I was amazed and relieved to see that I already had 12,000 words. I was 20% of the way there.
I’ve always been a planner…some say to a fault. Some people have criticized me for “wasting time” planning, when I should just jump in and “git ‘er done”. I believe good planning is essential to success. So, rather than sitting at my keyboard banging out whatever came into my head…just to get something on paper, I brainstormed with myself. I made a list of potential topics, ranging from characters I’ve known…a newsman who robbed a bank…to who decides what music is played on the radio…to the gypsy lives of announcers…and everything in between. My initial list was 20 topics long. I continually expanded it.
Being a planner, I blocked out days in my daybook (I’m a dinosaur, I actually have a physical book) with the word “Book”. Those would be the days when writing a piece or two for my book was to be my top priority. The great benefit of having a list of topics to choose from was that it allowed me to match my mood of the day with the mood of a piece I’d choose to write. If I felt goofy (as I am wont to do) I chose and wrote about one of my off beat topics. A serious mood might mean an explanation of AM versus FM.
From a stylistic point of view, my challenge was to retain my “voice”. Members of our writers group and those who’ve read my work always find them to be conversational, tinged with a bit of humor and irony, occasionally sardonic. I don’t ordinarily, consciously sit down to include those elements. They just come out. However, I have to admit, in writing some of the radio pieces, that could have been too technical, too dry, I purposely lightened and colored them to keep my style and “voice” consistent with the rest of the pieces.
Once my mood selected my topic du jour I sat down at around 10 Am to bang the piece out. I almost always had an opening line in my head and a pretty good idea of how I wanted the piece to end. My job was to fill in the blanks. I let it fly, the fragments I had thought about and apparently cataloged and stored away when I first considered the topic somehow came back to my brain and out my fingers. If I couldn’t come up with a word or phrase, I used a “place holder”. The initial draft took anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes to complete. As any writer knows, that’s just the very beginning. Rewrite upon rewrite, ripped up copy paper overflowing my wastebasket, by about 3 Pm, at least a half dozen rewrites later, I was fried, exhilarated, exhausted at the same time. Even in the dead of winter I’d go outside to talk a walk. To burn it off. I suspect most of you who write can relate to this.
When I fly overseas I like to look at the screen that shows how many miles we are from our destination, or driving to see how long it is before I get to where I’m going. I needed to see my progress as I wrote my book, checking the cumulative word count against my 60,000 word goal. So disappointed to see I was only at 27%…crossing 50% was encouraging…I began to “feel it” in the high 80s. The last four pieces were the toughest. I had to finally force myself to tackle topics I never “felt like” writing, the death of a Punxsy newsman for example. I also had to scour my brain for additional topics that I had overlooked or dismissed. I vowed to myself and close friends that I would take a weekend and finish the book. I wrote consecutive doubleheaders…two pieces each on Friday and Saturday. Finally, at about 5 Pm on a Saturday in early April, I hit 60,962 words. I was wound so tightly that a buddy called me just as I finished and hysterical I screamed “I can’t talk now” and hung up on him. A long fast walk and several beers eventually brought me back down.
Jo Scheier graciously agreed to be my beta reader. Before I could take my manuscript out to her I decided to “let it settle” for awhile. I needed to settle, too. A week later when I, for the first time, read the whole collection it was as if, for many of the pieces, somebody else had written them. I honestly did not consciously remember the physical act of writing them. Even then I found about 20 edits and changes I needed to make. Improvements I hope. I arranged the pieces to provide the reader with the “roller coaster” effect that Jess Weible had suggested to me earlier, to give the reader changes of pace…a long instructive piece followed by something silly, then a heart warmer.
I dropped what I hope will be my radio book out at Jo and Ray’s awhile ago. I value Jo’s experience and proven record as a writer. I am anxiously awaiting her guidance. I’m still in withdrawl after writing the book. I miss it. I feel empty. I don’t know what happens next. I do know those 60,000 words were only the beginning of the process.
- Previous: Book in Progress, Part 1
- Next: Beta Readers: Book in Progress, Part 3
