Michael Di Lauro's Blog

As I work with my editor on my rock-and-roll novel, I thought I’d share this story about jazz (my preferred genre) with you. Hope you enjoy it.

The magic horn

In the late seventies, my cousin and I, along with a gang of jazz aficionados, began frequenting a Montreal spot called The Rising Sun. 

Into the mid-eighties, the club, a tired firetrap kind of place that you accessed by walking up a claustrophobic staircase lined in what looked like shag carpeting, was still the go-to joint for raw, real jazz. Everyone, and I mean everyone, played the Rising Sun, and just off the top of my head, I remember catching Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Joe Pass, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie at that tiny jazz spot. But the story I want to tell you features The Heath Brothers—Percy and Jimmy.  

My cousin and I were there to catch the show, and at their first break, we invited the two brothers to sit at our table just off the stage. They happily joined us, mostly I think, because there was nowhere else for them to go. There were no greenrooms, no backstage, no nothing at the Rising Sun and the musicians either stood by the bar, or sat with the patrons. 

My mind still boggles, by the way, at the memory of that evening. I mean, come on, Jimmy and Percy Heath sitting at your table and talking jazz? Crazy, right?

As we chatted up the two brothers, someone said something that got Jimmy Heath to tell us a story that stayed with me forever.

It seems that the one-and-only Charlie Parker showed up at Jimmy Heath’s door one afternoon, asking if he could borrow Jimmy’s horn. Now the purists out there might mumble something about the implausibility of such a request, given that Jimmy Heath was known for his work on the tenor while Bird, of course, played alto. 

I don’t remember if Jimmy had an alto sax kicking around (apparently he did start out on the alto) or whether Bird borrowed a tenor, but the important point is that Bird had a gig, his own horn was in hock, and he needed Jimmy Heath to lend him one.

And after setting up that whole backstory, Jimmy Heath went on to tell us that after he got the horn back from Bird, Jimmy was quite keen to get it out of its case, and play some riffs, just to see if, “Any of Bird’s magic was still left in the horn.”

And I’ll never forget the dejection in Jimmy Heath’s posture as he glanced up at us, and with a shrug, said, “But no, all that magic had blowed right through.”

Persistence is key. Unflagging devotion. Stiff-upper-lipped, hardheaded goddamn doggedness. That’s what an author needs in order to no, not finish a book, but instead, to submit query letter after query letter. Yeah. Fun.

I have this recurring dream. It goes like this.

They say Edgar Allan Poe wrote on parchment paper, and then pasted the sheets together to make a scroll. That seems messy, and tedious, to me.

But pen and paper was all that was available, I suppose, and those rather uncomplicated tools produced an end-product (like Poe’s scrolls) that was, at best, fussy and hard to manage.

Today, the tables are turned. Today, we use advanced and complex technologies that let writers create an uncomplicated electronic document that can be shared, copied, printed and safeguarded.

But what exactly are the tools we writers should use? Well, I’m glad you asked, because here’s my take on things.

My computer is a MacBook Pro. Yeah, the model with the much-maligned Touch Bar. For the life of me, I still don’t understand why computer users prefer a dull and static row of function keys over a dynamic and visually appealing Touch Bar. So listen, if you need a new MacBook, get one with a Touch Bar. Because Touch Bars are cool. Touch Bars rule.

I need silence when I’m writing. And that’s why I plug in my AirPods. I’ve got the ones with that noise cancellation feature. I just pop in those suckers, turn on Apple’s Background Sounds feature, and I’ve got the ideal writing environment whether I’m home or in a noisy café.

I once called Scrivener The best pencil ever. And yeah, as far as writing tools go, you can use Scrivener as an unfussy pencil, or you can unleash a myriad of features that includes a name generator, an outliner and corkboard, cloud sharing, and a whole pile more of these crazily useful technologies.

QueryTracker is another one of those ridiculously effective solutions that you never knew you needed, until you tried it. QueryTracker lets you find agents, explore agent data, prepare and submit your query letters, and organize and track your queries.

There you have it. My top-four writing tools. What about you? What tools are you using?

Man, I thought writing the book was the hard part. But eight weeks after starting in on it, I finally completed my query letter. Sent off a batch of queries today too.

And all of that stuff up there? Man, it ain’t easy.

But now comes the trickier part.

Yeah, I’m talking about the rejection letters.

But I’m bracing for it. Got my teddy bear. Got my security blanket.

Nah, just kidding.

A nice bottle of single malt, though? Yeah, that should do it.

Writing is the easy part. Not sure where I read that. Not sure who said it. Come to think of it, maybe it was me.

The thing is this. When the writing’s done, the heavy work starts. And that’s where I’m at. Looking at all the heavy work I need to do. Starting with “the pitch.”

You writers know what that’s like right?

Selling a book idea to an agent or publisher, for me, ain’t easy. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really been very good at selling. But it’s a job that needs to be done. And I’ve got to do it.

I’m working on it man. Working on my pitch. Working at my synopsis. Working on matching my book’s genre to a rigid classification system. Contemporary? Commercial? Up-market? Or my favourite, genre slippery.

Yeah, genre slippery. I kind of like that one.

Anyway. I’ll let you all know how things go.

Thanks for reading.

What’s the world record for time between two novels? The answer to that question is, I don’t know. But I suspect I’m in the running.

Fourteen years is a long time. But fourteen years after publishing my first book I finally my second novel, Rock Kills. Why fourteen years? Hey, how much time have you got?

Suffice to say there are countless reasons. Most of which would bore you. So let’s just say, life. Life gets in the way, you know?

Let’s just also say let’s not look back. Let’s look forward. Forward to getting this book, Rock Kills, published and released.

How long will that take? No idea, to be honest. Hopefully not long. My plan is to pitch it to agents and publishers. Going to give that a couple of months. If there’s no traction to be found, then I’ll dip my foot into the self-publishing pool.

That’s where we’re at folks. If you’d like to tag along, that’d be great. Should be an interesting ride.

Thanks for reading.

I wrote this a few years back. I like to refer to it once in a while. I like to refer to it because, like any entrepreneur, I sometimes need something to motivate me. To cast away the self-doubt. The self-doubt that comes–part and parcel–with the world of self-employment. Anyway, I thought I’d put it up here; share here with anyone who’s considering taking that leap, that leap into self-employment, that leap onto a new and maybe scary project. That leap into the unknown.

What if?  You said, “I will” rather than, “I’ll try.”

What if?  There’s one person standing between you and your dream

What if? That one person is you

What if?  You have superpowers

What if?  You only need to realize you do

What if?  You said, “I’ll do it” rather than, “Someone should.”

What if?  You created opportunity rather than waited for it

What if?  It is rocket science, and you’re the only one with a Ph.D

What if?  Money does grow on trees

What if?  Your resourcefulness & imagination are the roots

What if?  You won’t enjoy doing nothing

What if?  It’s not about greed

What if?  Greed was illegal

What if?  Negativity is bad

What if?  Nothing is real

What if?  Everything is

What if?  Jagger had stayed at the London School of Economics

What if?  After being laughed off-stage, Charlie Parker had simply quit

What if?  Beethoven had said, “I’m deaf, I can’t write music.”

What if?  Robert Johnson hadn’t gone to the crossroads

What if?  Warhol only got 15 minutes too

What if?  Dreamers stopped dreaming

What if?  We’re all cheering you on

What if?  You’re not listening to us

What if?  Nothing is mutually exclusive

What if?  Everything is possible

What if?  Procrastination didn’t exist

What if?  Idleness was outlawed

What if?  Cartoons are real life

What if?  Real life is a cartoon

What if?  You listen to your heart

What if?  You ignore the negative chatter of naysayers

What if?  There’s no such thing as failure

What if?  The idea you’re hesitant to share is the one that will bowl us over

What if?  There’s a masterpiece inside you, just waiting to come out

What if?  The world is waiting for you

What if?  It’s you we’re all counting on

What if?  It’s all a dream

What if?  Dreams do come true

I got this email. Just now.

I must admit that part of me ponders the implication of being called a little genius (does it mean I'm smart but not that smart, or does it mean the person who wrote it is physically huge and therefore considers me a tiny guy–albeit a smart tiny guy? Hmmm…)

Most of me, though, still cannot believe the high I get from knowing that someone, not only enjoyed my book, but also benefited from it in some way.

That's a high money can never buy.

Notice that last sentence, the one that asks, "When is your next book coming out?"

While I do have one in the works, odds are that it won't see the light of day for another 18-24 months.

Yeah, I know, I'm a slow novelist.

But it's not only that.

It's also that, right now, I'm incredibly busy at my day job, the one that sees me as an accountant who writes.

Lots of writing, teaching and consulting projects on the go, right now.

And, when I take a respite from all that, I'd really like to use that downtime to work on ze novel.

And so…

I feel I need to take a sabbatical from this blog.

For how long, I don't know.

If you'd like to keep in touch, I will continue to update my other site, my business site.

The one over at dilauro.ca.

So maybe I'll see you there.

Whether you migrate over or not, I'd like to thank each of you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading my ongoing ramblings, for buying my book and, especially, for taking the time to post comments here on this blog.

As I said, I will be posting here again one day.

In the meantime, thank you and Arrivederci.

Something like this warms my heart,

When someone takes the time to write.

When someone takes the time to share their views, their desires, their concerns.

It really means a lot to me—to all writers, I bet.

This truly is why writers write.

Yes, it's true, by training and education, I'm an accountant.

Over the last 8 years, though, I earned my keep principally through writing. Technical writing, that is.

Now technical writing, though financially fulfilling, doesn't quite feed the soul.

So I wrote a novel.

It was fun, writing a novel—a truly rewarding experience.

And now, about a year—bang-on—since the novel's release, I can tell you that I've earned an education of a different kind.

Here, then, are ten things I learned about being a novelist

1. Writing is the fun part

2. Promoting isn't all that fun

3. All moms love what their novelist offspring write

4. Other than for other writers (and moms) most don't give a crap that you've written a novel

5. If extracted into an hourly wage, my book's earnings would leave me destitute even in a developing country

6. I'm intrigued by (and—if I'm honest—envious of) those debut novelists who break out big

7. If I were my accountant, I'd counsel my client to forget about this novelist thing—there's simply no money in it

8. I'm glad I'm not my accountant

9. It continues to thrill me when someone tells me they enjoyed my book

10. Though it's tempting to give up, every day I remind myself of this…

Ever tried. Ever failed.

No matter. Try again.

Fail again. Fail better.

(Samuel Beckett)

What about you writers out there. What did your first book teach you?