Sing, O muse, of the frustration of a writer...

Circling around the truth, I might be

reading time: approximately 15 minutes

I bought Tori Amos’s first (solo) album Little Earthquakes on cassette in high school. Her sophomore endeavor, Under The Pink, came out in my sophomore year in college, and Boys For Pele came out my senior year. I was taking creative writing classes for my major and all I wanted to do was write stories like Tori wrote songs. I was in love with Tori as an artist (I still am). I remember sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of acquaintances back then—when I knew everything, as all 20-something college students are sure they do—and had a conversation that went something like this:

Acquaintance: Have you listened to Sarah McLachlan’s new album {Fumbling Towards Ecstasy}? It’s soooooooooo good. She’s so amazing.

Me: Why, when I could listen to Tori Amos?

Acquaintance: Huh?

Me: I’d rather Tori.

Acquaintance: You don’t have to chose, you know. You can listen to both. I like both. I listen to both.

Me: I guess. But Tori’s the only real choice.

I could be a real snotty PITA in college when I tried. But in that particular instance I wasn’t actually trying to be trying. I was attempting to convey how listening to Tori’s albums so deeply validated my own emotions, my experiences of being a woman in the world, and what I thought about being an artist, that I found similar female musicians pale comparisons. Tori’s music was so vivid to me that when I listened to her songs I understood myself better. And why would I not want that experience every time I could get it?

For my awesome readers who aren’t familiar with Tori Amos, or are only passing familiar, you could take a few minutes and listen to this live version of her song “Winter.” One of my favorites.

I never could write stories like Tori wrote songs. I so desperately wanted to—want to still—but I could never figure out how.

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Over the past few months, I’ve been supporting a friend going through a tough time. I’d had the thought that I should make her a Tori playlist. And when she told me the “girl power” songs that she’d been listening to lately—all songs written and sung by male singers—I knew the time had absolutely come. For the first time in a decade or more, I went back to those early three albums in their entirety: to Little Earthquakes, to Under the Pink, to Boys For Pele.

I still don’t know how Tori does it—beyond being an incredibly talented and dedicated artist and human being—but I might possibly understand a little bit more now than I did before.

When I was young, and in creative writing classes at Stanford, everyone else in the room was ridiculously, incredibly smart. And their stories were, unsurprisingly, witty and clever, just like all the stories written in 1995 in academia were.

{If you don’t know exactly what I mean, here are the opening paragraphs of A Woman Run Mad, a novel written by my departmental advisor, John L’Heureux.

All Quinn wanted was a little peace. And some money, a lot of money. And a job. And to write a novel that would make all those smug bastards at Williams choke with envy. Fame and money, that’s what he wanted. But right now all he wanted was a little peace.

He and Claire had fought again last night and went to bed mad. When he got up this morning—late, because after their fight he’d had a few more drinks—he found a note from Claire on the hall table. “I love you,” it said. That was all. So Claire was one up on him, and now he’d have to find that damned bag she wanted, and buy it.

Quinn was moping around Bonwit Teller looking for the handbag department or leather goods or whatever they called it. If he could just get that bag—brown, small, rectangular—and have it waiting for her when she got home at five, then they’d have peace again. It was a special brown, not reddish brown or cocoa brown or anything brown. It was chocolate brown—Godiva bittersweet—and the only store in Boston where you find that brown was Bonwit Teller.

So witty. So clever! Just do be careful not to drown in the over-privileged ennui. That’ll definitely leave a mark. }

So I tried to be witty and clever. Sarcasm, a fellow writer told me, should be lightly etched, not dripping. I revised. I listened to more Tori.

As a writer I paid most attention to Tori’s lyrics, which I thought were clever, and often witty. Like the second verse of “Crucify”:

Got a kick for a dog

Begging for love

I gotta have my suffering

So that I can have my cross

I know a cat named Easter

He says, "Will you ever learn?

You're just an empty cage girl

If you kill the bird"

But that was 1992 Tori; in 1996, when she released Boys For Pele, the lyrics on that concept album were often nonsensically impenetrable. The opening of “Professional Widow,” for example:

slag pit

stag shit

honey bring it close to my lips

don't blow those brains yet

we gotta be big boy

we gotta be big

starfucker just like my Daddy

selling his baby

just like my Daddy

gonna strike a deal make him feel like a Congressman

it runs in the family

But somehow, I felt like I knew what the song meant. Even though most of the lines don’t exactly make sense to me, nor do they really make sense together. There are a few clear images…maybe? And together it all gives an impression of…something? But I still feel like I understand it.

My writing craft take-away from reading Tori’s lyrics while also reading my peers’ stories and listening to feedback on my own stories in writing classes was to try to mask all meaning behind somewhat impenetrable metaphors and to cultivate prose so strikingly beautiful and intelligent that readers might not understand exactly every phrase, but they would appreciate it all the same. And they would instinctively know what I meant. And so I tried that, with enough success to get me into advanced level writing classes, but not enough that I felt like I knew what I was doing. The feedback was erratic; ofttimes no one knew what to focus on in my stories, so they would focus on weird irrelevant details. I knew I wasn’t doing something right, but I couldn’t figure out what.

After college, I moved on to trying to write a novel, and everything got worse. But that’s a story for another day.

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While I was making up the playlist for my friend last week, YouTube inevitably started to surf up react videos, where musicians and producers and vocal coaches listen to Tori for the first time and record their reaction live. And what they say, over and over again—besides how masterful Tori is at performing—is to pay attention to her breathing. That how she takes in air and releases it becomes part of the song, gives the listener emotional cues that contextualize the lines she’s singing.

There’s a story that a friend told me long ago, that one of Tori’s early producers took all her breaths out of her songs, a common practice at the time (and still is, I believe). Tori was furious, and on a re-release put them all back in, because for her they are part of the song.

Ah, my darlings, do you see how I got it all wrong? I understand Tori’s more impenetrable songs not because the lyrics are witty or clever. Her lyrics, even though they are sometimes deeply layered in meaning, are secondary. Because under and around and through those lyrics, Tori uses every tool at her disposal—dynamics, tone, sounds, instruments, breath, timing, pauses, notes, chords, harmonies, microphone technique, and probably a million other things I don’t even know about—to make us feel what she wants us to feel.

Listen to the beginning of “Professional Widow” instead of reading the lyrics. Look at the damn picture on the album cover.

I can feel her dripping contempt. There’s nothing nice or merciful about it. It’s cutting and pure repressed feminine anger that is done playing by the rules and is ready to eviscerate the next male that stands between her and power. I didn’t need to understand exactly what the words mean because I could feel the emotions resonating with a piece of myself so far down inside I hadn’t even realized it was there until I heard this at 21 years old in 1996.

For the first time in 30+ years, today I looked up the meaning of the song:

I was going, "Oh, I wanna see him crawl." And letting that be there. Wearing a really cute fuzzy pink shoe. And having no limitation of exploring certain facets of the personality. And being shocked and horrified about "Professional Widow," and then loving her -- just loving the fact that she's convincing him to kill himself, guaranteeing that Mother Mary will supply. And I said, you really can't get any lower than that. I love the fact that she said, "This is how far I've gone -- this is where I am at this moment. Are you willing to see that part of yourself? The part that wants his energy, that wants his fame, that wants his light -- not recognizing your own." It gets to the point where you don't even have to push him over the edge - you're just reading him poetry, and that's enough to make him want to kill himself."

Tori Amos interview, Aquarian Weekly - Feb 21, 1996

I wanted to go into the hidden parts of the feminine; the way I see it, anyway. We all have our own perspective, men and women, about what the hidden parts of the feminine are. I went after what in some cases have become distorted, such as "Professional Widow," the black widow, and when I ran into the widow... [she lets out a sick little laugh] I had to come to terms with the fact that I wanted to be king. And to be this in the patriarchy... I never wanted to be the maiden. I wanted to be the knight that got the castles. I wanted to be the one who got the Land. But still I wanted to have babies; I wanted to be a mother, I wanted to feel that ability to do that. So the role of woman, to have babies and do that, you can't be a knight too, you can't do that. And the women who were knights were virgins, the Joan of Arcs... so you are not a sexually active being who wants to be involved and have a baby and a love relationship and be the brains to keep the castle running. And I do not mean the chatelaine... I want to be Patton.

Tori Amos interview, B-Side - May/June 1996

You can’t express this with witty. You can’t express this with clever. In fact, I’m beginning to think that all too often, witty and clever are the last resort of those who either have nothing to say or are too afraid to say the things that will make them vulnerable. Possibly because they have too much to lose if they do. (I admit I am a member of this ‘they’ far more often than I want to be, especially in the moment.)

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But Elnora, you might be saying, you’ve already had multiple moments of realizing emotion is the key to good storytelling (and have even written about it quite a bit recently). So why are we here today?

We’re here because I’ve been re-writing a story and I think it’s been going well, but I’m currently stuck in a way I’ve never been stuck before. I’m not stuck on the story. I’m stuck on the process.

Using the tips and tricks I learned in Writing For Emotional Impact, I’ve identified the story’s concept (In the future where superheroes with incredible powers fight super-powered villains every day, one normal girl knows she can be a superhero if she just gets the chance), the theme (Fulfill your dream by becoming more than you think you can be), and the arcs of the main characters. I’ve even identified the emotions I think they will feel as they reconcile their needs versus their wants. But how does one take that useful information and construct a story? And this is so important to me, because this is the heart of what I want to do as a writer. I want to take these emotions I feel in very deep, internal places in my psyche and render them as stories that engender similar emotions in the reader. The same way Tori’s songs do for a listener. But….how? How do I bridge the gap between the intellectual figuring of a story and the evocation of emotions so strongly they can feel physically overwhelming? Because words like “plot” and “structure” don’t seem to me to be tools that have the range capable of the task I want to set them.

I guess the question really is, what is the writer’s version of breathing? Of dynamics, of sounds and harmonies and tone and microphone techniques? How did Tori get from knowing she wanted to write a song about her hunger for power in a man’s world to “Professional Widow,” where none of those words are even mentioned? How did she dial in on what the hunger felt like and express that with such artistic clarity that I can viscerally understand it with barely any help from the lyrics?

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I spent a few days sitting with this question, and turning it around and around. I dug into Tori’s process—which she talks about quite a bit in various interviews and books. I started to think about how I could perhaps modify it for writing. And in searching for ideas, I stumbled over Jack Grapes’ concept called Method Writing.

And then I spent three hours watching a video of an interview with Grapes talking about his method, and I think this might be a thing that will help me do what I want to do?!

When you let go of your talent sometimes, and are willing to fail, because you have no idea what you are doing, sometimes, your genius comes to the rescue. And when it does, you do something and it shocks you…You can only be receptive to it happening. You can only be available to it happening. And how you make yourself available and receptive? By getting rid of your talent. If you think that’s easy, you have another thought coming. ‘Cause you and your talent are in cahoots. You say to your talent, “Make me look good, and I’ll keep you on the payroll.” And your talent says: “Keep me on the payroll, and I’ll make you look good.” So the two of you got a deal going, here. You’re both going to make the artist look good. But that’s not what you want. What you want is something great. And it’s always unexpected, and it’s always an accident of your genius, and an accident happens when you’re falling off a cliff, and all of a sudden you fly.

Jack Grapes, Method Writing: The First Four Concepts - Jack Grapes [FULL INTERVIEW]

And here is Tori, talking about her process:

You know, when somebody talks about meter, or how they’re going to do it this way, you’re going to do it that way—okay, fine, but that might just be an exercise, you know? Maybe it’s really good to allow yourself to have these exercises, to say, “I’m going to write something in this form” and then just experiment with the forms. Then, after you know and understand those forms, songwriting can become transcendent. Then you can throw the forms out and say, “Look, I’m just going to open myself up to whatever might come” and see what happens.

You never know when the ideas will come or where they might come from. There are songs on this record that came from things I was reading—about the reunion between Demeter and Persophone, for example. Having a mother and being a mother, I was thinking about what that moment would feel like. Sometimes you are surrendering to the feeling of what something would be like and suddenly there’s a song there. Another song came from a story we were telling around putting up the Christmas tree. Sometimes these real life happenings blur and that’s where the feeling comes from. It’s mostly about being receptive to those things when they happen. That is the skill.

Grapes goes on to talk about his method as a process, where one journals to come to the story authentically from a place of deep feeling. And he talks about the deliberate use of distinct voices—which he calls tonal dynamics—to create drama. He talks about creating cinematic moments, and techniques to create dramatic pauses in narrative. Tools!!!! Tools to create a story out of personal authenticity and emotion.

You will write in an authentic way, sounding like yourself, and not like a fancy writer —  it’s what all good writers and artists strive for — we call it VOICE, and writing LIKE YOU TALK. Then we will teach you a technique on how to take that voice even deeper. Because it’s the voice that hooks the reader, then the voice creates character, and then characters create story and plot…You will come from “process”  instead of writing toward a specific “product,” you will open yourself up to the accidental detours of your inner truth. You will come to trust process and that process actually creates product. When you’re “in the moment” in your writing, you’re also open to the unexpected ideas and stories that come from your deepest self.

Kevin Jacobsen, in the description of his First Level Method Writing Class

Here I am, after all that, off on another writerly adventure. I feel like I am getting closer to the information I need to know to craft the processes that will help me move my creative writing forward. I’m starting with Jack Grapes’ first book, Method Writing, and that is what I will explore in this month of May.

Thank you so much, you wonderful darlings, for traveling with me through this piece as I worked out my thoughts and feelings.

💖s  forever,

Elnora