Hey, ho, let’s go!
Reading Assignment for this class: “Smilin Jack, Part 1” and “Smilin Jack, Part 2” chapters from Teardrop Road
Writing Assignment for this class: The assignment from Class 13 is due today. Send it to jesseteller (at) yahoo (dot) com. Remember to rate and review your performance at the bottom of the assignment.
When you’re a self-published writer, you find yourself in groups with a lot of different people. Friends with a lot of different writers. And they always span the spectrum of good to bad. I read some really bad fantasy from some self published writers that are just really not worth your time. I’ve got no names for you. I don’t do that. If you want to read some good stuff, you have to swing to the other side of the spectrum. You have to look for people like ML Spencer, Sarah Chorn, my wife says a few Rob Hayes books really blew her away. You’re never gonna go wrong with Richard Nell. His Rebellion of the Black Militia is brilliant in concept and world building. But you’re gonna find that even the good writers have different levels of experience.
Experience does weird things for you when you’re a writer. You start off with hard opinions. They get softer as you move, ss you realize that there’s more than one way to create a book. It’s like this, imagine you’re at a buffet. You came for the popcorn shrimp. Grab a plate, you fill it full of popcorn shrimp, two leaves of lettuce, a radish and a little bit of ranch. You go and you eat one of the leaves of lettuce, and over fifty pieces of popcorn shrimp. That’s how you write your first book.
You get an idea of what you do. For me, it was handwrite ten pages on yellow legal pads, type it out, adding as you go, seven hours worth of work. That was my popcorn shrimp. That was my leaf of lettuce. Certain things were left untouched, just like that radish, other piece of lettuce, and the majority of the ranch. Tools that I had bought for myself, the real leather case I had bought, for what exactly, I don’t know. The three packages of unsharpened pencils, only the best, the most expensive, Ticondaroga I think is what they’re called. Pencils I never use. Leather cases I never used. I bought tiny handbook dictionaries and thesauruses. Those are my radish. Those are my second leaf of lettuce.
Second book, you go back to the buffet. You’re here for the popcorn shrimp. But you save room for the chocolate pudding. For some reason they always have chocolate pudding in the salad bars. The self-published writers you’ll be living with, socializing with, interacting with, some of them will be brilliant. Most of them will have a limited amount of actual writing experience. Even the good ones. So what has a tendency to happen when you have a limited amount of experience with something is, you develop a hard opinion. All popcorn shrimp. Your popcorn shrimp opinions will be things like, “You should write every day.” Or “You should only write when you’re inspired to.” Your big popcorn shrimp opinion will be pantser or plotter. This is a very interesting and mutated concept. It’s interesting and stringent for most writers. It’s mutated for me.
A plotter is somebody who writes detailed outlines. They do incredible amounts of research. A plotter will draw maps. A plotter will write 500 pages worth of world building for a 200-page book. The plotters are the architects of the writing world.
Then there’s the pantsers. They’re more maverick, gunslingers shooting from the hip. Their research is limited. They have no outline. They have no plan when they go in. Every writing session is inspired by the one before it. A lot of them don’t even know how the book ends when they start the book itself.
I promise I’m getting to urgency. I promise. I’m just going the round about version. I’m pantsing it. I’m pantsing this lecture. I know what I want to say. My opinion on the things I want to say has not changed. I have an idea of some points that I want to hit on the way. For the most part, word for word. I have not outlined this lecture. I’m pantsing.
Sorry, my wife is typing this out as I ramble. I had to take a real quick break to flirt with her.
So writers will often spend time talking whether they’re pantsers or plotters. I’ve heard professors say nobody sits down to write a book without an outline and a plan. And I think that used to be true. I really do. Things have gotten wilder out there. There’s a criminal element to the writing world now. So you run into a lot of hard opinions, people who are strictly popcorn shrimp plotters. There’s other writers that lose a taste for the popcorn shrimp and the next time they go to the buffet, they forsake the plate altogether and they get a bowl, three bowls, of chocolate pudding and also a radish. These are your pantsers.
As you get more and more experience you realize that the hard rules you formed for yourself, they mean absolutely nothing. You’re gonna find that the things you’ve been taught about exactly precisely how to write a book, they work for that person who’s teaching them to you. And you’re gonna find out you don’t like popcorn shrimp or chocolate pudding and you’re gonna have a more rounded meal. Some of you vegetarians are even going to find yourself sprinkling a little bit of bacon on your salad.
You learn a lot of hard fast rules is what I’m saying. Once you have a certain amount of experience, these hard fast rules become laws. And somewhere in there they become commandments. And every time they get harder and they get more narrow in scope.
So what I’m dealing with on this particular day is, there’s an editor whose name I will not speak. And the trend at that point was the pro-tip. This is how you do a pro-tip. In your Facebook post, you write capital Pro, capital Tip, colon. And then every single thing you say after that is law, sometimes commandment, based on the level of respect the reader has for you. I did a couple of pro-tips. I’m ashamed of them. I don’t do them anymore. Not because they were wrong. Just because they’re, it was arrogant and trendy.
On this particular pro-tip, it was talking about urgency. And the editor said, “Pro-Tip: To create urgency get rid of unneeded things. ‘She went to pick up her sword.’ Cut that straight down to ‘She picked up her sword.’ Get to the action. That will create urgency.”
Now at this point in the self published community, everybody hates me. They don’t wanna hear what I have to say. I have way too much experience. Even this professional editor doesn’t have as much experience as I do. But they’re a friend, and I think I’m okay. So I go with it and I hit her. And I said, “That’s not how I create urgency at all.” And then I dropped this quote:
I disagree. Kinda. But only in some instances.
The urgent scenes are not about description of action they are about the rhythm of the writing. The pace is then decided by the sentence lengths and the pauses.
So if you are writing a scene that is in need of a long sentence at that beat of the rhythm of the writing then it doesn’t matter what you write as long as the sentence stretches. Then quick, short lines. Pound that beat. They hit hard. Then you need a sentence that reaches as long and as far as you can get so that the pace steals the breath and quickens the pulse. Again the small. And again we feel trapped.
Then when things slow down. The reader did not notice that you said “long” and “far”, two words that mean pretty much the same thing. They did not notice because the tempo was high, the sentence long enough to keep the reader running.
My description of urgency displayed the urgency itself. Was this editor wrong? No. You should always cut as many extra words out of your work as you possibly can. Does this editor have a limited view of how to create urgency? Definitely.
I wrote another example in the same post, the same comment, where a person is trying to escape a house and a murderer is looking for them. But the weather demands that they put on a coat, they put on their shoes, lace them up tight before they go out into the weather. Let’s say some kind of tundra situation. In my example, I took a long time describing every bit of putting on the coat, with the long sentences and the short quick beats. Took a break and described the murderer stomping in the room just above them. Described grabbing the boot, dropping the boot, picking the boot back up. Sliding it on, fighting the laces, I described every bit of tying the boot, along with making mistakes.
As the murderer got to the top of the stairs, got a look at what the person was doing before they burst out the door, running into the night. Now the editor would’ve said, threw on the coat, threw on the boots, out the door. But while sticking with the long sentence, short sentence, urgent cadence model, and choosing to describe every single minute action of the putting on the coat and lacing up the boots, what I created was an elongated paragraph about putting on a boot. Every now and then I’d punch in a description of where the murderer was in the house at that point. At this point with the description of the boot being put on in such agonizingly long paragraphs, I’ve created a certain level of frantic and that frantic notion creates urgency. It’s the exact opposite of “She went to pick up her sword,” or “She picked up the sword.” It’s the exact opposite of that.
When I was writing about the boots and the coat, the concept behind the writing is they could not do it fast enough. They were struggling, they were fighting, to do it faster and faster. They could not do it fast enough. And the urgency is just palpable.
See, I knew I could get from popcorn shrimp to murder. I just had to do a little pantsing. So next time you’re thinking about murderers, you might just get a craving for popcorn shrimp. I don’t know. If I’m doing my job you will.
So let’s hop around in metal. I figure we’ll go from the 80s to the 90s to the 2000s. Should be fun. Alright, I hope to be able to show you three music videos in this one class. I might cut in the middle of one or two of them, cut them short. But we’re talking about urgency here. Nothing does urgency better than music. Let’s start with Tesla. They did a song in the 80s called, early 90s, called “Hang Tough.” You’re gonna hear a bass line come in. That is your short, burst sentences. I described this earlier. Your short beats. You’re going to hear the scream of the guitar. That is your long stretched out sentences. The lyrics are your content. And the way they all work together is the song itself. It’s actually pretty beautiful if you think about it that way. Let me see if I can find the video. I’ll be right back.
As a writer, personally, I don’t like this song. I chose it partially for that reason. The music does exactly what I need it to do for this lecture. The actual lyrics though, it’s not good writing. Tesla’s criminally underrated. You’ll never get me to say anything different. But this particular song is cliché after cliché after cliché when it comes to the lyrics. As far as the lyrics go and the actual content, it’s not great writing. That’s my point. Do or die situation, keep your head up off the ground, hang tough. You gotta give it all you got. Lyrics wise, this song is not great. But the music itself is next level, and the music is what creates the urgency of the song.
There we go, I think all my analogies are in place now. This particular song mimics the Facebook comment that I made perfectly. I described exactly how to write an urgent scene, long and far if you remember correctly. I’ve done the same thing by showing you this video. I think we’re done with Tesla now. That was “Hang Tough” from The Great Radio Controversy.
Again I’d like to say, Tesla is a criminally underrated band. And not all their songs have lyrics that are written this badly. I’m actually, it’s gonna take me a long time to forgive myself for showing you one of the lesser songs. You should look for “Paradise.” Don’t get the acoustic version though. Go for the one straight off the album.
Now let’s talk about urgency in a story kind of way. Who plays the drums for Rihanna? Who is Taylor Swift’s lead male dancer when she gets on the stage and sings “New Romantics,” who’s that guy she’s dancing with the most? Let me tell you, both Rihanna’s drummer and that guy dancing with Taylor Swift, they have their own dreams, and they’re not necessarily reaching them. Jennifer Lopez was Janet Jackson’s back up dancer for “That’s the Way Love Goes.” J Lo started a movie career. I’ve never heard one of Jennifer Lopez’s songs, but she’s my hero. Not because I wanna marry Ben Affleck, but kinda because I wanna hold his hand. But mostly because of her entire approach to her fame. And the urgency with which she must have danced with Janet Jackson. Imagine the urgency and the passion she put into that dancing in order to propel her into what we know her as now. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about Jennifer Lopez, but we kinda are.
The end of high school, after high school, I ran into a song from a new singer that I absolutely loved. It was her very first debut song. She never did another song like it. It threw her instantly out on the big stage. There was only one person I knew that did not love this song and did not love this singer. In the book I call him Bruise. And the reason he didn’t like this singer and didn’t like this song is because the singer reminded him too much of my sister Less. So he refused to listen to her. She was the solo artist Alanis Morrissette. The first release on her debut album Jagged Little Pill, the first release was called “You Oughta Know,” and she exploded on the scene.
It was the edgiest, most sexual, most aggressive artist we had ever seen. In 1995, she was willing to say things that even Madonna had only ever hinted at. In her first release she described things that made her trash and she did it with pride. Her first release, “You Oughta Know,” gave everybody a glimpse of what raw, unapologetic, proud female sexuality could be. It was way before its time.
We’re not here to talk about this. I just wanted to make my opinion known. We’re here to talk about the Jennifer Lopez of her band. We’re here to talk about the drummer for Rihanna. Taylor Swift’s back up singer. See we find ourselves as one of the most gifted drummers of the generation without a band. So he gets the gig to play as Alanis Morrissette’s drummer. He takes a look at the set list, he takes a look at the things he’s supposed to play and he realizes that the first release is his only chance. The rest of the music for the rest of the album is very pale in comparison. The only other truly brilliant song on Jagged Little Pill is the last one. It’s called “Your House.” It’s a hidden track. According to the runtime it’s 8 minutes long.
They liked to do this back then. This is the very end of the era where you put the album on and listen to it from beginning to end. And so there was often at the very end of the album silence for a long time, so you would turn off the CD or turn off the tape, without knowing that if you had just listened to the album in silence for seven minutes, at the end you’d get a minute-long song. It was called the hidden track. So it was a trend and it was just starting. Harvard was smart enough though, and he was patient, and so my friend who as soon as “You Oughta Know” hit the airwaves, went and bought Jagged Little Pill. He found “Your House.”
The only problem is “Your House” is a cappella. Meaning no music whatsoever. I could give an entire lecture on “Your House,” and maybe I will. Those were the two most intense, real, raw songs on the album. One of them has no drums. And so you are left with “You Oughta Know.” You’re a drummer that does not want to be playing for Alanis Morrissette your entire life. Most likely you’ve been in band after band after band that has dissolved around you. So just like “That’s the Way Love Goes” for Jennifer Lopez, “You Oughta Know” is a blank audition. It’s a statement of absolute urgency. This is your character.
I’ve talked about urgency in the writing and how to create urgency through sentence length and cadence. But when I play this extremely highly sexual powerful female song, we’re gonna talk about urgency of character. Because the drummer of this song, the drummer of this entire album, wanted something more. And through the urgency of his playing, the brilliant work he did, he got it. I would like to introduce you to the very first time that I heard the drumming of an artist that would become my personal hero. His name is Taylor Hawkins. Here’s “You Oughta Know.”
Before we go any further, let’s talk about the urgency of women in this age. You had Alanis Morrissette singing “You Oughta Know,” unapologetic and absolutely accusatory about her sexuality. You had an artist named Meredith Brooks who sang a song “Bitch”. You have Sarah McLachlan putting together a traveling tour called Lilith Fair. The Biblical character Lilith is being looked at again. And now there is a collection of powerful women who are gathering together in a festival of female power to celebrate what’s to come.
These ground breakers, these were the “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynors of my generation. No more are we talking about the blues diva, or the jazz diva, who has to seduce us men with her sexuality and sultry voice. There was definitely power in those women. I’m not taking anything away from these women and Ella Fitzgerald. Lilith Fair told the musical world, we’re coming. And it laid the groundwork for every powerful female who has come after it. If you ever see a comedian making fun of the Sarah McLachlan sad dog commercial ever again, flip off the TV or flip off the computer, give them the bird. Because Sarah McLachlan created the Lilith Fair.
I haven’t walked away from urgency or Taylor Hawkins when I tell you how important Lilith Fair was and the urgency of its success.
I just had my wife check how long my lecture has been so far, and she says I have plenty of time, so let’s go. No. Let’s go! Let’s talk about Lilith Fair and the urgency of Lilith Fair. Let’s talk about women and the urgency of women. I have the chance to kick a little ass here. And so I’m gonna remind you that I have DID and within me I have three women. You couldn’t ask for any more diversity, but they’re taking over for just a little while and they’re gonna talk about the urgency of women.
Hmmm, hi. I don’t have much to say. I’m mostly male and my anatomy is male. I’m gonna tell you what happened with the Lilith Fair as told to me by an interview. It could’ve been Sarah McLachlan, it could’ve been Jewel. I don’t think it was Jewel. And I’m not gonna stay here long, because I have a beard and it’s really weird for you guys to see me like this.
Sarah McLachlan had a vision of female camaraderie. And the alternative music movement, here is a group of women that will not be able to make it alone. Sarah McLachlan, and I want you to remember her for “Adia,” not “Angel,” they try to dumb her down with “Angel.” Great song, but not her message.
Mmm, mm, mm, mm. These girls, so many girls, they just don’t know how to… society you know it teaches girls, it teaches girls a lot of things. It gives a woman so many goals and aspirations. And they’re all competitive. Sarah McLachlan talked about how they were at a hotel, and for show after show, every woman would go to the hotel and stay in their rooms. And then Amy and Emily, I don’t know how many of you know about Amy and Emily, a few of you, a couple of you, hm, Amy and Emily are the members of a group, Amy and Emily formed a group called The Indigo Girls. They couldn’t be at all the shows, but four, maybe five, in, Amy and Emily got their rooms and they just walked down the hall poundin on people’s doors, jerking powerful women out of rooms and, grab your instrument, come on. Come on, girl.
There was an urgency to Amy and Emily that day. There was an urgency that showed that we’re running out of time. Hm, uh, Sarah threw this together for us but we’re running out of time. We need to love one another. All this competition needs to go away. In the interview that I saw, Sarah described it as the greatest moment of her life when The Indigo Girls showed up in the hotel of Lilith Fair, started by the wrists sometimes maybe, I don’t know, I’mma throw this in here so that you can hear it. Sometimes by the hair, they pulled em out cause The Indigo Girls understood the urgency of Lilith Fair.
I have this balding head. I have these male parts. And I was living in rural Missouri at the time, so I didn’t get to see The Indigo Girls, I didn’t get to see what happened that night. But as Sarah told it, all the girls who had joined the Lilith Fair, all these powerful women creating music, breathing art, they all began to create together. And Sarah stood back as Amy and Emily pulled women out of themselves and darlin I can only imagine what happened that night. But there was an urgency in the air.
We’re playing for our sisters, for our mothers and aunts. Maybe one day our children. We’re playing for our lovers. For feminism, for slut shaming, which they didn’t even know was a word yet. That night, they’re playin for everything that women have been facin’ all over the world.
Right there, in whatever room they were in, with as many instruments as they had, and the singing that they did, they laid it all out for us. For us girls, they laid it all out for us, they said here’s what we see, here’s what we can do. But more importantly, and with sudden and crippling urgency they said, here is you. And I see you. And Amy and Emily and Sarah and the Bitch, they all said you’re beautiful. Thank you. Not many people remember Lilith Fair. I was watching the Lilith Fair from outside of a very male body. But in the 1990s, as they all rose to attack the ideas and the laws of man that had been forced upon them, can you imagine anything more beautiful? Can you imagine anything more urgent than the Lilith Fair?
Did you guys just meet Pepper? Man, the first time my family met Pepper, it was elemental. Pepper is not to be denied. She’s one of the greatest things about me and we’re just getting to know her. Pepper, thank you for coming and talking about Alanis Morrissette, or was it the Indigo Girls, Lilith Fair? I wish I could assign for all of you to listen to Nomads, Indians, Saints, and tear apart and paste together a mosaic of understanding of that Indigo Girls album.
I’m gonna just throw this in real quick, has nothing to do with urgency but that’s what literary criticism is. A piece of literature comes to you. It’s a solid object. You break it apart into shattered pieces, evaluate all those pieces, and then with the paste and the cement of your imagination and your understanding and world view, you put together a mosaic. Yeah, I think that’s the best way to describe literary criticism and all things literary, when you are trying to take something apart. Whether it is “Wild Child” by W.A.S.P., “The Faerie Queene” by Spenser, or “I’m a Bitch, I’m a Lover, I’m a Liar, I’m a Mother.” My advice to you is when you find a piece of literature you wanna talk about, take a sledgehammer to it. And it’s your responsibility to paste it back together into a mosaic that makes sense to the rest of the world.
What does that have to do with urgency? If you truly understand literature, and you understand the world you’re living in, I won’t have to explain what your mosaic has to do with urgency. If you don’t understand, come meet me at my office during my office hours and we’ll try to find urgency.
We’ve done Alanis Morrissette. We’ve talked about Sarah McLachlan and the Indigo Girls. The natural progression is Metallica. Right? When you have a mind like mine, the natural progression is Metallica. A mind like mine should never be exposed to the public. Okay, let me get through the boring stuff real quick and get straight to the no name drummer playing for his life. Metallica is a groundbreaking heavy metal band that defined a subgenre of rock and roll. And they are being honored by MTV on a special called “Icons.” This is a hard group, guys. Most of you have probably heard some of their songs. Hard group. The crunching of the guitar and the depths of the bass and the aggression of the drums. When Metallica first displayed itself to all the record labels, they were told, “Your work is too dark, no one wants to listen to that.” Kind of like what my mother-in-law said about Chaste while I was writing that book.
Everybody heard of Avril Lavigne? “So much for my happy ending.” “Sk8er Boi.” I made sure that my wife spelled “Sk8er Boi” with the 8 and the i. Well, at this MTV special that honors Metallica, Avril Lavigne is going to play a Metallica song. At that particular moment, her personal performance did not matter to me at all. Avril’s a good singer. Maybe she doesn’t have the deep and the bass for the song. But I don’t doubt Avril. She got me through a hard time. So much for my happy ending. That kinda thing. But when it came to singing Metallica, I had my doubts. That’s not where my focus was, though. It was the drums.
These are pop music musicians playing for their heroes. And this is an impossible drum line to play. Really listen to the drums and what they’re doing. Sometimes they’re aggressive with the song, then during the chorus they drop down to mimic the sound of an engine. You play for Avril now, but this could be an audition for bigger things in the future.
And now we find ourselves back with Taylor Hawkins. Taylor knows he does not wanna play drums for Alanis Morrissette for the rest of his life. He’s a drummer without a band. He’s a genius without a home. So he does the best he can, and I want you to think about what we heard with “You Oughta Know.” Her singing is pretty much statements. Powerful statements, but statements nonetheless. Statements don’t follow a guitar melody. Statements follow a drum beat. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend to stand here, I think I’m standing. I might be sitting on a random table at this point, or walking around the room. Let’s say I’m standing. I’m not gonna stand here and tell you that I know Taylor Hawkins entire musical history. But I will tell you that the drummer of Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know” became drummer of the Foo Fighters.
The god of the Foo Fighters we all know is Dave Grohl. I swear, Bekah, if you spell Grohl wrong, I’m gonna tell everybody in here that you spelled Grohl wrong. She started clicking on her mouse. I assumed she was checking for spelling. She was actually cleaning up a typo. She looked at me and she said, “I’m not gonna spell Grohl wrong. I know how to spell Grohl. I follow him on Facebook.” Dave went looking for the very best drummer he could find when he created the Foo Fighters. If you follow the line of videos, interviews, if you watch Dave Grohl perform, he always goes back to Taylor Hawkins. Dave Grohl needed a foundation to build his empire on. He himself was the drummer of Nirvana. We’ve already talked about Nirvana. So he knew how important drums were to him and he knew that he had to have a master in order to play what he was going to write.
Taylor Hawkins is gone. He died on March 25, 2022. I’m gonna ask for you all to be silent for a minute in honor of Taylor Hawkins. I’m gonna ask for this because Taylor was not only a fantastic artist, but he was my hope, and my dream is, he can be yours.
You are starting from the bottom. Once you leave this college, nobody has any reason to listen to you. Nobody has any reason to read your books. You’re gonna claw and you’re gonna beg for every review. And you’re going to be judged on your urgency. On the way you challenge yourself and your readers. That’s exactly what happened to Taylor Hawkins. So we are all going to take a moment of silence. That moment’s gonna last one minute long. For Taylor and everybody like him, that through their urgency and their passion made an impact on their world and their medium. From “You Oughta Know” through everything that the Foo Fighters did. “You Oughta Know” is where you’re starting. Death is where it all ends. Let’s honor Taylor’s beginning and where he ended. Give me one minute of silence.
Reading Assignment
Reading assignment for next class: “The Beginning of My Life” and “The Coming of Shadow” chapters from Teardrop Road
Seeds of Tarako will have to be read by the next class as well.
—Prince
Jesse Teller 
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