"I am very happy in this work, I do know that.  It satisfies me so far.  But I wish I could have the music.  I really need the music.  Have to make the sound of the tractors and the dust of the tractors.  I’ll have to have music before that…."

John Steinbeck, "Working Days," Entry #7, June 6, 1938

Coltrane.  Baker.  Davis.  Horn and Horne.  McDuff.  That’s the music of this novel.  Not quite all jazz all the time, but close.

Except, while Steinbeck wrote literally about music (actually, he writes about not being able to hear his music over the washing machine, which is as pedestrian as it gets), he is also talking metaphorically about music.

In other words, does the work – the words on the page – sing?

I’ve begun chapter five and the lady ain’t singing yet.  She’s warming up, maybe, but not quite yet stepped up to the mike and belted out whatever tune is in her head.  That is because, as much as I preach get in and get going immediately if not sooner, I’m trying to slow down in this series.  Much of what I’ve done so far has been warm up.  There is a touch of back story, a bit of set up to minor incidents, and two or three bits of major set up.

Yet now, as of 11:30 last night, we have a body.

At least, the rough draft of  body.  Right now, it’s in the hallway, a shank sticking outta its chest.

So we’re not really singing yet…just sort of moaning.  Hopefully, it will eventually sing.  Hopefully,  the language on the page will match the language in my head and it will all match the music of the death.  We have to hear the shrieking alarm beyond me simply saying, "That alarm was noisy, dude."  We have to hear the last few moments of life beyond me simply saying, "Then the dude was dead…oh, wow, man."  And we have to hear, in the music of the language o the page, the slow spill of blood.

That’s the music Steinbeck was really talking about.  It’s much harder to hear and – hopefully – nearly impossible to compose to the standards of the composer.

Up next?  The machinery of investigation.  Oh, by the way, we are starting with more than 300 suspects.

Hehehehehe…this is where it gets fun. 

“Today the argument against sin and the means of losing it – the quest for the true spirit. This should be a good sharp section.”
– John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #4, June 2, 1938, Thursday

No giant moral arguments for me, at least not yet. Today’s work – tonight actually – is chapter 3. Jace at home after a long shift wherein an inmate has a problem in medical and we get foreshadowings of the underpinning of the book.

Chapter 3, then. Short, sharply delineated (I hope). She’s scared to sleep, scared of the dreams; leftovers from the psychological aftermath of Book One. Though the books are desert-set, this section should have the oppressive feel of the hot and humid, almost like being able to see the humidity hanging in the air. Should feel as oppressive as the Louisiana bayou. Hell, maybe I’ll just ask James Lee Burke to write it for me. Should have long sentences and long paragraphs, almost painful to read because of her fear of sleeping.

No Gramma and none of The Coots. This is all Jace. But short because I’ve already strung out the initiating murder too long. Too much navel-gazing already. But then, pacing never works for me until deep near the end. That’s the only time I can look back and see what’s what.

But like what became the middle part of “Grapes” chapter 4, this should be good and sharp. We’ll see.

And the quest for the true spirit? It may be corny, but there are no other quests. Everything dances to that particular rhumba.

“It seems to be necessary to write things down. Can’t stop it.”

John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #1, February 7, 1938, Monday.

It is a marvelous book, Steinbeck’s “Working Days.” It is not one of the novels – the short, kiss-in-the-dark sweetness of “Of Mice and Men,” nor the sprawling “East of Eden.” Neither is it one of the volume of letters like “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters,” or “Journal of a Novel, the East of Eden Letters.”

It is Steinbeck’s attempt to “map the actual working days and hours of this novel.”

It is a diary of his time spent writing “The Grapes of Wrath.”

And it is, quite simply, an amazing book.

I am very much into discovering and exploring the creative process. I want to see your painting, yes, but I also want to know why precisely that color in precisely that place. I want to see what you did with the lighting scheme for “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern,” but I also want to know why that green at that moment.

“Working Days,” is an almost daily account of the writing of Grapes. The struggles as to tone and pace, the battles as to timbre and situation. But also, it allows the reader to see how in hell he got the book done given everything else that was going on in his life at that time.

I am not so bold.

But I am just cheeky enough to believe I could do something similar. My Working Daze, however, won’t be as disciplined or as regular. He wrote his as a daily warm up to writing. I, because of my work schedule, no longer write every day. Instead, I write every day I’m off. And my writing time is so limited that if I tried to keep Working Daze constantly up to date, I’d never work on the novel.

So my scope is much more limited than his.

I will try, as best I can, to put down what it’s like to write a novel. I will explore the artistic struggles of tone and timbre, pace and plot. In short, I will navel gaze with the intensity of someone who is self-involved to the nth degree when it comes to his writing.

I already know, to a degree, what’s coming. I’ve written books before and there will be days where I am nothing short of the single best writer what ever walked the planet. And there will be days where I want to throw the computer out the window and take up knitting.

Maybe it’ll fun and maybe it’ll suck, but I’m gonna give it a whirl and see what happens. The trick, of course, is to explore the writing of the book without giving the book away. Hell, if I put it all down in the journal, there would never be any reason for you to go plunk down $25 for it, would there?

The book, by the by, is the second in a brand new series centering on a female sheriff’s deputy. In book one, we see her at the beginning of her career. I mean the very beginning – day one – and we go from there. The first book is called “Slow Bleed” and you haven’t seen or heard of it yet because I only finished it a few months ago and am waiting for my agent to read it. After him, hopefully, publishers. After that, hopefully, enough sales to fund a two-month trip to St. Thomas.

Steinbeck said something else in that initial entry back in ’38. He wrote, “I don’t know whether I could write a decent book now. That is the greatest fear of all. I am working at it but I can’t tell.”

It is the greatest fear of us all. So we’ll see what happens. And do, please, post your comments. I’d love to know how you do things, how you explore your creativity.

And what your favorite Steinbeck book is.