Aye aye oh! Shake your foundations.Sometime in fifth, or as late (!) as sixth grade, I started reading Stephen King. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, his early collections of short stories, were and remain my favorites. (Although you must read The Long Walk by his Richard Bachman alias if you haven’t. One of my top five books of all time.)

In 1986, King’s directorial debut Maximum Overdrive came roaring into theaters, which means I must’ve seen it in ’87 on VHS or HBO. It’s a fun film–not to say “good”–based on King’s short story “Trucks,” starring a very smarmy Emilio Esteves, although to say the movie “starred” anyone is a stretch. The opening sequence includes a mechanical drawbridge that raises on its own!!! and makes cars crash all over the place. Later, kids are slain by rapidly ejecting soda cans!!!

But the soundtrack that played over it all . . . merciful Zeus. I had found AC/DC.

Which, I was promptly informed by my Missouri-Synod Lutheran school classmates, was an acronym for

AFTER CHRIST/DEVIL COMES!!!

I am not making that up.  True story. I still remember the kid’s name who first told me. And he was certain of this.

I tracked down the soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive; officially, AC/DC’s Who Made Who album, which only contained three new songs: the title song and two instrumentals, with the rest being a sort of “best of.”  I started scooping up AC/DC tapes

(New tape smell! Someone bring that back!)

as quickly as I could afford them. My favorite, still ranking as a top-five desert-island pick, was Fly On the Wall. Every song hit just the right note for adolescent me, with great riffs and colossal middle fingers raising to lyrics like:

Born in trouble they gave up on me/Teacher preachin’ what not to be/Call me dirty trash my name/Just tell the boys that I’m gonna be/Back in business again!

You could find this poetry scrawled on one of the yellow tab divider sheets in my Trapper Keeper in eighth grade. When I drafted a couple friends to make my first horror movie at the ripe old age of 13, I knew which music I’d be using for my soundtrack.

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I wrote the notes to what turned into my first movie  in sixth grade. I was home alone, and a few odd things happened, like rain with no visible clouds, the lights flickering, and the cats acting . . . okay, like cats, so maybe that wasn’t exactly noteworthy. These eerie events!!! formed the basis of what became my first feature film, The Moon Daemon.

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There are a number of things I could complain about when it comes to my K-through-8 school. Hell, there might even be a faint whiff of lawsuit if I closed my eyes and concentrated. But there are two specific things they did great, for which I am seriously grateful.

One: They let me write a novella, Derro the Warrior, which I later took to a Young Authors Conference at Arizona State University. That book stood in for a yearbook (I have zero yearbooks from the school), and was signed by everyone I liked, or everyone who tolerated me.

Two: They let me shoot a movie and edit it with their equipment. A horror movie. With a sound track by AC/DC. That included “Hells Bells.”

In retrospect, part of the allowance the staff must have made was the film didn’t star my best friends, two or three other ne’er do wells like myself. Rather, the film starred me, the pastor’s kid, and the board of elders’ kid.

It’s always about who you know.

But who cares? They let me make the thing and screen it during class time!

Furthermore, for all the things I could tell you about when it comes to my parents, and there’s plenty to go around, I have to give my dad credit: the guy put on a truly ridiculous costume and played the Big Bad for me in the movie. I mean…that’s love. Ain’t it?

He has a three-pronged garden tool for his right hand. BOO!

Now, this footage has not been seen by anyone — except maybe Joy — since 1988, when I showed it to my then-girlfriend and her family so they could appreciate the true genius that was my film. Inexplicably, instead of recoiling in horror, they laughed. A lot. And oddly, they insisted on referring to the film not by its blockbuster title The Moon Daemon, but rather as the diminutive Bucket-head.

Well, okay, maybe it’s because he had a bucket for a head. That makes sense.

Ridiculous or not, when we screened the film in class, we did get one legitimate, startled shriek from a girl when the titular character suddenly appeared behind us as if by teleportation. That was a great moment for me. It meant I could physically affect people by storytelling. That’s no small thing.

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I don’t remember the last time I listened to an Ozzy song on purpose. Decades. Nothing against Ozzy, he did some damn fine work; it’s just that tastes change. I know a guy who’s gone from Exploited to Enya. ENYA! I don’t get it, but it happens. It happens.

 (There’s a handful of Enya songs I like, too, but again…it’s been decades since I actually listened to one of them.)

I never lost my taste for AC/DC, though. With AC/DC, there are no surprises. That explains why some people don’t like them, I suppose. For me, they’re a comfortable old leather jacket, relic of a bygone time, yet valuable for exactly that trait: It takes but one progression or riff to take me back to when getting in trouble was fun; when I lived in that short moment where everything was new, everything was the first time. Watching some other old videotapes recently, I took a note about my friends and I, regarding my fiction: “Don’t forget the joy. Everything we did, we did with unfettered f***ing joy.” And it’s true. We did suck the marrow out of life, we did take everything–good and bad–to the Nth degree.

(Sometimes I miss that part of me.)

AC/DC does that, too. They’re never not fully engaged, whether it’s blowing up your video or shaking you all night long. Yeah, it all sounds alike. Yeah, it gets repetitive. But I like that predictability. You can trust AC/DC to give you a simple chord progression, a sweet solo, and a driving beat. AC/DC is everything that’s good and right about hard rock, and when I listen to them, I’m reminded viscerally about that brief moment in time when it only made sense to videotape a horror movie with a zero budget, no script, and a dad with a bucket on his head.

Good times. It’s what AC/DC and eighth grade should be all about.

Carrots are better with a little dirt.

Yes, I have click-baited my blog post with a “5 Things” headline. Live with it.

So I’ve got this garden, and only by sheer force of will am I able to keep myself from using sarcastic quotes around the word “garden.” Except, I just did it right there, so…moving on.

There really are at least five things I have picked up from teaching myself how to garden that are applicable to your fiction writing. In no particular order, they are:

1. Trust the soil and sun.

I don’t have a green thumb, though my father does. I pushed little holes into the store-bought dirt, chucked some heritage seeds into them, covered ’em up and hoped for the best. What that got me was not exactly a bumper crop, but for my first time out, the sugar snap and snow peas were delicious, and the carrot came out pretty nice. Your soil and your sun are your history, your experience, your feelings. Trust them to get the job done. They are what makes your voice and story different from any other.

2. But you have to weed and water.

That being said, gardens don’t grow themselves. Not the beneficial, yummy kind, anyway. It requires effort on your part to tend things, to make sure they’re getting enough water, to make sure weeds or pests aren’t destroying things. Most of us can’t roll out of bed, pop out a manuscript, and send it to Random House. Consider your first few years of novel writing as your apprenticeship. Trust your voice, yes; but learn your craft, too.

3. Use shit and scraps.

I didn’t use any actual manure in this garden, but I did use a homemade compost made from leftover soil and our fruit and veggie kitchen scraps. Your best writing, no matter the genre, will come out of your metaphorical shit. All the gross parts, the goo from the broken eggs, the fragile shells, the wilty green stuff. Fiction is about conflict and adversity, always. It’s the shit of human life, so bring yours to the keyboard and use it. All stories are about characters, and the more we identify with your characters, the more we will love your story.

4. Learn from your mistakes.

Like I said, I’m not a gardener, really. I threw stuff into the dirt and poured water on it. But even that modicum of effort showed me that I can actually grow stuff that is fit for human consumption. That’s a powerful thing, the first time you experience it–and so is storytelling. Never forget that.  But now I know how much water to use next time. I know that I needed to plant some other types of vegetation to help reduce the insect issues I had. I learned a lot this season from that little ill-tended square-footer; what might have happened if I’d actually paid close attention? Really gotten my hands dirty, so to speak?

No manuscript–no sentence–of fiction is ever wasted. Every word and every mark of punctuation is like money in your writing bank, slowly building toward a novel or story that will knock people’s socks off. That means even…no, that means especially the bad stuff. You won’t publish every word you write, but you’ll learn from each one.

5. Don’t share until it’s ready.

It really sucks to pull up what you think is going to be a gorgeous carrot, and instead it’s this little runty pale orange root. Growing food takes time; so does writing a novel. Or a story of any length, really. (In fact, I’d argue writing a great short story is much harder than writing a good or even acceptable novel.) Don’t pull your stories out of the dirt until they’re actually ready to be consumed; don’t show them till they’re ready. For beta-readers, that might be after you type “The End.” For agents or publishers, though, it means making absolutely sure everything that went into that story is the best it can be. Did you use good soil? Did you use good shit? Did you show enough patience and get enough coaching and help to make sure it’s ready to show off? Be patient, and keep working. The story and the vegetables will let you know when it’s time.

*Bonus: Ask around.

Read what others before you have learned. Talk to them in person whenever possible. You can learn more from a five minute talk with a published author, and from a ten minute backyard garden tour, than almost anywhere else. There are plenty of awesome books on both gardening and writing, and you should read them. (Tiny list below.) You don’t have to write this book or raise this garden entirely alone.

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Okay, look, I apologize for straining the analogy here. It’s a bit goofy, and a dash trite, I know. But the take-away is still for real: If I can plant a garden that yields an edible–nay, delicious!–carrot and some peas, then you can write a great story. Get busy!

Recommended Reading:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Barbara Kingsolver

Plot – Ansen Dibell

Burning Down the House – Charles Baxter

COMING UP:

Behind the Music, episode 3: Shake Your Foundations

Type Something Up: What to do with too many ideas. 

“I recall that you were there/Golden smile and shining hair/I recall it wasn’t fair.”

This is therefore an examination of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope rather than reiteration of it, but any readers who have lost their hearts to a troubled waif or watched while someone else did will relate to Ty’s obsession. In fact, it is the watchers in this tale that carry a lot of the interest; Syd, Ty’s sister, and his zany best buds all provide admirable support in different ways for their lovelorn pal as he works very hard to break his own heart. —The Bulletin

As I’ve emphasized time and again, manicpixiedreamgirl is not autobiographical. Not literally. Emotionally, maybe. If you’ve read it — and you should! — you may recall a moment where our self-heart-breaking protag Tyler catches a glimpse of not-so-manic pixie Becky’s bag, on which is pinned a band logo patch. The band, astute readers have no doubt noticed, is Just This Once, who made an appearance in Zero opening for Gothic Rainbow at Damage Control. This little moment is based on reality.

[Sidebar: Just This Once is a real band that played exactly … wait for it… just that once. True story. I’ll post it someday.]

I saw my personal MPDG (who, like Becky, was not at all one) standing at a bus stop in front of the 7-Eleven nearest our school. She was just stepping onto the bus, and I saw her wearing that T-shirt. The orange earth and mysterious runes reading GREEN R.E.M.

First and only thought: What is a green rem, and how can I get one??

Fortunately, I had pop-musically trained friends like Tim and Greg to gently explain that a “rem” was R.E.M., and Green was their newest album. Great! I went and got it, and not unlike Tyler, listened to it until I liked it (manicpixiedreamgirl, p.160)

That’s the day I became an R.E.M. fan. Because, as I wrote in manicpixie, it’s about a girl. Isn’t it always?

It turns out I genuinely did enjoy Green. It also turned out I’d already enjoyed older songs by the band, I just hadn’t known it was them. Superman, It’s The End of the World, and The One I Love had played in the background of Tim’s house several times before, but I hadn’t bothered asking about them. To be sure, the jangly pop of R.E.M. was a big departure from my roots in junior high, where Ozzy, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC were de rigueur among my degenerate stoner buddies.

Huh huh–you said rigueur. That sounds like “dick.” Huh huh! OZZY!!!

But there was a girl at stake, and if she liked R.E.M., then by god, I would too. I even…

(Hold on. I am about to actually make this public. Jesus. Well, in a hundred years, who’s going to care?)

I even learned the “Stand” dance. Perfectly. I would correct others. Because there were lots of people out in public doing the “Stand” dance.

Not really. But I did buy the cassingle with “Memphis Train Blues” as the B-side.  By that point, I was committed. I picked up their previous albums (from Murmur through Document) and proceeded to listen to them endlessly.

I confess, linking the “Stand” video to this post has got me a little nervous, because while I probably still know the “Stand” dance — muscle memory, I swear to god — it’s not something I would show off at, say, a Social Distortion show. But to be fair, I hadn’t been to a Social Distortion show at that point. Music appreciation (or over-indulgence) is a fluid, incorporeal thing, with no real certainty of continuity, especially in high school.  Then again, so are friendships, romances, future plans, and often, parents.

Long after my non-relationship came to a non-close with that T-shirt wearing girl, R.E.M. remained a staple. I’m sure I would have fallen for Out of Time like the rest of the galaxy if I hadn’t already been a fan, but even then, their hit singles weren’t my favorite. Oh, I listened to “Losing My Religion” just as…religiously…as everyone else, but it was never my favorite. Just like “Stand” wasn’t, either.

I preferred, unironically thank you, R.E.M.’s more off-the-R.E.M.-path stuff, though I think now that they did, too. Document‘s “King of Birds” can still be found on my mix-CDs (which I do have, thank you again. If you’re nice, I’ll show you the video I made for it. But probably not.) I wallowed in mellow purple songs like “Perfect Circle” off Murmur. “Swan Swan H” (Lifes Rich Pageant) made zero sense then and makes zero sense now, but its slow-marching tempo and inscrutable lyrics were great for eyes-closed late-night crooning along. I’m still not sure what bone chains are, but it’s fun to sing.

The great thing about R.E.M. at that time was their sheer selection. If you bought AC/DC at any point in the last, say, eighty years … you got AC/DC. As Jim Breuer points out, they’d do a great “Row Row Row Your Boat.” You ready? You got to row! row! row!…Fire! All right! You ready?

R.E.M. gave this teen options. Plenty of fun, “Everyone sing along!” songs like “End of the World,” whose lyrics I believe are still being debated in Congress, or “Pop Song 89” which has a good beat and you can dance to it.

But then other times, sometimes even moments after a great dancing song when you’re all pumped up and ready to take on the night with your buds, you’d need to settle down and smoke a slow cigarette and wonder what SHE is doing right then. At those times, you needed a “World Leader Pretend,” where Michael Stipe could put into words so effortlessly what you were feeling:

I sit at my table/And wage war on myself/It seems like it’s all/It’s all for nothing.

(Did a video for that one, too.)

I lost my taste for R.E.M. right around Up. By 1998, other bands had supplanted the Athens group who’d walked me through a number of broken hearts and stupid choices. Once the internet became the internet as we know it today, I found myself going backward rather than looking forward, scouring the web for rare acoustic or live versions of older songs I loved. Apart from personal taste, no one can take away from R.E.M. that they put on a hell of a show, and they stuck to their artistic guns – for better or worse. Any band on Earth would do well to emulate how they did things, no matter the style of music.

Which actually leads me right back to Social D, another one of the few uncompromising bands that’s ever existed, but they don’t really share the same space as R.E.M., not in our world, and not in my own. So I’ll cover Mike Ness and his Spinal-Tapian cycle of musicians some other time.

It’s just funny how we find music. If you grew up in the 90s, you were going to find R.E.M. whether you wanted to or not. I’m glad to have found them before Out of  Time happened, because, street cred. But they would not have had the impact on me they did if not for that distressed T-shirt worn by That Girl at a bus stop circa 1989.

And for that, I thank them.