Writing the Phil Ochs book.

Posted on by Opher

Writing the Phil Ochs book.

In order to want to write about anyone you have to have a love and great affinity for them. You are going to spend a couple of thousand hours of your life deeply immersed in them and their lives. You have to enjoy the experience.

Right from the sixties I have been a fan. Those early albums played a huge role in my development. His words inspired me. Phil was a hero of mine. Spending hundreds of hours in his company was going to be a pleasure.

Having twisted the arm of a reluctant publisher who did not even know about Phil Ochs and had to be persuaded that he was an important person worthy of a book, with sufficient ardent fans to make a book viable, I secured a contract.

That was the start.

Setting up

The first thing, before a word is put on a page, is to set up. To gather together your source material. I had most things. Over the years I had accumulated nearly everything Phil had done or had been written about Phil. I had all the books, every single album and a mass of bootlegs. I was a huge fan and had gathered everything. I had to check to see if there was anything missing; anything I needed to hunt down.

Starting The Process

It’s one thing having things for pleasure and quite another studying them to write about them. I began reading and making notes.

The Structure

Fortunately, the structure for the book is more or less dictated by the format of the series. The aim was to write about every album and every single song Phil Ochs had released. I had to write an introduction. Write about each album giving the background and details and then write about each and every song shedding insight into its content, meaning and importance. Easy. Well, actually not quite so easy. Some songs were not quite as simple to interpret as might appear, particularly the later ones. I had my own feelings and understanding but was that the same as Phil’s intention? Or other peoples’ opinion? I could only listen, delve, think and express my views.

Starting

I started reading the biographies and listening to all the albums. I had to get in tune, gather my wits, open my ears and allow the spirit of Phil to take over. I knew that it was a responsibility. The major songs were not a problem. The rarer ones were the most important. There were some that I’d glossed over. We all had our preferences. I had to give them equal weight and listen to everything.

Pen To Paper

Or at least finger to keyboard. I’m a one-finger typist but I can go quite fast.

Task number one was to do the layout. I put the headings in. The introduction, the albums, all the songs. I had a skeleton. I now had to apply the flesh.

I then wrote the introduction. It came spilling out.

The Albums

One by one I worked my way though, album by album. I sought the details of studios, producers, labels, personnel. I wrote about the times, the creation of the album and as much detail as I could muster. The internet was invaluable. I could check out different facts, chase things up and fill in the blanks. At times I felt like I was a detective on the case at others that I was piecing together a jigsaw.

The Songs

I then played the songs, one by one, analysing the lyric, thinking about the meanings, how it was written and why. Finding words to describe what Phil was trying to say and how the song was put together. Not always easy to find words. Phil was a master of lyrics. How was I supposed to shed light on his creations? They were too important to mess up. I could only give my views and interpretations. At least others could use them as a sounding board. They might disagree. That’s fine. The most Phil’s songs are talked about the better.

The First Draft

At times the process was hard. Working up to eight hours a day, concentrating, trying to find words that were right, sapped the energy. There were days where I was tired and could not be bothered, days when I was fired up and ready to go. Fatigue sets in. Writing is a lonely task. Friends get bored with you going on about minute details. You spent hours at your desk tapping away. Hours with headphones listening, relistening, studying, scribbling.

Finally you have done the last song, completed the bibliography and it is complete.

Rewriting

Of course, it isn’t anywhere near finished. What you have is a first draft. It was put together in pieces. There is the little task of rereading it and changing the disparate parts into a coherent entity. The facts are there but does it flow? Is there annoying repetition? Does the style change? Is it coherent?

Getting that right takes a good rewrite.

Editing

Once you have the second draft the nit-picking begins – the grammar and punctuation, sentence structure and spellos. It’s amazing how they annoyingly proliferate. No matter how many times you reread they still pop up.

The Publisher

When you’ve done all you can you send it off. There’s always a fear. Will they like it? Will they reject it?

Last Edit

Having a professional objective eye run over the writing always turns up a few things that require addressing, the odd repetition or section that requires a rewrite.

The Wait

That’s it! You wait!

Finally, months later, a package arrives containing your ten copies and you hold the finished product in your hands. You have your book.

The book is up there on line on the Amazon site and Publishers site. It’s out for order in book stores. The publisher does a little marketing. You sit and anxiously wait for the reviews. What do people think? Have you done justice to Phil?

I hope so. I really hope so.

The life of a writer.

Posted on by Opher

Firstly, you have to have lived a life full of experiences. That’s the grist for the mill. You have to know and have lived what you write about.

I only write about the things I love.

Next, you have to have an imagination that enables you to think up plots, story-lines, characters, settings and stories. You need a wealth of pressing ideas. I’ve always had so many thoughts buzzing round my head that I don’t need a net to catch them; I just need the time and energy to write them down. They generate the obsessive enthusiasm.

Thirdly, you have to have an ability to string words into interesting patterns. That is not merely grammar, spelling and mechanics; it’s a magic that causes words to come together in a synergetic pattern that illuminates wonder. Some call it style. It comes out of nowhere. A lifetime of writing. Some just have it. Others have to work for decades and put in thousands of hours before it comes together.

Fourthly, you need to be obstinate and able to endure the tedium and exhaustion, to become a completer finisher. A book can take a couple of thousand hours of work. You work alone, late into the night, and press on even when all the enthusiasm has dissipated. Then you start editing.

Fifthly, you have to have a thick skin to put up with the indifference, knock-backs, petty nit-picking and rude put-downs.

I have written some hundred and twenty books. I dread to think the number of hours. Fortunately I enjoy writing more than reading. It’s been worthwhile. The cost has been the time not spent with friends, family and other pursuits.

That’s the life of a writer.

The Process of Writing.

Posted on by Opher

I am certain that this process is different with all writers. We all have our ways of working. It is also clear that it is not always the same with me. Sometimes I have carefully plotted out a novel while at other times, I work with a vague idea and allowed it to unfurl as I progress.

I used the Butch Cassidy principle: there are no rules.

But always, as a novel progresses, as a character develops, a novel takes on a life of its own. It is a coalescence of ideas. I will wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and have to get out of bed to write it down or it is likely to go.

All my novels start with an idea. That might be sparked by a news story, a book I am reading, a programme I am watching or a train of thought. One idea is never enough though. It has to be married with others.

Often the end of the novel is what emerges first. I will often write the end first.

Always there comes that time when you sit at a computer (or a typewriter) and begin. You have a blank page in front of you and a head full of ideas. With me there is excitement and anticipation.

The ideas have to have a setting and characters. With Sci-Fi, there are infinite possibilities.

I often write a beginning that is later superseded by another beginning. Once I get that first sentence down the rest seems to flow. The characters develop, the scenes change, the ideas chase one another. I struggle to keep up. It becomes like a line of dominoes. One knocks over another which sets two more falling over. I write quickly, trying to keep up with the ideas, following the characters and inventing settings. I work on the principle that with the first rewrite I can expand and fill everything out. It is as if the first draft is a rough sketch that gives the outline of the book. The rewrite starts to fill in the colour.

It is usual for me to increase the words by a good fifty percent.

The second rewrite will again add a lot more.

The third rewrite is more of an editing process – changing words, altering sentence structure, correcting grammar.

The most important part for me in writing a novel is to get that first sentence down. After that it is like an egg-timer. The sand grains are the ideas, characters and settings; I just allow them to trickle through until my head is empty.

Marketing your book.

Posted on by Opher

You have written your book, rewritten it, redrafted it, and edited it. You have sweated over the cover notes and strained your brain over designing the front cover.

You now hold the finished product in your hand. It looks good. It reads well. It sounds interesting. You are filled with a great satisfaction. All those hours have resulted in this. You created it. It is your baby. You conjured it out of thin air.

It isn’t over.

Having your book, and being delighted with the product of all those hundreds of hours of work, is the easy bit. Now you have to market it. If you do not market it then it will be unread. Nobody will even know your book exists.

Marketing is all about presenting it to your audience. You have to promote it and make people want to read it.

You have to sell it.

Marketing is a merry-go-round. It involves press releases, social media, book signings, blogs, interviews, calling cards and endless promotion.

You can work harder on marketing than you did on writing.

This is where I go wrong. I have written over sixty books. I enjoy writing. I don’t enjoy marketing! I don’t have the time, energy or inclination.

A writer on writing – How I write

Posted on by Opher

How I write

I do not have a standard way of writing. Usually I write from an inspiration. Sometimes I plan meticulously. Often I write a stream of consciousness.

  • Torture – was thoroughly researched. I spent ages checking out the Quran, quotes, factions, terrorism and torture. A lot of that was not pleasant reading. I mapped out each chapter and wrote it slowly.
  • Anthropocene Apocalypse – was written in sections. It was a series of my personal observations and thoughts that stemmed from my life and travels around the world and personal witnessing of the destruction of the natural habitat around the world.
  • Sorting the Future – came from a dream. I was on board the Marco Polo and had a weird dream about aliens who came to Earth on a mission to save nature and intelligence, equipped with rejuvenating machine and advanced technology. It was a bit of wishful thinking. I wrote the first draft in five days in one long stream of consciousness. It just flowed. The rewrites took a lot longer but I tried to keep the light touch and flow and think I have been successful
  • New Eden – was mapped out very carefully with the plot sorted. I had the outline written out but did not write it for about twenty years. When I did it came out as one of my best Sci-Fi novels
  • In Search of Captain Beefheart – was a memoir of my life with Rock Music. It charts my love of Rock from my first singles, albums and gigs through to now. It straddles the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. I did not want it to be a boring chronological run through but I had this idea of a quest that brought it to life. It is my most popular book.
  • A Passion For Education – this was another memoir. I wanted to put my philosophy of education down in black and white but I did not want it to be a boring academic book. I had the idea of explaining why I believed in the various aspects of my reasoning through anecdotes and experiences that brought it to life. It tells the inside story of Headship. I have had many people not in education tell me how interesting they found it. That was good. I wrote it in sections. It was easy to do. The content provided the structure. I had to marry the anecdotes and stories to the theory.
  • Danny’s Story – is a story about a house I lived in in the early seventies. It was full of characters and incidents. I sat on it for forty years. I could not think how to write it in an interesting way. Then I read John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and it inspired me. I saw a way of doing it. I fictionalised myself and the characters so that they were removed from it. It flowed out ion one great stream of consciousness that worked for me. I am now going through and knocking the raw, rough descriptions and sentences into better shape.

As you can see – I tend to suddenly get an inspiration and that is it – I’m off. I write hard and fast until it is complete. I then hone. Sometimes I plan and map. Sometimes I research. But often it comes pouring out of my head in one long splurge. All I have to do is get an insight into how to structure it. It’s like pouring cement. When I get going my mind churns. I find myself waking in the night to head off to the computer to write another section that has materialised in my sleep. I have been known to write through the night for twenty four hours without a break. I enjoy writing more than reading. It’s like solving some huge jigsaw puzzle, a massive suduko or crossword. There’s nothing quite like it. It gives me a reason to get up!

I have written 100 books.

My Sci-Fi books I write under the name Ron Forsythe, the rest are Opher Goodwin.