Yeah, sure.
“I write because…because I must,” he said as he fell back in a swoon, hand to forehead.
Blah, blah, blah. Flip it to the B-Side, Sonny.
[Jeez…how many of you don’t know what I mean by “B-side,” I wonder?]
Let’s drop the dramatics and be real for a moment.
The truth is, if I never wrote another word, if I never ventured another sentence of prose, I would not die. Yes, that’s right. If I never wrote again, I wouldn’t spend my life in abject misery. I wouldn’t feel the lack of a pen in my hand like the ache from some phantom limb. I wouldn’t bemoan the globe’s loss of my mellifluous prose (nor, most likely, would the globe).
No, I do not write because “I must.” Nor do I write for fame (duh!) or fortune (ditto!). Nor do I write for the approbation of my peers (hell, they’re so busy they can’t even find time to read my books, much less swamp me with approbation.)
Obviously, there are reasons I write. You don’t write nine novels without sufficient reason. But do you want to know why? Seriously, do you want to know?
C’mere. I’ll tell you.
I write because it’s fun.
Yup. That’s why. It’s fun.
There are other reasons. It’s artistically fulfilling. I get a grand feeling of accomplishment when I finish a novel, a chapter, a really great scene. It’s a hell of a challenge. Writing a novel is hard work, and something most people in the world will never do. I look back on my work and take pride in it.
Another big reason is to learn something. Every book I’ve ever written has taught me something about history, about cultures, about people. I learned about the Bedouin and the secretive Sulubbiya when I wrote Dreams of the Desert Wind. I learned about life in the Dark Ages, Celtic gods, and the ley lines of Brittany when I wrote The Ploughman Chronicles (did you know that there really was a 9th century duke of Brittany named Alain?) I learned a ton about the Cheyenne, their history, and a hundred other things as I wrote The Fallen Cloud Saga. And Unraveling Time gave me a reason to learn about Agincourt, the yellow fever epidemic of Philadelphia, warfare tactics of the ancient Greeks, and Hypatia and the library of Alexandria. I love learning stuff, and writing gives me the perfect excuse.
Right now, I’m learning about the founding of Old Seattle, the last frontier city in the world. I’m learning about the culture of the people who lived here before the whites arrived, about the hardships of the white settlers, of how a city was born and how the land was shaped by human design. Each fact is a rough-cut gem that gets tucked away, creating the foundation for my next book. It’s fascinating. It’s exciting.
And it’s fun.
Building a story from nothing, pulling words and images out of my inner consciousness, crafting page after page until I have a ream filled with words, a tale to be told, a novel to be read.
It’s grand fun.
That’s why.
k
Okay, so to actually address the topic and not just the reference that gives away my age, I started writing as a “have to” thing. It was how I got all the horrible things – thoughts, feelings, worries, fears – out of my head, things that actually would have caused damage not to get out.
But part of doing that was eventually transitioning to less horrible things as I worked through all those horrible things (yay for therapy), and the less horrible things I had to get out, the more I was able to write other things instead, and now I pretty much write for the same reason you do, because I love to do it. 🙂
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PS – I write stories not because I have to – but because it helps me to clear out the whirlwind of story ideas from my head.
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I make a point of delving into obscure references that linger on from our history and love to read stuff like; Upper Case and Lower Case refers to a printers collection of letter stamps that were used to create printing press plates. Capital Letters were stored in a wooden case above the small letters – which were also in a wooden case. Therefore; ‘Upper Case’ came to mean capital letters.
33 1/3 LPs didn’t have unsaleable songs on their B-side – just the rest of the album. But some artists DID have fun with their 45rpm records. Napoleon XIV’s release of ‘They’re coming to Take Me Away’ featured the same song on both sides – except that the B-side song was in reverse!
.
*goes back to doing useful stuff like memorising the dictionary*
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I remember that song, but I never heard that story! I wonder how much that brings on eBay, these days.
Thanks!
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[Jeez…how many of you don’t know what I mean by “B-side,” I wonder?]
Ooh, ooh! I do. I understood that reference.
(now let’s see if you get THAT reference. Mwahaha)
😀
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That could be anything from The Beave to Sweathogs to Spicoli!
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(It’s more geeky than that. And much more recent. Want a hint?)
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Sure. Hit me!
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It was a line from a recent comic-turned-movie.
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Well, that narrows it down to, what, about HALF of the movies out there…
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Oh geesh: It was in the Avengers. Someone tossed out a comment about flying monkeys. Thor said he didn’t understand and Capt. America quickly jumped in with “I do. I understood that reference.”
AAAAANYway…
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Criminy. And that was one of the ones I actually saw (it being Joss, and all)…
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That’s why I figured you’d know it!
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A “B-Side” was the less saleable song on a vinyl disc. It was on the opposite side relative to the sellable song (the “A-Side”). This was back when music was distributed on petroleum byproducts rather than digitally, as it is today.
Though I had to explain what it was to one of the nieces the other day…
j/k 😉
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To be specific, it really only applied to the 7-inch 45 rpm discs, each side having only one track/song. I’ve heard it applied to LPs (33rpm) but I consider that an error.
Did you also have to explain what “like a broken record” means?
hehe.
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What about the 10-inch 78 rpm discs? They pre-dated the 45s and were also issued with an A- and a B-side (although very early 78s only had one side). I believe the catalog numbers on the discs were suffixed with an A and a B. But yes, the B-Side was supposed to be the less sellable/likeable/profitable song. Every so often the B-side became the hit, and the A-side flopped.
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The commercial value of A- vs B-sides didn’t really come into play until the ’50s, by which time 45s were becoming the mainstay. You’re probably correct, in that the cataloguing of 78s may have been A and B, but the relative value of either side wasn’t a factor in which was which. The use of records in radio broadcasting wasn’t that common before the ’50s. IOW, though “B-Side” may have been a term since 1910, I think it’s safe to say that the current (albeit anachronistic) meaning derives almost solely from the era of 45rpm vinyl.
All of this is waaay more than I knew about “B-Side” this morning. Great details, folks!
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Here’s a completely unsubstantiated theory about why the “A” side became the “hit” side over time:
Let’s say you’re a radio DJ and you get a new record. You haven’t heard either side yet.
Would you make the assumption that the “A” side was “better” than the “B” side, simply by virtue of being the “A” side? “A” is better than “B”, right? ..Any “A” grade is better than a “B” grade, whether it’s in school or grading beef, or in software development (yet to come at that time), or whatever. “A” always comes first, and it’s always superior.
It’s a fictitious explanation, but it’s plausible. Lord knows the actual explanation is likely way less esoteric.
It’s similar to the way that 33-1/3 albums would be sequenced so that the first three songs would be the strongest songs/hits. The DJ isn’t going to sift through the entire album — he’s just going to drop the needle at the first song to see if the album if it’s of any use to him. If he likes the first one he might listen to a couple more..
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I don’t know…It had to be more intentional than that. Record producers (almost always) knew which song was a better hit, and that’s the one they’ll promote the hardest. The B-side was almost a lagniappe–a gift with purchase, if you will. The A-Side was the “hit single” side, just as the first three tracks on the A-side of an LP were the three best…at least until the prog-rock era. (Boy, are _we_ getting off topic!)
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I dunno… we *are* maintaining an internal consistency within this particular thread in the comments section. I’d say we’re still “on topic”!
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