{"id":8118,"date":"2021-11-30T09:54:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T15:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=8118"},"modified":"2021-11-30T09:54:55","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T15:54:55","slug":"not-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2021\/11\/30\/not-by-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Not By Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"457\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chaos.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8119\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chaos.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chaos-300x171.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chaos-768x439.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>While eating breakfast before work yesterday, I watched this video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Band Member On Story Of The Most DISTURBING Song Ever Conceived Circa 1980 | Professor of Rock\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VHJ_vj5gJis?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>About five minutes in, there&#8217;s an interview with Peter Hook about recording Joy Division&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/zuuObGsB0No\">&#8220;Love Will Tear Us Apart.&#8221;<\/a> While mostly focused on the song, Hook talks about the times and some bits about the process behind the recording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He focuses a bit about his bass style with Joy Division. Many bassists lean into the lower strings when playing, but Joy Division had a different sound: a low and brooding singer and&#8230;higher bass notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems like something done by design, but it turns out Peter Hook had a crappy amplifier. When he played low notes, it sounded like sludge. Only when playing higher up could the bass actually be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later, when he got a decent amp, singer Ian Curtis told him to keep playing high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a signature sound created not by design, but by circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Older Stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve written long enough that I can see how my writing has changed over the years. Older stories tend to have fewer settings and leaps in time. Part of this, I&#8217;m sure, was me figuring out how to write, but when it came to comic book scripts I was also writing early on, I jumped around. There&#8217;s something about the design of comic book stories that lends itself to that kind of thing, whereas the prose I used to write was more grounded in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes that place was one room, with flashbacks to other things necessary for the sake of the story. Other times, I might have jumped around a bit between characters and scenes, but the stories I told were linear. That changed when I was in a writing group with a couple friends years ago and often produced one or two stories a month for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Recently&#8230;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One of my friends from that writing group recently mentioned how much he likes the changes of time and place in my stories today. No longer do I fret about smooth segues and explanation like I once did. If something requires what I might have deemed a jarring leap in the past, that&#8217;s what I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure, part of it is realizing that trying to explain everything slows a story down, but much of the things people like about the stories I tell today is not be design. Like Peter Hook&#8217;s high bass notes, it&#8217;s a result of what I have to deal with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not By Design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While I am very fortunate to often have hours to write before work, I still find myself writing when I can &#8212; sometimes, in less-than-ideal conditions. Right now, my wife is doing laundry back here in the office. I can hear her in the living room when she&#8217;s not back here. Shadows play at the right side of my peripheral vision as she moves around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clear, my wife and I have long established boundaries when I&#8217;m writing or she&#8217;s doing art, but each of us often create not in solitude, but in what would be deemed chaos to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I go into the office, I write by hand during lunch breaks in cafeterias so loud that music can&#8217;t block out the sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the exceptions of very early morning writing sessions, I rarely have time for the intense focus I prefer when I write. (And even then, sometimes my wife wakes up very early as well, and she has every right to get up and move about. Perhaps when we have more room, I&#8217;ll find better solitude, but our apartment isn&#8217;t even 850 square feet, so we do the best we can with what we have.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">By Necessity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All this is to say that much of what might seem like style in my writing is really circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used to have jobs that required little thought. Today, I&#8217;m paid better because my job requires me to give some of my brain to thinking about work even when I&#8217;m not working. Before COVID hit, my only writing time each day was an hour lunch break in a crowded cafeteria. Today, I often write among domestic distractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My process now involves writing little chunks by hand, or chunking out bits of stories in Scrivener as I build a new story from little more than an idea. While my phone makes no noise (and I&#8217;m good at not distracting myself online while writing), there are times I&#8217;m waiting for a message and I flip my phone over so I can see it light up or check email to see if the message has come through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My choices are to deal with all this, or be precious about my writing time and end up pissy because things aren&#8217;t like they once were, when I had dark and quiet times during which to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The stories I write are, at least in part, a product of the environment and circumstances under which they are written. This is not to say I don&#8217;t have the luxury of those silent mornings I crave, but they are not guaranteed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, I write when and how I can &#8212; and a fortunate side effect of that is people seem to like the effect of necessity on the stories I tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Image: <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@dariusbashar\">Darius Bashar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While eating breakfast before work yesterday, I watched this video. About five minutes in, there&#8217;s an interview with Peter Hook about recording Joy Division&#8217;s &#8220;Love Will Tear Us Apart.&#8221; While mostly focused on the song, Hook talks about the times and some bits about the process behind the recording. He focuses a bit about his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8118"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8122,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8118\/revisions\/8122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}