Writing Process Blog Tour

My dear, sweet, smart, handsome, multi-talented, hardworking friend Cooper Lee Bombardier invited me to join this Writing Process Blog Tour, and I said yes. It is impossible to say no to the ones I admire the most. Also, this seemed like as good a time as any to revisit the blog I never remember I have. 

1. What are you working on?

I am working on my thesis (Still? my friends and family ask; Still, I say), which— because these things need to be named—is called Cuba Libre: Punk Rock in the Belly of the Crocodile. In short, it is a group of essays about the punk movement in Cuba; more precisely, these essays are about my encounters with this movement and a swell of other issues, besides, including but not limited to hunger, economic disparity, effort, censorship, tourism, borders, and what I think of as a universal inclination toward a sense of freedom.

Beyond that, I’m in the early building stages of something whose form has yet to announce itself, about my adolescence-into-early-teens best friend and I and an ongoing fascination with the story of James Vance and Ray Belknap, the young men whose suicide pact was blamed on the supposed subliminal messages within Judas Priest’s Stained Class LP. (Note: my best friend and I did not have a suicide pact. Another note: Stained Class is one of the greatest records of all time. Another note: sometimes it's not hyperbole, it's fact.)

2. How do you think your work differs from others in its genre?

I began to answer this question by listing all of the things my work is not (but that I wish it were)—a characteristically Piper answer I'd like to avoid, because this doesn't strike me as an appropriate forum for self-flagellation. Instead, I'll say some words about what I think my writing is, though whether the answer highlights any significant difference from other writers in the (enormously varied) genre of narrative nonfiction, I don't know.

I guess most often I find myself writing around questions that I know I will never quite answer, but that nag at me anyway—and my hope is that the work demonstrates the sort of befuddled awe with which I move through the world, as well as some occasional bright ideas. I hope that anyone who reads my work appreciates the transparency, has a few laughs, learns something they didn’t know before, and/or walks away with questions, with invigorated curiosity... really any kind of reaction (though preferably positive) will do.

3. Why do you write what you do?

I write because I can’t sit and visit all day long, because things nag at me and writing is the best way I know to work through them, because I think better on paper, because I am awestruck and want others to share in my wonder, and because words are a joy and the love of my life. 

4. How does your writing process work?

I’m not nearly as diligent as I wish I were. My blood gets extra hot—in a good way—under a deadline, even a generous one, so those help a lot. Having a good audience, ear, and/or editor-—when I'm ready for it, and sometimes when I'm not—is an incredible motivator. I almost always begin with pen and paper, and I prefer to do early revisions that way, too. If I try to commit anything to type before sufficiently working it through in a notebook, I tend to freeze up and fall into the usual, embarrassing distractions. Deadlines aside, I write in fevered bursts and then don’t write for days. And I rely heavily on my home library, my school's library, and the public library for inspiration and some company along the way.