Writing While Away

Wednesday is about books. And writing. Today it’s about newsletters and my process - while holidaying. This time next week I’ll be somewhere else entirely. But the newsletter will still be ‘here’.

For the best part of nine years I wrote a daily blog for Stuff. It started right around this time – the month of September – in 2007. I remember it vividly. I was on holiday. I had been approached about writing a music blog, and I was keen. I had no idea then how it would come to dominate my life, especially from about 2009-2013. But it most certainly did. In September of 2007 I was enjoying a holiday in Fiji. We were young(er) and didn’t have a kid. We were there for a family wedding. I do enjoy swimming, but I’m not a fan of sand. So I parked up in the hotel and wrote what would be the first few blog posts for what would go on to be called Blog On The Tracks.

I’d dragged a 4DVD box set of Rolling Stones concerts over to Fiji. I had an iPod filled with music, piles of CDs and my computer. The internet was patchy – so I was just writing off the top of my head. Topics were plentiful because I hadn’t done this before. There was one about the band Wilco – but it was really about the seriousness of music fans, and how sometimes music was ruined by fans being a bit too cult-like. So, really, the post existed purely so I could share the headline I’d come up with to hang it all under: Obsessive Musical Cults, or, Where There’s A Wilco There’s a WACO. There was one about the aforementioned box of Rolling Stones concert films. One about the Carpenters – though it was mostly about the tribute album to the Carpenters. One about how I always used to listen to Guns N Roses’ Appetite For Destruction whenever I flew anywhere. And how in particular it was the perfect Wellington-Auckland flight-album. And I think there was one about Neil Young. (There ended up being a few about Neil Young).

That was it though. That was all I had. Each night on holiday, I banged out a few words and saved the docs ready for my return. That was when the blog would launch. These early posts were supposed to prop me up. They’d be there in the files for when I was pressured. I’d create new content in and around these posts. But what happened instead was these five or six ideas were the first five or six published blog-posts. And by day seven, it was seat-of-the-pants stuff. (For Stuff). And I flew that way for another nine years.

Every holiday I took during that time, I would pack the laptop up and drag it around the country with me, and over to Australia a few times, to Vanuatu once, and even to America a couple of times. I stayed up late at night in a motel Charles Bukowski probably stayed in. Miraculously, when I got back from seeing The Roots live in concert at the Starlight Ballroom in San Francisco, my laptop was still there under the bed where I had hidden it. At 4am, and more than sufficiently lubricated, I found my way around the keyboard by memory to review that show for the next day’s blog.

But mostly I just wrote about stuff while I was on holiday, just as I would have done if I hadn’t been on holiday. I’d get up and file the daily report on music. That was how I saw it. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes I shouldn’t have bothered. They can’t all be bangers. But I never liked the idea of taking a break – because writing is a muscle. And you need to stretch it. You need to turn up. You have to do the work. If you do that sort of writing (or this sort of writing) occasionally, you will find it tricky to make things stick; you will struggle to develop any sort of groove. That’s been my experience. That’s my process. That is what I have learned about myself since 2007. I knew it a little bit sooner than that perhaps, because even before blogging I was writing a lot of what is now called content – and from 2001-2006 I was published in a lot of places I guess. Always an assignment. Always there on top of my real job. Always something to do while on holiday, as well as during the regular working life.

The couple of times that I signed off for a month or so over the Christmas break, I felt liberated only for a day or two. After that I twitched. I wondered what to do. And when I tried getting back to writing in late January, I found it harder than had ever been the case. I had lost my stamina, my discipline. I had to re-learn it.

All of this, is to prepare you for the fact – as teased previously – that I’m about to go on holiday. For only the second time in the life of “Sounds Good!” Last year I was in Melbourne for a week and I kept up the thrice-a-week schedule, no issues.

But this time I’ll be in America. I’ll be all over the place. I will try and schedule a couple of posts before I go. (I say that now, it is unlikely this will actually happen). And I will take my iPad with me, in the aim of tapping out some stories, some newsletters, some ideas…

And I’ll try to keep them to the schedule I’ve made over the last couple of years, but there might be some day-late/day-early carry-on. Because I don’t know quite what I’m getting myself in for, data-wise, wifi-wise, and just travel-wise. I don’t know where I’ll be on certain days. It’s a family holiday, and so I’ll want plenty of that family-time too of course, but writing is something I do for relaxation, or just because it’s something I do. It is not so much who I am – because that sounds lofty, still. But it is also who I have become (because that somehow makes sense to me at least). If that sounds at all pretentious to you, just know that I hear it with a 50/50 mix of mild delusion and slight weariness.

When I was last in America – in 2016 – it was the very final days of Blog On The Tracks. I didn’t know that at the time. But it was in the post I guess. But I had my own website too, Off The Tracks – you can now read that site’s contents, all of the archive and fresh new posts right here at Substack. I wrote a bit of a tour-diary of America in 2016. And it is something that might happen again in 2023. We’ll see. You’ll know as soon as I do. I also wrote some reviews of albums, some creative writing, and some random/general blog-posts. Because, as said, have laptop – will travel. Am travelling – will write.

I am hoping to get to a gig or two – so I’ll definitely review them here. Because that’s just hard-wired. I tried to stop writing gig reviews, back when music journalism was cancelled in 2016. But I just couldn’t stop myself. And then, post COVID-lockdowns, I got right back into gig-reviewing; it’s just how I process going to shows. It’s part of my routine, if not ritual.

Friday’s music post this week will be as usual. And Monday’s movie/TV newsletter will be whatever it will be – arriving as normal. My first day of holiday, but not my first day of travel. After that? Well, it’s all up in the air. As I will be too. And then when I touch down, hopefully another newsletter will have arrived in your inbox or via your app. But if you don’t get one, don’t panic. I’ll write as soon as I can/as soon as I’m able.

I still get people telling me I should ‘have a break’ while I’m on holiday; that is, after all the very purpose…

But that hotel room in Fiji in 2007 is a strong memory. The start of a habit. And I doubt I’d be happy without it. Weird. But that is how I am, if not who I am. This is me. And I write – even while on holiday, up late at night sometimes, or up very early in the morning. It can be laborious, and if you wince while reading some of the words you can guarantee that I have cringed at myself even harder. But they can’t all be bangers. It’s work. And it needs doing. You have to hit the keys as if they owe you money. You will go stale otherwise. And stale is dull, is boring.

Last week I mentioned my holiday reads – they’re in the mix of course. I’ve already ordered a book to meet me in America; couldn’t wait. Could not be without it. So it’ll be lookout as that pile grows while I’m away.

And then I’ll be back. And back to work. And in a newsletter-sense, you might not have even noticed anything different. Only some of the place names might have changed. I’ll be here. Still doing it. And if you’re there still reading, then I’ll continue to be very grateful for that.