Sixteen Reasons by Connie Stevens
I had another song in mind for today, one about a violinist I’d done a bit of research on, but impulsively, I’ve decided to choose this one. It just feels more ‘today' than the other song does. That’s the beauty of writing this thing. It’s a facet of my life I can rely on in an impulsive manner. It doesn’t need to be planned or anything. It’s a bit of freedom—woo.
Aside from choosing what sentences to write, impulse is beautiful but deadly for a writer. As I’ve hammered home in many previous posts, the creative impulse is very strong, and when it’s neglected, the writer’s life falls apart; this is merely because we’ll tend to become creative with our own life as opposed to with our work. An example is becoming antagonistic at social events, becoming hostile, picking on people or talking to them like one of our characters would. It’s very insane. Another is doing something like booking a flight to Taipei last minute with all our savings and abandoning all our responsibilities, rationalizing it by saying—well, I’m a serious journalist! Or, the unwriting writer could, and this is the worst possibility, take a samba or tango class. If we fail to write, these things might happen. I also believe, and I don’t know why, that if writing doesn’t occur, I’ll whither away and die much faster. That may just be a superstition.
A surprising fact about Connie Stevens: she’s a diehard Republican, contributing thousands and thousands of dollars over the years to the RNC, one of those Los Angeles Libertarians, like Jon Voight and Clint Eastwood, just much less famous. She’s also Carrie Fisher’s stepmother.