My Music Journal 2025: October 20, 2025

 

Monday, October 20, 2025

Time: 7:45 PM
Song:  Rock Yourself
Artist: Locomotiv GT
Mode of Consumption: Listening to “Locomotiv GT” vinyl album. 

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7svjwMcArQ7a45C5EH371c?si=4ae62e38f4d04742

For the last year or so, I have been running our Write On meetings, and one of the activities that I initiated was studying various published works. That has meant me finding stories, essays, poems, and novel chapters.

For the most part, I have used our discussions to lead me into finding some story or something that builds off the things we’ve learned. For example, I used a selection from Stephen King’s book “On Writing” once, and in it, he contrast between John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy. He had one sentence examples. I was able to provide a chapter from “The Road” one month, and then followed that with a chapter from “Of Mice and Men.” 

The last month or so I have really struggled to find something that I have wanted to talk about, and I needed to select something tonight so that I could have it ready to hand out to the rest of the group tomorrow night. 

So, I sat on a stool in our basement and rifled through some of the books that are in garage sale pile. These are books that we have finished reading in the last year or two. 

There was a nonfiction book by David Sedaris. It opened with a chapter where he shares a story from a Halloween in his youth. It was timely in that regards, but I wasn’t sure there was a ton of substance there to discuss.

Next there was a short story book by Richard Russo. I love Russo, but the stories were all pretty long, and I couldn’t remember the details of any of them enough to zero in on one. I’ll have to look around sometime to see if we have any of his novels around. 

Ah, “The Shipping News” by E. Annie Proulx. This is one I’ve mentioned at Write On before. It starts each chapter defining a knot from the “The Ashley Book of Knots.” The opening chapter really leans into the definition to create the main character. 

We have a winner. Yeah!