Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 8, ISSUE 4 | Page 21

In Nashville, it's not so much who you
know as what you can do, and I think I
acquitted myself very well during my
years there. I left voluntarily, despite hav-
ing opportunities to move into record
producing. My time there showed me I
could accomplish a lot of things if I put my
mind to it and worked hard. I subsequent-
ly left country music altogether and
moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1984 and
then to New Orleans in 1985 where I
played and sang rock & roll and rhythm &
blues in a Bourbon Street hotel piano bar.
WTT: That's quite a change!
MD: It really was. I had never done that
kind of thing before and the gig just sort
of fell into my lap. I sensed opportunity,
so I grabbed it and wound up playing at
that hotel for nearly 7 years. It was diffi-
cult at first, building a solid repertoire
and developing my strength to where I
could play and sing 100% of the songs for
5 hours a night, six nights a week. That
can take a lot out of you if you're not used
to it.
WTT: Then what?
MD: Well, then I moved to Key West,
where I played for the next twelve years
or so. Key West is a great place, but musi-
cally, Jimmy Buffett has ruined it with his
calculated images of the town. Everyone
wants to hear "Margaritaville". I only
played it at gunpoint.
W INTER 2019
WTT: So, according to my calculations,
we're up to around 2004. Is that when
you started writing?
MD: Time for a flashback. I started writ-
ing in 1987, during my New Orleans
years. A lady friend of mine, who was her-
self a writer, somehow got the idea that I
could write a novel. I laughed it off, telling
her that was the province of "real" writ-
ers, not musicians like myself.
Anyway, she continued hounding me until
I'd had enough. One day, I bought a sheaf
of blank white paper and a box of pencils
(computers in those days were way too
expensive).
I sat around looking at that blank sheet of
paper for hours until finally an opening
line came to me. Then, another line, then a
character, and boom! I was off to the rac-
es. Three months later, I had a finished
novel. The next day, I started another one.
That one took me about eight months to
write.
Of course, neither of those novels will ev-
er see the light of day, but as a result of
the confidence I'd gained during my
Nashville years, I was able to actually
write two novels! I started a third imme-
diately. My music career prevented me
from devoting any real time to marketing
these books, so the third one languished
in semi-finished form for three or four
years. By then, I was in Key West. The
musical pressure was off and I could feel
the first subtle rumblings of my music ca-
reer winding down.
P AGE 16
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE