The Writer’s Playbook: The Drummer Boy

By Steven Harms

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As a contributing writer to Killer Nashville Magazine, I’ve been tapping into my career as a professional sports executive to showcase some very personal stories and observations from my time in the business. Each one has been filtered through the lens of utilizing those moments to correlate topics to discuss in the world of writing. 

Here, I’m going to pivot a bit and pluck a different kind of story from my background. It’s about my journey to becoming an author and getting published. My hope is that it serves to inspire, in some way, all those who are trying to break into the business despite its tendency to be a rather difficult and complex undertaking.

Writing is our passion. It’s a creative expression full of dreams and hopes and wants. Success, comes in many forms. For me, I simply wanted to challenge myself to write a novel and get it published through the traditional process. Would I have the chops to succeed? But that question and dream followed something I accomplished that was a precursor; an undertaking that took me down a road I had never traveled.

As a backdrop, I’m a person of faith and have attended church my entire life. In the early 2000s, my wife and I started attending a non-denominational church that, we came to find out, used creative arts at times in its sermons. Specifically, dance and drama in the form of skits to underscore that day’s message. I dabbled in theater in college, but frankly, never stayed with it and moved on with my career following graduation. Apparently, the acting bug never truly left me, and I ended up volunteering to be in some skits at our new church home. I eventually started writing their skits around 2004 to provide the need for “home-grown” drama, which implanted in me the writing bug. 

Fast forward a few years. I can’t tell you the exact moment, or the trigger, or the catalyst that washed over me one day and placed on me a calling to take a stab at being a playwright and write a unique story surrounding the birth of Jesus. If you are a person of faith, chalk that up to the nudging from the holy spirit. If you aren’t, chalk it up to me being a crazy half-baked dreamer.

The inspiration was quite clear and straightforward, though. The seed of the idea was to create a story using songs of the Christmas season to help drive the plot like a traditional musical does and build a compelling story arc that would touch believers and non-believers alike. The story wasn’t what you’re probably thinking. The target audience was very much adult-oriented, with the main character’s life unraveling in some very troubled waters. I also have zero musical talent, making this idea even nuttier. After a few nights of trying unsuccessfully to get it out of my mind, I dove in.

There I was, like we all sometimes do, staring at a blank screen with that heavy mixture of excitement and dread. You think I would’ve researched simple things like how to write a script, what were the dos and don’ts, generally acceptable lengths of scenes, and on and on. Well, I didn’t. I just started.

I landed on something from my childhood in the form of the song “The Little Drummer Boy.” It’s been a favorite of mine, perhaps my most favorite. I gave him a name–Mozel–and filled my head and notes with his backstory and plot line to get him to Bethlehem on the night of the birth. Along the way, literally a hundred characters came to life. Eight traditional Christmas songs were used to help drive the plot. It took me about a year to complete. 

I never told my church I was undertaking this effort. I simply acted on the inspiration I was gifted and wrote the story. I distinctly remember, when it was completed, I said something to God along the lines of, “There. I did it. You asked me to do this, and, well, I did, and it’s now done.” I never held any purposeful intent to ever let it see the light of day. 

Maybe a few weeks rolled by, and then something happened. The head of drama for my church had professional theater experience and was an advocate for utilizing drama as an outreach to the community. She directed some secular plays annually at our church over the years, with most of those targeted at kids and families (think ‘Wizard of Oz’ type shows). She and I became good friends along the way. We connected following a Sunday morning service, or maybe at a church picnic or something, and I casually told her why and what I had written. She wanted to read it and was adamant that I send it to her. This occurred in spring of 2007.

In December 2008, The Little Drummer Boy made its debut on our stage. All in, the cast and crew numbered around 150. We pulled together every discipline a professional theater needs, including volunteer leaders who captained costumes, lighting, sound, choir, music, ushers, parking, and marketing. We paid a local university’s drama department to build sets, leaning into their expertise based on our stage dimensions and back-of-house capabilities. The show ran for five years with four shows during one December weekend annually in 2008-2010, 2012, and 2014. Over 20,000 people attended the performances, some from nearby states who became aware of it through social media marketing. We gifted homeless veterans an entire section of seats each year. We bused them in from shelters in Detroit. They usually numbered about 300 and were the most energetic and grateful group of people I had ever been around. That alone was worth every minute of our collective efforts to bring the production to life. After those seven years, I pulled the plug due to personal burnout, and wanting the show to go out on a high note. 

But something interesting happened in that final year of the show. That same little voice gave me another nudge around October 2014. Having never written a short story, let alone a novel, it told me to write one, anyway. The inspiration was the challenge, but more so, to task myself with embedding moral principles as the undertow theme within a secular book in the mystery/thriller/suspense genres. Two years later, with an edited manuscript completed, I began my search for an agent and landed at the Liza Royce Agency in New York about five months into the process. The first book, Give Place to Wrath, was published in 2017 as the Roger Viceroy Series, with the second one, The Counsel of the Cunning, released in 2021 after a pandemic pause.

While the books have been critically well-met, the sales haven’t done nearly so, which makes me a member of the overwhelming majority of authors in the world. But I press on with determination and confidence, having shifted to a stand-alone story taking shape now for my third book.

As mentioned at the start of this blog, perhaps there is inspiration for you in the telling of my road to being a published author. Mine was a voice that simply wouldn’t go away. 

As I look back, I truly believe becoming the playwright of The Little Drummer Boy was a deep-dive training experience. I had to map it all out as the playwright and producer, ultimately having to devise a business plan and then follow through with the hundreds of action steps to bring the show to life. Yes, it was consuming, but the results outperformed even my most positive projections. The process taught me there are no corners to be cut, that inspirational story ideas, told well and authentically, will capture audiences, that people in your universe of contacts and relationships will help without question, that sticking to a plan produces results, and that you can jump into the great unknown and find your footing because you heeded a calling to do so.

Give it your excellent best effort. There are readers out there just waiting to dive into your book. Happy writing.

Getting out of a Writer’s Slump

By Leslie Conner

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All writers have found themselves in the not-so-ideal situation—feeling like they’ve fallen into an abysmal ditch or they’re at a standstill at the foot of an insurmountable mountain. This sensation is most affectionately called “Writer’s Block.” But I prefer not to use that term because it sounds too formidable, like the perfect antagonist. 

I choose to use “Writer’s Slump” because it more accurately portrays the predicament (and my horrendous posture at the keyboard). Writer’s Slump is the inevitable condition visited upon anyone who takes on the task of writing anything, whether you are schlepping away at a short story, a mystery novel, or a memoir. You’re gonna run smack dab into that wall and a groan of recognition will escape your lips. 

You’ve seen this wall before. We all have. 

And there is nothing more defeating than staring at that wall with nothing to say to it but a string of obscenities. It can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be immobilizing. I’m here to share a few tips that I use when the creative train in my brain derails somewhere in Albuquerque. 

1. Skip Ahead. If you are writing a scene of two characters in a diner and you’ve spent more than two paragraphs describing how the characters are holding their cups of coffee, just stop. You’ve hit the wall, and you’re trying to drive through it by boring everyone to death. There are times when I know that I need a scene with two characters having a conversation in a diner, but I’m not quite sure how it’s going to play out. In other words, I haven’t figured out the purpose. So, I meander around describing everything just to keep writing, but I end up with miles of nothing. That’s when I know I need to skip ahead to a later scene. Getting the characters into the next predicament can (a lot of times) help me to figure out what should happen before it. Writing what you do know will help you to fill in the blanks of what you don’t know yet. 

2. Work on Something Else. If there is no skipping ahead on this story, you might consider pulling out an abandoned short story or rough draft of another novel. I do this all the time. If you drag your brain through something you haven’t read in a while, it’s like rewiring the synapses. Getting yourself in a completely different world with completely different characters makes you focus on anything other than what you were struggling with in the first story. And then when you come back to that story later, you’ll see what you need to do, clear as day. Almost like it was right there in front of your face taunting you like Road Runner does to Wile E. Coyote. 

3. Go to another creative thing. Writers are creative people, and their creativity is not limited to just writing. Most authors I know enjoy many other creative hobbies. So, when you are stuck in the mire with your story, pick up the guitar or sit at the piano, get the canvas out, or take some artsy black and white photos of your cat (even if he doesn’t want you to—and he, most likely, doesn’t). I can hear you saying now, “but writing is my jam. I’m not good at anything else.” Well, that’s just not true. Everyone has talents that they don’t consider talents. You could bake the most incredible red velvet cake or whip up a mean spinach artichoke dip. Maybe you’re great at knitting socks for dogs or growing tulips. Whatever it is that you love to do—that you lose yourself in—go do that until the writing muse makes her grand entrance again. 

4. Go to the woods. If steps one through three don’t help, the most reliable way to break through a slump is to go outside. Nothing clears out the gray matter clutter better than some fresh air. Go to the nearest park and take a hike. Get lost in the trees, sit and ponder the reflections on the lake—wherever you can go that removes the sounds of civilization from your consciousness (you know those pesky things like cars, phones, televisions, and people). There is nothing better to restore your sense of calm and creativity than communing with the birds. They always have a story to tell, and if you’re lucky, you can hear it. 

A Writer’s Slump is just a dip in the road. You aren’t a bad writer or a failed creative person if you find yourself sitting in the mud puddle every once in a while. But if you are diligent about inviting your creative muse to come back to you, she will. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to have some donuts there for her, too.