Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose music has been praised by The New York Times for its “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.” Her music has been widely performed in the U.S. and internationally by ensembles including the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Modesto Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, and The Singers – Minnesota Choral Artists. Choral Arts Initiative’s debut album of Trumbore’s choral works, How to Go On, debuted at #6 on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Chart. Trumbore has written extensively about working through creative blocks and establishing a career in music in essays for 21CM, Cantate Magazine, the Center for New Music, and NewMusicBox, and she is the author of Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life. Learn more at daletrumbore.com.
Kristina Marie Darling: Your new book, Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life, was recently launched and hit #1 on the Amazon Hot New Releases List. What are three things you’d like readers to know before they delve into the work itself?
Dale Trumbore: First, the creative lessons in Staying Composed are derived from lessons in composing, but the book is absolutely for writers, too. I’ve found books about writing to be so helpful to my composing process, and I wrote this book with every intention of it being useful to any creative person.
Staying Composed is about getting to know your process so well that even the worst parts of that process can’t derail you; you’ll learn how to name those challenges, anticipate them coming, and move through them without adding extra anxiety to what’s already a challenge.
And I truly think there are only so many ways to describe the creative process—to say, essentially, just sit down and write the thing. But the entire point of Staying Composed is to give you phrases you can repeat like mantras when you’re caught up in the actual mess of creating and move you through any blocks you encounter.
KMD: This is a courageous and necessary book, especially because creative practitioners almost never speak openly about self-doubt and anxiety. In my opinion, this silence fuels a toxic culture in many artistic circles. What are a few things you hope to change by starting a conversation?
DT: I’ve realized that whenever I mention my own anxiety to another artist, they almost always describe their own relationship to anxiety in response. At the very least, we both feel less alone. At best, our shared experience renders our anxiety less powerful over both of us. Once it’s been declawed in this way, anxiety is a little less threatening, and maybe even less likely to derail our creative work in the future. However uniquely terrifying you think your own creative fears may be, I guarantee that another artist has felt the same way.
KMD: What is the greatest risk you took when writing this memoir? After seeing your book published, what was your greatest triumph?
DT: Self-publishing was scary, even though I had a professional editor and graphic designer on my side, rooting for the book to be good (and for it to be done; by the end, we were all more than ready for it to be done). While I’ve been writing shorter essays for years and grew up in a family of writers, writing still isn’t my primary profession. It felt risky, in a way, to take ownership of the word “author” as someone who primarily writes music.
Honestly, just finishing the book felt like a triumph. Holding the galley in my hands for the first time was unreal; it almost felt like it would scald me if I held it for too long, and I had to put it back down very quickly. (Do other authors feel this way?) Obviously I got over that feeling, but it took a couple days to be able to accept that I needed to pick it up and continue editing it.
The reader response so far has been great, too; people are finding the book helpful, which was the entire point of writing it. I’d hoped it would get that response, but you can’t control what anyone else thinks of your work, and I was open to the possibility that it wouldn’t be as successful as I’d hoped. But people I don’t know are recommending it to other people I don’t know on social media, and seeing or hearing about those interactions feels really lovely in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
KMD: Staying Composed has seen great success as an independently published title. What are some advantages to publishing work independently?
DT: In the classical music world, there’s been an increasing shift towards self-publishing over the last twenty or so years, as well as the rise of distributors—rather than publishers—who will promote your work while still paying you well and letting you keep your copyright.
So while there’s still a stigma against self-publishing in the writing world, I approached self-publishing with a composer mindset. I initially made a list of publishers and agents I could approach, and then I ended up not pursuing that route—or any of the prospects on that list—at all. I did hire quality collaborators, though. I hire Jackie Littman, my graphic designer, as often as possible; she’s immensely talented, and she’s designed my logo, two of my album covers, and now Staying Composed.
As a result of self-publishing, when I get my first royalty check, I’ll be able to more than pay my rent with it. Since the release in early June, it’s made back just about double what I put into self-publishing it. And if I want to adapt this book into a workbook or a workshop later, which are both options I’m considering, I still have my copyright; I won’t need a publisher’s permission to continue adapting this work.
KMD: As a composer, you frequently work with experimental poetry by women, setting contemporary texts to music and bringing them to life. How did your work as a composer prepare you for the writing life?
DT: There are so many similarities between writing and composing, especially when it comes to large-scale works. In writing a book and in writing larger works, there are moments where the project seems insurmountable, as if it will never be done. Right now, I’m in the earliest stages of planning a concert-length piece (about 70 minutes long), and it’s reassuring to know that I’m perfectly capable of moving through that barren desert wasteland—the middle of a project—where there seems to be no way out for miles. That stage is awful, but it’s temporary; it passes, and then somehow, you’ve made it out of the desert, you’ve found a water source, and you have many, many pages of the new thing you’ve created. And in music and composing, the editing process is the same; there’s always something else you could be fussing over and rewriting, but eventually you have to let the piece go and start something new.
KMD: What other projects, events, and performances do you have in the works? What can we look forward to?
DT: I was horribly late turning in this interview (sorry, Kristina!) because I’m getting married this summer, which certainly feels like a Significant Event. I don’t recommend planning two separate wedding celebrations, releasing a book, and having three deadlines in one summer, but now that I’m finally almost at the end of it, I can already sense that I’m going to remember this overwhelming summer in a happy, nostalgic way.
Over the next year, I’ll be writing a solo piano piece about how we process memory over time, and that will be for me to perform—a 100% self-motivated project, sort of a counter to writing music solely on commission for the last seven or so years. I’m not complaining about working on commission—that’s a rare and wonderful thing, and I’ve been working my entire life to have writing music (and now words) become how I support myself.
Whenever I’m feeling stuck in my work—composing or writing—or as if I don’t know what my next direction will be, I consider what I can accomplish by myself. Nearly every project requires some sort of team eventually—an editor, a designer, a recording engineer, etc.—but I will always be able to write an short essay for my own web site. I’m a pianist, too, so I’ll always be able to compose and perform music for solo piano. If you consider the resources already available to you, the friends you love to work with, and the work that you love doing, you’ll never be without something new to create.