writing with swedish rock!

i am always impressed with the writing process. as frustrating as it is to have your work be realized, it is equally as exciting to see it change. and sometimes these changes happen involuntarily. i supposed you have to keep a sense of openess, a willingness to roll with the punches, to improvise when necessary.

when i wrote desert sessions, it was nothing but improvisations. i just wrote what i felt. i forgot how to do this when i wrote this is hardcore. that book, because it was my attempt at a genre thriller while retaining my political sensibilities, needed to be strictly plotted out. because of the high concept of the lives of three people changing so dramatically in a 24 hour period, and because typical thrillers have typical plot points, i needed to organize it so succinctly or else it would fail. i had to be obsessed with structure. luckily, it turned out okay judging from the responses from friend and collegues who have read it. i dare say, it is better than desert sessions.

i was trying to do the same process with cooler than the millions, which is why it wasn't working. i've realized that each book i write will need a different approach. cooler than the millions broke wide open for me yesterday, when the character of elton overtook john to become the primary male lead in the first half of the book and john de-evolved into more of a selfish individual. also, alot of what i was going to accomplish in 2/3rds of the book has now been put into the first half of the book. i haven't cut anything, and i'm not cramming anything together; it's just that the second half of the book has completely changed.

when i was blocked, i just started to force myself to write, which eventually became more of a natural process until thoughts and words and sentences were just spilling out, to the point where i have been writing pretty much non stop, every moment i get, even during work, for 3 or 4 days straight. the end result is a book which is now going to be longer than intended, with a first half that is intense in its short number of pages, filled with dirty politics and violence. and now the second half, which will be more of a mystery novel. that is what i decided: that cooler than the millions, while sharing the same characters and while still fitting together, will almost be like two different books. it's interesting anyway. i have just written a great little section that involves two people having sex in the backseat of a car, a bridge, and a tank. trust me, they go together once you read it!

any rate, i have been listening to some good music while writing. one of the bands i've been listening to is the sounds. the only band since rammstein to show that playing keyboards can be cool. enjoy the sweet, swedish rock of the anthem, "living in america" and their david letterman performance a while back for "seven days a week." (forgive the choppy video. you may have to let the video play through all the way once, then on the replay it runs much smoother).

p.s.: what is it with pixie blond girls in the music industry and their ability to perform well? gotta appreciate a girl that can hold her own amongst a group of guys. at any rate, these guys look fun live.