What of the Muse?

Dang him. If you believe in him, anyways. I was reading Blog Ing's Writing Log and he was talking about sitting in front of the paper for an extended period without anything coming out. In the mean time Theadra has got more bouncing in her head than she can get down in the time she has.

I fall somewhere in between.

Ing's experience made me think of the problem that we all deal with at some point.

That made me think of something I read at Holly Lisle's site a long time ago. Don't ask me where; as she like to tout, she has over a hundred-thousand words of free writing advice over there. I'm sure one of the other Buddies who has read it all can vouch that what I'm very leisurely getting ready to talk about is, in fact, there somewhere.

Holly has scenes that she has a cute name for - candy scenes? something like that - scenes that she was incredibly excited about writing. She would make them into a reward. When she had written so much tying-together material she would allow herself to write the scene she was so excited about writing before.

I've been doing that a lot with the story I'm working on now. It started in my mind as a few roughly connected scenes that I am trying to turn into a 16k competitor for WotF. I hope you are sending lots of positive writer thoughts this way, because the space between those scenes is going a lot like this: blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. Anyways, sometimes thinking of muses is a muse ing. Or a muse Ing. What do I know? If I had written this much for my story tonight I would be this much further along. Hopefully it helps somebody somewhere, if only in the sense of shared empathy. Or something.

Write on.

R.

Observation

Some people are clever. Some people are prolific writers. Some people are both. At least there is rock and roll for the rest of us.

R.

Leppard on the Loose

I heard that Def Leppard was releasing a new album and I did some reminiscing about those pop-rockers. There path has been an interesting one. By the time I was old enough to know about the Leppards, they were already the one-armed-drummered-pretty-poster-boys for glam rock. Leather and spandex, ugly guitars, the one-armed drummer - they had it all. I bought Hysteria on cassette at a fair. I wore it out. Then I discovered something very interesting: they had done other albums. How novel. I made a powerful discovery then, one that I will share with you, if you don't already know. In their early years, the Leppards were a driving force in the NWOBHM with the kind of impact that led young bands like an unnamed garage band that would become Pantera to learn and play the album On Through the Night from beginning to end.

So . . . I have put up a new player to the right. It only has three songs. I know you want to know why if they had three albums before Hysteria why I could only find three songs. First off, I tried not to put anything that was remotely a hit on there. Okay, Too Late for Love still gets a lot of air time, but I was desperate. The web site that does the players there did not have a single song from On Through the night. Not a one. I recommend Rock Brigade or Sorrow is a Woman if you want more vintage stuff.

These are just some tunes that might surprise you if thinking of the Leppards instantly makes you start humming Two Steps Behind. Watch out for the B-word in Let It Go, its right in the first verse, but do take note of the fine cow-bell work. The drummer did have both arms in those days. The riff in H&D should speak for itself, and as I already said, TLFL is just a fine tune that leans more towards their old sound than where they were going by Pyromania.

As a sidenote - I have a friend who refuses to listen to Led Zeppelin on moral grounds but thinks the Leppards are swell. Keep that in mind as you enjoy these tunes.

R.