Friday’s Theme Music

Today’s music choice is a song that keeps stirring during my writing thinking session this week. I’m mulling three different novel ideas. One of them ends up with this song, “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin (1975) in my stream.

I have some vivid impressions of this song on the album that it came from, Physical Graffiti. Nineteen years old, I’d completed basic training the year before, and technical training at the beginning of the year. After that, I was assigned my first duty assignment at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. I met two other guys there. One of them had a Ford Mustang Mach I. He used to play Physical Graffiti on his car’s eight track or his room’s stereo almost all the time. He especially loved “Kashmir”.

Haven’t seen him since 1976, when I left for the Philippines. Wonder what he’s been up to.

Poor, Poor, Cynical Me

After writing a snubnopsis – a typo that caught me off guard. Freudian slip? My dark side asserted its opinion about having an agent read it and react positively? Don’t know.

Okay, to begin again, after writing the synopsis and submitting twenty queries, I was alternatively discouraged and excited. I’m told that all writers endure these cycles. I endure mine in edgy desperation, not sharing it with anyone outside of my posts. Not asking for a shoulder, mind you, just stating facts.

I’m always disappointed in the submission process. One, some agents are so nebulous and wishy-washy about what they’re looking for, offering scant evidence of what’ll attract them. Many fall back on that old expression, “good writing”. They know it when they read it.

Two, some of them offer a huge buffet of wants. They want it all. Send it all to them! Hurry.

Anyway, though, that done, the writing mind struck out on a hunt for a new story. I’m due to write a third book in a series, after e-publishing the first two. The problem that I face is that I’ve outlined the third book, so it feels like it’s already written, or something. Muses are sirens with other ideas. That’s why I’ve eschewed outlining. I prefer pantsing. It feels like the territory is always new and fresh when I follow an unplotted, organic trail.

Oh, boy. What I know, though, is that I want and need to write, to begin again, to follow the muses, find a story, and write it. I dislike the downtown. I’m addicted to drifting through the day, imagining characters and their situations. As usual, after careful consideration, I’ll do something impulsive. Then I’ll start writing like crazy.

Flight is boarding now. Later, gators.

Saturday’s Theme Music

Sitting in the chasm between writing projects, dealing with submissions, hunting for acceptance, stamping on depression, and resisting regression. I walk along on slippery wet leaves, gold and red, fallen from trees, I hunt the moment and a song, something to sing to take me along.

I depend on music like I depend on coffee, computers, and the net, soft addictions to deal with what’s left, and what I hope to do and be, striving to leave a little self to the world’s history.

Into the mind stream jumps the Kinks, squeezing alongside Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and snippets of other song links, taking me back to decades gone, sometimes to people and selves where I felt like I more belonged. I offer you a fantasy, a song to help you escape, “A Rock and Roll Fantasy” from nineteen seventy-eight, a time when we had more hope and direction, and people weren’t warning us about civil war, strife, and sedition.

More coffee, stat.

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