BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Inspiration and writing

Lately I've been listening to some iTunes U content from a provider called "Academy of Achievement"

I guess they are called providers?  I'm not entirely sure.  I think that's the best way to describe the organizations that run the channels because they aren't always colleges or universities.

Well anyways the series I'm listening to is called "Authors and Poets".  It's pretty great.  Each person is a famous author or musician or journalist or playwrights or poet or what have you.  And they each get 8 minutes to speak.  There are several other series that I hope to get to eventually.  They include scientists and nobel prize winners and political leaders and such.

Well most of these famous authors are people you would know that have written some pretty famous novels.  A lot of them talk about before they were famous.  Like when they wrote their first book.  Some of them just talk about how they woke up one morning when they were 35 years old and just started to write out the blue!  That's kinda what has happened to me with my books.  I'm actually working on two books now.  But mostly just the one book.  The second is still an idea.

It's super inspiring because before any of these people made it they were just people!  It's how most great notable people in the world start out.  For the most part they are just regular people and they have regular jobs and they just kind of start with an idea and just keep working at it!  I'm still focused on music but the writing thing is still going strong.  I've now been working on this book for a good while.  I've come up with a whole system for writing it.  It's pretty cool.  And it's a system I've adapted from songwriting.  It seems to be something that can work as well for writing more books.  I'm also using something similar to work on my youtube video ideas.  I think the best thing to do is to come up with a system that works.  Once that is in place things can just flow.

So all this talk about my book... and people keep asking me what it's about.  Hmmm... well I can't really give it away... It's just something you have to read to really understand what it's about I suppose.  But... well let's see...

I don't want to give up any content or ideas or anything like that.  I don't want to really give away anything.  Soooo maybe I'll try to describe it using the mood of the book.  Or the feeling of the book... using these two youtube videos...

So the book kinda starts out with this sort of mood... the feeling is very....

 

So watch and take in that video and feeling that song and video gives you.

That's how it starts... then... take in and watch this video and song...

 

 

OK then listen to that song... and sorta just take in the images they show... since I can't find a music video.

Like just the feeling that the songs give.. that's the idea of the book.  So it starts out very... I would say very dark and like there isn't any hope  and ends very light feeling... very hopeful...

I guess that's a LOT of books.  But that's sorta the idea.  It's not really what the book is about.  But again... its just... the mood and feeling of the book.  Hopeless... to hopeful.  Light to dark.  Impossible to anything is possible.

As I've been writing the book I constantly watch those two videos for inspiration along with a whole playlist of dozens of other songs and videos.

Writing is pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever taken up... because it allows you to the bleak truth of reality and make pretty much anything become possible....

And from listening to all these other famous authors that's how it started for them.  They were too broke to leave their apartments. Or they had lost people to death or divorce or betrayal or lost friends to distance or time.

Or they had just lost hope in the world in general and decided to put the pen to paper and put it all there.

So that's what I'm doing... just combining my life experiences along with my imagination with other artists inspiration and putting it into a novel.  Of complete hopelessness becoming a light and hope beyond about the world anything anyone can imagine.

Also it's pretty funny.  There are a lot of one liners that just crack me up every time I read them back to myself.

Some of the authors said it took them 5 years to write their first book.  So hopefully this won't take me that long.  But everyone will have to be very patient.  It's going to take me quite some time to finish writing this thing.  I would say it's pretty much all worked out.  I just have to start connecting things together and fixing logical things that don't completely make sense.  Writing a story is a bit like putting together a puzzle.  You start with just a bunch of pieces that don't make much sense and then you start to put those together and the picture becomes ever so slightly that much clearer as each piece falls into place.  And sometimes you have to take things apart you thought worked and rework them again.

But I am really enjoying the novel writing process!  It's pretty neat.