What On Earth Does Van Halen Have To Do With Writing a Good Novel?

By Gst Dv (If you know me, you can still tell it’s my name, right?)

Maybe it takes a whacked out mind like the one rattling between my ears to come up with a comparison as in the title floating above this blog cloud. Probably, it also has something to do with me being a guitarist. Hell, I even used to make money jamming. But I was no Eddie Van Halen. And a lot of my rockin’ and rollin’ buddies used to say the same thing about themselves. We simply idolized this skinny dude with the funny striped instrument.

In case you’re not familiar with Edward Van Halen, he is pretty much to rock guitar what Stephen King was to horror. Sure, there are some other giants like Clapton, Page, Hendrix, and so forth, but…well dammit, just hear for yourself on the You Tube link here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_lwocmL9dQ

Okay, so here’s the thing: when I’m listening to Van Halen’s melodic screams, power-packed scales and celestial trills…I find that I want to hear what he’s going to play next. He constantly keeps me dazzled. And a few days ago when Michael Jackson’s Beat it played on a nearby radio, featuring Eddie’s solo, the reverie struck an epiphany: I want to read books that amaze me the same way.

I want the story to go somewhere. If it has to slow down to provide some needed info, cool, but the author should make those words sing. Nothing ordinary. Don’t give me sentences that anybody at a keyboard could dial in. Yeah, clarity is paramount, but these little characters we call words can be stacked in oh so many ways, going up, down, and stirring up pictures and emotions in the reader. Like Eddie’s solos.

Rock on Eddie, and rock on my writer chums.