Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe started his Dark Days blog way back in February but it wasn't really updated until recently, when he announced he finally finished his first draft.
Initially, Blythe thought he would have enough time to write his book and write blogs about the process. But, as he points out in an excellent new entry to his blog, he grossly underestimated how hard it is to write a book:
As I sat down each day to work on Dark Days, I very swiftly realized that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to do much of anything at all except write my book while I was writing my book. Writing a book is not easy. Not at all. And despite the fact that I am, indeed, intimately familiar with one variety of the creative process after making several records with my band, the process of writing a book is vastly different from getting together with four other dudes to write and record an album. In my experience, writing a book makes writing a record look like a joke in comparison. And if you do it like I did it, with no cowriter or ghostwriter or underwriter or whatever they are called these days, then you do it 100% alone. That means when something sucks, it’s 100% your fault. There’s no chance of pawning off even one shitty sentence in your book on someone else. Unlike an album, where listeners sometimes exercise a great amount of leniency and tolerance for aspects of the music they don’t care for because of the things they do enjoy about the band (ie., “I don’t really care for the singer, but the drummer/guitarist/accordionist/kazooist/whateverist is amazing”), an author has nothing to offer to the audience but his own contribution to the book. A reader isn’t going to recommend your book to anyone else just because it has a few good paragraphs in the first chapter, or they really liked the epilogue. And unlike the collaborative effort that occurs in a band, you as the author can’t blame that particularly sucky self-indulgent part of your book on anyone but yourself. In a band, if a song just sucks (even if it’s your fault), you can always pass the buck and blame someone else: “This would have worked if it wasn’t for that stupid wanking guitar solo at the end,” or “If the drummer would have just played a straight beat like we wanted him to, the middle of this tune wouldn’t sound like he had epileptic fit in the studio,” or “This thing was a ripping jam until that douchebag singer came in and ruined it with his pretentious lyrics and awful screeching.” Then, when the album drops and people hate it, you can just sit back and take a long relaxing soak in a glorious hot tub of self-righteousness: “I tried to tell them, but those boneheads wouldn’t listen. Now look at ‘em.”
Blythe also talked about the innate procrastination that comes with writing:
Contrary to my ridiculously self-assured assumptions, I did not write the book with the greatest of ease. I did not breeze through it with style and grace. I did not just sit down, start typing, and watch the words appear before me like magic. I struggled hard with it, every single step of the way. And not only did I fail abysmally to give the book writing process a Bruce Lee-like Fingers of Fury typing beat down, in very short order I began to manifest every clichéd writerly behavior I had ever read about. Wild mood swings. Long periods of depression. Inexplicable and overwhelming urges to get up from my desk and do housework. A bad case of Ye Olde Imposter Syndrome. Multiple trips to the grocery store in one day for entirely unnecessary single items, things like hot sauce and hummingbird feeder nectar. Lengthy journeys down the cyber-rabbit hole after I stopped writing to look up some historical tidbit pertinent to my book, only to wind up an hour or two later on some ridiculous website dedicated to some grotesque “fitness model” internet celebrity I had never heard of. The only two things I didn’t do that a lot of writers seemed compelled to do were: #1- drink way too much (I mastered that skill a long time ago) and, #2- become “blocked” (actually, I did have a two week period when I couldn’t bring myself to write a single sentence, but a friend very dear to my heart had just died, so I cut myself some slack there).
Overall, the entry is a great read and I can't wait to read the book. Initially, a late 2014 release was planned but it's clear with Blythe just finishing his first draft that the book will be released early 2015 at best.
[via MetalSucks]
