There are those times in a creative person's life which you remember very well. One such time for me was when I started writing my first "real" novel (Land of Hope). About 5 hours into the writing it suddenly struck me what I was doing, and I said in a loud voice, "holy shit, I am writing a novel!" It was not long after this, of course, when I realised that writing for nine hours on the trot was a dumb idea because most of what you produce is pants. I did manage to salvage quite a few of the ideas but tossed about 40,000 words of total bilge.

I had another such moment on Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning at about 4:30, but, unlike the above one, someone else was needed for it to work properly. Whilst my bandmate John and I were waiting for a large multiplayer map for Unreal II XMP to download, he began to play a tune on his keyboard. As you do, I naturally started singing along. The odd thing was that both the tune and the lyrics I was singing were original, with the words off the top of my head.

At first I thought I was singing in my head, that was until John began to sing along with me. Next thing I knew he had a piece of paper in his hand scribbling down my lyrics and his musical notation. By the end of the download we had lyrics, a tune, and instrumentation for our first original song (as a band). It was both a most cathartic moment for me and one of the most pleasant experiences I have had in many a moon.

Whilst dling the next big map, we finalised the song. I asked him whether this was the normal way to write tunes (he had written original music before, but not lyrics). John assured me that is was the first time he had ever heard of it.

What kind of song is it, you ask? We, for our sins, have written a power ballad. I can't wait to sing it in public. Next time I hope we produce a good ole' rocker.