Music for the Story -
For writing, I have a very long, very diverse musical playlist consisting predominantly of Celtic music, all instrumental (lyrics distract me when I’m writing) and all of it just gets me into writing. It awakens the muse and the words come forth. I wear headphones and am able to tune out the whole world. My world becomes the story. I see it, feel it, hear the dialog and I just… write!
The interesting thing is for almost every story I’ve written, one song comes out on my playlist as the song of that story. It’s the one that “fits.” It’s very hard to explain, and I haven’t figured out what makes it fit and why, but it’s the one song in the whole playlist that seems right. When I find that song, I’ve been known to just put that one song on repeat, over and over as I write, not caring that I’m hearing the same song again and again. It seems to fuel my muse and the story unfolds from inside me, right onto the computer. To this day, when certain songs on my playlist come on, the story I associate them with always flashes through my head. It usually doesn’t distract me, but it always happens. For just about every story I’ve written, I can identify one song that defined it, all the way back to early stories like Demons and Heritage (though my playlist has grown a lot since then!)
Wow *scratches head* that’s kind of neat actually. (okay, it’s neat to me. LOL)
Sometimes, I’ll struggle in writing a story, feeling distracted, gaining a few words here and there, not having yet found my rhythm or my flow for the story, feeling very unfocused. I’m skipping song after song in my playlist, not finding one that has the right mood for the scene I’m working on and all the sudden I’ll hit one song and it’s like a floodgate. I’m not sure I fully realized how much that impacts my writing until today. I knew there was something to it before, as I’d hit on songs and replay them predominantly in writing particular stories, but the level of impact it has on my writing, was not clear to me.
I found that today for this story (yay) and before I knew it, I had 2600 words written in a very short time. I was in the zone and off and running. Now, I managed to put about 6k on this story before finding this “song” but there was a lot of tweaking, a lot of “that isn’t quite right” a lot of “that reads like a narration and not a story” bits, and a lot of rearranging too. It was like I couldn’t get the story straight. WHAT story was I trying to tell? Why? What journey are the characters taking in this story? That disappeared today. I found the story I wanted to tell (and some of it is unexpected and not what I was thinking when I started LOL) and boy is my muse telling it! HA! I hit this one song and it just defined the story.
It’s very hard to explain and I get the distinct feeling that I’m not articulating myself very well here. (and you’re probably thinking I’m off my rocker! LOL)
So, yes, this is a writing update for me and this Secret Santa story, which, as of now, is humming along beautifully! But, this is also what I think is an interesting insight into how my own writing process works, which may or may not be of any interest to any of you, but it struck me very profoundly and I just had to share. It sort of makes sense. I’m a lifelong musician (singer) so it stands to reason that the creative side of me identifies very strongly with music. Guess I didn’t realize just how much!
Definitely something I’ll have to give more thought to.
/end weird writing babbling….
The interesting thing is for almost every story I’ve written, one song comes out on my playlist as the song of that story. It’s the one that “fits.” It’s very hard to explain, and I haven’t figured out what makes it fit and why, but it’s the one song in the whole playlist that seems right. When I find that song, I’ve been known to just put that one song on repeat, over and over as I write, not caring that I’m hearing the same song again and again. It seems to fuel my muse and the story unfolds from inside me, right onto the computer. To this day, when certain songs on my playlist come on, the story I associate them with always flashes through my head. It usually doesn’t distract me, but it always happens. For just about every story I’ve written, I can identify one song that defined it, all the way back to early stories like Demons and Heritage (though my playlist has grown a lot since then!)
Wow *scratches head* that’s kind of neat actually. (okay, it’s neat to me. LOL)
Sometimes, I’ll struggle in writing a story, feeling distracted, gaining a few words here and there, not having yet found my rhythm or my flow for the story, feeling very unfocused. I’m skipping song after song in my playlist, not finding one that has the right mood for the scene I’m working on and all the sudden I’ll hit one song and it’s like a floodgate. I’m not sure I fully realized how much that impacts my writing until today. I knew there was something to it before, as I’d hit on songs and replay them predominantly in writing particular stories, but the level of impact it has on my writing, was not clear to me.
I found that today for this story (yay) and before I knew it, I had 2600 words written in a very short time. I was in the zone and off and running. Now, I managed to put about 6k on this story before finding this “song” but there was a lot of tweaking, a lot of “that isn’t quite right” a lot of “that reads like a narration and not a story” bits, and a lot of rearranging too. It was like I couldn’t get the story straight. WHAT story was I trying to tell? Why? What journey are the characters taking in this story? That disappeared today. I found the story I wanted to tell (and some of it is unexpected and not what I was thinking when I started LOL) and boy is my muse telling it! HA! I hit this one song and it just defined the story.
It’s very hard to explain and I get the distinct feeling that I’m not articulating myself very well here. (and you’re probably thinking I’m off my rocker! LOL)
So, yes, this is a writing update for me and this Secret Santa story, which, as of now, is humming along beautifully! But, this is also what I think is an interesting insight into how my own writing process works, which may or may not be of any interest to any of you, but it struck me very profoundly and I just had to share. It sort of makes sense. I’m a lifelong musician (singer) so it stands to reason that the creative side of me identifies very strongly with music. Guess I didn’t realize just how much!
Definitely something I’ll have to give more thought to.
/end weird writing babbling….