Contest: Who's Your Muse?

[alanajoli]

As I mentioned earlier, I got my Serenity Adventures earned Origins Award, known as a "Callie" (because it's in the shape of the muse Calliope) in the mail in the last few weeks.

Comments

[spyscribe]

This is utterly unromantic, but the impending deadline is my greatest inspiration. That and knowledge of the sucking well of self-loathing that awaits if someone asks me, "So, what are you working on?" and I know the true answer is: "Nothing."

[jeff_duntemann]

Calliope, of course. I have a perverse love of the musical instrument, the original steampunk synth, which came about when a clever mechanic connected a row of surplus locomotive steam whistles to a keyboard. A calliope has a role in a future drumlins story, so I've been reading up on them.

But more to the point, when I want to set a mood for a scene I'm about to write, I play a few tracks from my MP3 collection that point me in the right direction emotionally. This works better sometimes than others, but sometimes it works spectacularly well. The best example from my personal experience is the scene in The Cunning Blood where the slightly deranged nanomachine Sahan Grusa destroys Sophia Gorganis's pirate colony by creating swarms of terrifying but harmless nanobots. The track there was "The Plagues" out of the soundtrack album for the film Prince of Egypt. The effect was damned near perfect.

[elven_wolf]

Euterpe. Because even though like you I work for Calliope, it's Euterpe who goes 'Look! Here's a musician! You need to write about him and his music!' And I can't write without listening to music that fits the scene.

[bccreations]

Salma Hayek from Dogma.

[dcopulsky]

Everything I write is secretly about my girlfriend (Kat), whether I'm drawing on things we've done together, incorporating odd bits of the knowledge and ideas she's shared with me, or exploring the emotions of our relationship through strange characters in ways I'd be too embarassed to articulate.

[alanajoli]

Congrats, sir -- the d10 of Fate chooses you! I'll announce it on the post today. Shoot me an e-mail (alanajoli at virgilandbeatrice dot com) with your current mailing address and I'll send out the book. :)