One Writer’s Harrowing Journey (With Pictures!): Music

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Music and Me and Did Anyone Else Think Mumford & Sons Were From Tennessee?

I didn’t used to have specific songs or playlists for my stories as I work on them. But these past couple of years, I’ve been finding myself picking out songs and thinking, “Hey, that’s exactly how Character X feels and/or went through!”

I think it has something to do with the fact that these past couple of years I’ve actually been working on longer projects for extended periods of time. When your mind is so deep into a story, it’s going to make connections all over the place. Some songs have lyrics that fit perfectly for specific characters or relationships between characters. Others just have a feel to them that fits my story in some way or another even if the lyrics aren’t an exact match.

So here’s my current WIP playlist:

There’s one song missing. “Annie” by Elefant which goes right before “Thistle & Weeds.” They didn’t have it available on Playlist.com. So here it is from Youtube:

Is it just me or does this playlist make my story seem kinda dark, or at the very least on the downer side?

My inner goth is pleased, but I think I need a playlist part two. Subtitle: Hey, some characters in my story are actually happy and functioning people! I swear.

“No One’s Gonna Love You” and “Thistle & Weeds” are sorta my cornerstone songs. They were the firsts on my list and speak to certain characters/relationships in a very definite way (which may diverge from the songwriters’ original intent, but whatevs. It’s art. It’s interpretable). When I was stuck in my writing once, I listened to the two versions of “No One’s Gonna Love You” (Band of Horses is the original) over and over for like 30 minutes until I figured out what I needed to do.

I love “Thistle & Weeds” because I can really see and feel a storm building and escalating when I listen to it. (It's best to listen to it SUPER loud to really get the effect). I also feel it aptly represents a certain character of mine’s back story. She’s kinda scary crazy, but she wasn’t always like that. It built up over time and escalated to the point where she is now.

Also, the lyric “The sky above us shoots to kill.” Awesome! What a way to describe lightning! I wish I was as good at describing stuff.

Speaking of Mumford & Sons, I wasn’t the only one who thought they were from Tennessee, was I? Maybe this exposes my shameful preconceived notions about banjos, but I pretty much assumed that anyone playing them is from a southern state of the U.S. (Don’t get me wrong, I can get down with some Bluegrass. The banjo is an instrument to be respected.) I’d probably listened to the Mumford & Sons CD about 30 times before I was like, “Hey! Heeeey. Southern people don’t say ‘can’t’ like that. Or ‘plant.’ Or ‘all.‘ Or ‘been’! What is this deception!?!”

Plus, to me the leader sing from this band has a similar tone to the lead singer from Kings of Leon and Kings of Leon are from the South(-slash-Midwest). So, you know, associations. And apparently one of the guys in the band is called Country! And were is country music from?

Whatever! My assumption was valid leap in misjudgment!

…

Mumford & Sons really gets down with some banjo.

Anyway, what about you? Do you have a playlist to go with your novel? What’s on it? I loves music and to know what other folks are listening to. If’n you ain’t got no playlist, tell me yourn favorite song from 2011.

Or of the week. This here’s one of mine. This song is loud and discordant and brief and fast, and I loves it.

And oh, my gosh! I just found out this band is from Bowling Green, Kentucky! It has just been a southern-fied second half of my post, hasn't it?!

I think I got too excited about that...

Happy Friday, ya'll!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Are You A Pen-And-Paper Person?

Or do you go straight to the computer and start tp-tp-tptptp-ing away?

Me? I love a good notebook.

What is it about the chaos of keeping my ideas in barely legible writing across a million different notebooks that helps my creative process? As chaotic as the inside of my notebooks are, though, I do a pretty good job of remembering what I wrote in which notebook and wheresabout within those pages I made the jot. Sometimes I remember that I wrote something about something but I can’t find it, so I’ll look through the likely notebooks and a few unlikely ones five times with no success. Then I looks on my computer and find it in parenthesis in the middle of some bullet-point outline I typed up.

I appreciate my computer. I really do. But sometime it just throws me off.

I have a system.

My system works. (Mostly).

Usually, my projects only need one notebook each because my little spiraled friends are just for ideas, bits of dialogue, strokes of genius, etc. I’m not writing out entire, fully-rendered scenes in them. I save that business for Word, and the dialogue or quick description I’ve jotted down makes me feel like I’ve got a head start on whatever I’m sitting down to the computer write.

A big exception to the one project-one notebook trend is the novel I’m currently querying. That sucker stretched across many a notebook, and many a year.

The idea is one that had been incubating for a long time before I seriously sat down with a mind to make it to the end of a complete manuscript. (Previous incarnations of it include a pilot script for an animated series and a handful of comic book scripts.)

That’s another great thing about notebooks. I more often stumble across and decide to crack open an old notebook sitting on my shelf than I do an old Word document tucked away in my computer. It’s interesting to take a glance at some old dialogue or old character name or old character relationships from 5 or 10 years ago and remember the former lives of something that has come a long way since it’s inception.

And, my, has it come a long way.

Okay, enough about my super awesome notebooking habits. Here’s some stuff that’s almost as cool. Come. Geek out with me:

I’ve wondered about it. You’ve wondered about it. Here’s the answer to that age old question, what would Star Wars look like if Dr. Seuss had created it?

“You will sits and drinks my tea or I will eats you here and now!” – Uncle Werewolf from children’s graphic novel Ghostopolis (Doug TenNapel). You tell 'em, Uncle Werewolf!

What do you mean you haven’t gotten the new Strokes album yet? Have a listen. (Scroll down to the March 18 post.) Here’s one of my favorite tracks from Angles.