I don’t talk much about writing on my blog, but writing has been pretty much all I can think about for the past month or more. Today I was reflecting on how there’s usually one song that I heard at some point while writing each of my stories that, when I hear it, reminds me of that novel and puts me right back into the feel of that story.
Curious what songs inspire my writing?
Well, I’d been writing bits and pieces of The Lost Empire for a while when, one day, on a KEXP Music That Matters podcast, I heard Home by Villagers and something just clicked.
Oh, man. The feels in that song. Dang. There are a couple of lines that definitely get right at what I wanted to write in this novel. I listen to it whenever I want to remember that.
Before I finished TLE, I started another crazy novel that has a bananas narrative structure that somehow fits with the world. It was based on a writing exercise I did for one of my UC Berkeley Extension writing classes. When I heard Witchcraft by Pendulum, one of the scenes just popped into my head.
I didn’t know where that scene went in the story, but I could vividly see it in my imagination. I nicknamed that novel “Falling” and wrote nearly the whole thing during NaNoWriMo 2013. It still needs work, and every time I hear that song, I want to dive back into that world.
This past NaNoWriMo, it happened again. I was working on what I eventually named Godda’s War, and I heard Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood and something just clicked.
There is so much about this song that reminds me of Drew (one of the two POV characters). I just want to curl this song around me and play it over and over again when I work on this novel.
If you’re curious, you can read blurbs about these stories by clicking on my “Writing” page. None of these are currently published, so you can’t buy them anywhere, yet. I’m working on that. 🙂
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