Finding the muse in music
I've been working on a couple of projects recently, and for a while, there was some overlap. I've been editing what will be the sixth Emma Fielding mystery, Ashes and Bones (which comes out next summer), and at the same time, writing a short story (which will be part of a holiday anthology next year). The short story features a character named Margaret, and is set at Christmas-time in 1722 London.
The fun thing about this is that Margaret is someone Emma has been researching in the archaeology mysteries, which are set in the present. Piece of cake, right?
Nope.
I was completely confounded when I started working on the short story. I knew everything I needed to do, and could not do it. Couldn't type a line. It wasn't just nerves (though there were some of those; this is my first real stab at writing a short story for publication), and it wasn't that I didn't know where I was going, because I had all sorts of research and a couple of scenes in my head. I even had Margaret's backstory from the Emma books (especially Past Malice and A Fugitive Truth). With a deadline looming, the situation was untenable, to say the least.
I finally realized that I was still listening to the music that I used to inspire Ashes and Bones. It just didn't work for the short story and its period setting. As soon as I switched from The Killers (Hot Fuss) to Francois Couperin (L'Aptheose de Lulli) and Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi), I was golden. The story just happened. I swear the keyboard still has scorchmarks on it.
Some people need complete silence to work, some need a little background noise, and some need music: It's imperative to know what works for you. I need music, and it's something specific that sets a mood for me, reminds me of something, or just takes me out of my own head. Generally speaking, I have one or two albums that I listen to over and over while working on a book. And they stay a part of that book for me, they don't transfer from one project to another (my friend and fellow writer, Steve Kelner, wrote about this phenomenon in his extremely useful book, Motivate Your Writing). While there are a couple of albums that I can use repeatedly, for very emotional scenes (including Evanescence's Fallen, The Cure's Disintegration, and a couple of movie sountracks, like Prospero's Books, The Last of the Mohicans, Master and Commander, and Diva), I have to find that one album or playlist to be my soundtrack for a year.
Making the connection between classical music and Margaret was a ridiculous relief, and I probably should have figured it out sooner. Oddly enough, it turns out that only Baroque music worked: later composers like Liszt and Beethoven didn't move my story any further along than The Chemical Brothers did. As long as I stuck with Bach and Handel and Lully and things pre-1750, I was fine. Maybe it's the way the music of the period is structured, maybe it's because those pieces evoke for me the mindset of the early 18th-century, Margaret's "time." There's not always a direction correlation between setting of a story and my personal soundtrack, but there surely was in this case.
The fun thing about this is that Margaret is someone Emma has been researching in the archaeology mysteries, which are set in the present. Piece of cake, right?
Nope.
I was completely confounded when I started working on the short story. I knew everything I needed to do, and could not do it. Couldn't type a line. It wasn't just nerves (though there were some of those; this is my first real stab at writing a short story for publication), and it wasn't that I didn't know where I was going, because I had all sorts of research and a couple of scenes in my head. I even had Margaret's backstory from the Emma books (especially Past Malice and A Fugitive Truth). With a deadline looming, the situation was untenable, to say the least.
I finally realized that I was still listening to the music that I used to inspire Ashes and Bones. It just didn't work for the short story and its period setting. As soon as I switched from The Killers (Hot Fuss) to Francois Couperin (L'Aptheose de Lulli) and Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi), I was golden. The story just happened. I swear the keyboard still has scorchmarks on it.
Some people need complete silence to work, some need a little background noise, and some need music: It's imperative to know what works for you. I need music, and it's something specific that sets a mood for me, reminds me of something, or just takes me out of my own head. Generally speaking, I have one or two albums that I listen to over and over while working on a book. And they stay a part of that book for me, they don't transfer from one project to another (my friend and fellow writer, Steve Kelner, wrote about this phenomenon in his extremely useful book, Motivate Your Writing). While there are a couple of albums that I can use repeatedly, for very emotional scenes (including Evanescence's Fallen, The Cure's Disintegration, and a couple of movie sountracks, like Prospero's Books, The Last of the Mohicans, Master and Commander, and Diva), I have to find that one album or playlist to be my soundtrack for a year.
Making the connection between classical music and Margaret was a ridiculous relief, and I probably should have figured it out sooner. Oddly enough, it turns out that only Baroque music worked: later composers like Liszt and Beethoven didn't move my story any further along than The Chemical Brothers did. As long as I stuck with Bach and Handel and Lully and things pre-1750, I was fine. Maybe it's the way the music of the period is structured, maybe it's because those pieces evoke for me the mindset of the early 18th-century, Margaret's "time." There's not always a direction correlation between setting of a story and my personal soundtrack, but there surely was in this case.
posted by Dana | 12:30 PM
2 Comments:
It's so cool that that works for you. I can't write if there's any music playing, or even if the TV's on downstairs. I listen to the background sounds and I get nothing out for words.
Can't wait to read the new book and the short story!
Hey Beth,
Yeah, it's funny what works--and so important to figure it out. I think I developed the habit from all those years of commuting and doing my homework on a noisy train.
Thanks for the encouragement--and good luck with your writing!
Dana
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