Celebrating Beethoven's 250th Birthday

 

(Photo credit and history of the painting)

With my background in music, I cannot forget my first piano teacher who had a poster of this Ludwig van Beethoven portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler. The portrait has captured my imagination, especially the tale that the painter had to finish the hands by memory because Beethoven refused another sitting.

The best known guess for Beethoven's birth is December 17th, 1770 since he was baptized on the 17th, although he was probably born a day or two earlier. Regardless, this week will mark his 250th birthday.

I usually listen to Beethoven while writing, and I have selected some of my favorites beyond the widely known 5th and 9th Symphonies. May these pieces be your writing background music and inspiration for your writing to celebrate his 250th birthday.

Piano Sonata No. 5 in C Minor; Op. 10 No. 1 -1. Allegro molto e con brio

Rage over a lost penny Op. 129 

Symphony No 4 in B flat major 

Symphony No 7 in A major, Op. 92

Fidelio (Beethoven's only opera) 

What music do you listen to while you write? Do you have favorite composers, bands, groups? Favorite pieces? Something you listen to every time you write?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing Playlists

Music. It expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Victor Hugo said that. It's kinda funny that his major works would go on to become these huge famous musicals, and even more so when you consider that the original texts were like 1000 pages long.

I'm the kind of person who needs background noise, no matter what I'm doing. Driving? Radio's on. Lab work? Listening to a podcast. Trying to sleep? Got my white noise machine. So, when I'm writing, it's the same thing - I need something in the background. And that something is music.

When I work on a new manuscript, the first draft is usually accompanied by ambient music, like movie soundtracks or video game music. (Skyrim and The Lord of the Rings are particularly good at this stage.) Once I have a good sense of the tone of the manuscript and the overall feel, I absolutely have to put together a playlist. It's impossible for me to focus without that specific list of songs organized in a very precise manner. I can't say what it is - maybe I just hate silence.

Usually, I have one or two songs in mind that really speak to the manuscript. I start by adding those to a new Spotify playlist, and then I try to branch out to similar songs. I give the playlist ebb and flow - as much as I'd love to fill an entire playlist with total bangers, that's more likely to distract me than inspire me - and see where it takes me. Sometimes it's easy, with the songs popping into my head, and other times it's a half-day project. However long it takes me, I always end up with a playlist that's at least an hour long, filled with music that is this manuscript.

For example, GIRLS BREAK THINGS is a lot of female-fronted heavy metal (since it's a manuscript about badass girls and combat robots, badum-tss), while my new fantasy manuscript is more Love Never Dies meets Billie Eilish. Some of my writer friends absolutely cannot write to music with lyrics, and others have to have that pop ballad. Whatever your jam, writing to a playlist that accompanies your manuscript can be a great way to get inspired. Check out one of my playlists below!


Do you have a writing playlist? What's in it? Drop a link in the comments!

Tuesday Museday

Do you use the term "ear worm" to describe a song that just gets into your head and won't leave?
My husband plays this game with me: He'll hum a song and time how long it takes for me to start humming it after he's stopped. I get ear wormed fairly easily.
My current ear worm is your writing prompt for today. My kids are obsessed with Big Hero 6, and the Fall Out Boy song that plays while the heroes are practicing with their new suits. My three-year-old calls it the "Baymax song" and demands that we listen to it every time we get in the car. It's got some cool lyrics; hopefully some part of this song will inspire your writing. Or the concept of an ear worm will. Whatever it is, if you are feeling stuck today, check out Immortals, by Fall Out Boy by clicking here. You can listen to the song on the band's official Vevo channel, while watching the most boring video imaginable.

If you are working on a query and you'd like fresh eyes on it, let me know in the comments! I'll pick someone for a query critique.

Music and Memory

I've started on my sequel to Crow's Rest (its working title is No Man's Land) and a couple chapters in I realized I was having trouble finding the tone of the book. In the past, I haven't worried about that too much in the drafting stage, but with this book the tone is going to direct several plot-forks in my outline. (Plot-forks are too real things! Don't make me show you my literary license)

I was thinking about how when I would come back to the Crow's Rest draft after an absence, two songs helped get my brain in gear for writing (Firethief by Karine Polwart, and the song I wrote for the book which will appear in the book trailer). But No Man's Land didn't have a song just yet, so there wasn't a tool I could use to drop me into the story.

To fix that, I spent some time rewriting lyrics to an old English folk song, variously called A Blacksmith or Blacksmith Courted Me. Now I have song lyrics that are particularly relevant to the story and plot, plus singing it puts me in the frame of mind to continue in the Crow's Rest world.

Do you ever use music in this way? It's a little more specific than a playlist, but I'm sure they'd be considered close relatives!

TGIF - here's some writing music for your weekend!

Happy Friday, OA!

How many of you are settling down to a writing weekend? It's perfect weather for it here in New England: icy, cold, and slushy, generally the February standard around these parts. But that means everyone else is staying in, too. And in an old house like this, I hear just about every footstep overhead!

Having good writing music is super important to me for this reason. Writing music is distinct from my project playlists, which are best for long, brainstorming walks. Writing music, for me, is generally instrumental, evokes some kind of mood, and helps me drown out the din and concentrate. I know some of you are much better at finding your zen place amidst chaos (this is why I could never write in a cafe!) but for my fellow noise-sensitive writers, here's a recommendation for you. Which I tried to embed, but apparently am not HTML-savvy enough to do so...

This is one of my favorite tracks from Disparition, an instrumental (for now) solo composing project that, as described on their website, "combines a variety of electronic and industrial influences and techniques with interpretations of histories and geographies." In some pieces, like the above Ditmas, the piano melody is featured more strongly, while others have a more surreal electronic sound. 

And a lot of them are, to put it mildly, a horror writer's best friend, and have been fantastic for the eerier scenes in my manuscript. But even if your project isn't high on creep factor, Disparition still makes fabulous writing music.


If you'd like to check out more, the main page is here, with links to Soundcloud and iTunes. And if you'd like more of a taste, the (free!) album When Fourteen Suns is intended as a work aid for writing.

Enjoy, everyone! And if you'd like to share your favorite writing music in the comments, please feel free!

The Power of Music in Writing

 

I have a confession...I hate writing love/romance/kissing scenes. Well, let me rephrase, it's not that I hate them, it's just that I'm not really any good at them. 

Believe me, I wish it wasn't this way. I read Rachel Harris, Simone Elkeles and Katie McGarry all with total awe, and wonder why can't I do that? Why can't I just create heat in the blink of an eye without struggling with where the guy should place his hand? Or where the girl should move her lips?

This is all a big problem for me because right now I'm editing my YA Historical...wait for it...Romance.

Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. When I wrote this book, I skipped over much of the romance by just putting in "write something smexy here." And when I finished the book (except for those scenes) I worried that I wouldn't be able to pull the romance part off.

But then I was driving in the car one day and Ed Sheeran's "Kiss Me" came on the radio. In an instant, I was in the scene with my characters. The lyrics to the song had me actually visualizing how my characters' first kiss would be. I stopped what I was doing, turned around, and drove home. I raced in the door, downloaded the song, and played it full blast, over and over, while I wrote a love scene I never knew I had in me.

Music is a crazy thing. It gets us pumped up or makes us melancholy. A single note can force us to remember heartbreak or pure unadulterated love. Above all things, it makes us FEEL.

As a writer, I've found many things give me inspiration, but nothing is as powerful as music.

What about you? Does music make you a better writer? Is there a song that has inspired a scene in your manuscript or even helped you come up with a new idea? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

What's your writing playlist?

TGIF, Chez Awesome! And it can't come soon enough, MY GOODNESS. I am absolutely slammed, both at the day job and with writing things, so I apologize for the shorter post today - I've used up all my coherency on this manuscript. I've got lots more writing where that came from this weekend (my deadlines may be self-imposed at the moment, but they are deadlines nonetheless!) and in preparation, I've had my writing playlist on a loop.

I'm sure there are writers out there who don't rely on music for their plotting sessions, but I don't actually know any of them. My playlists tend to be pretty eclectic - some songs fit really, really well, and some just have the right tone, or have one lyric that's absolutely perfect . Just taking a quick look at my playlist, here are some of the songs on high rotation:

- Florence and the Machine everything (but especially Howl, Rabbit Heart, Seven Devils, No Light No Light, and Drumming Song)
- Haunted, by Poe
- The Funeral, by Band of Horses
- Paradise Circus, by Massive Attack
- King and Lionheart, by Of Monsters and Men
- Apres Moi, by Regina Spektor
- Bones, by MS MR

And now that I'm writing it out like this, I can see a slight tendency toward the dramatic in most of these... but high drama totally works for a writing soundtrack :)

How about you guys? What's on your writing playlist right now? (And more importantly, can I steal it? What can I say, I'm always on the hunt.)

What American Idol Taught Me About Writing

So. American Idol. It is a TV show with:


One host


Three judges


And as of today, three contestants.


Last week, however, there were four contestants. One of them was...

James Durbin. 


Resident metal fan. Or, as I like to call him, Captain Awesomesauce.


So.


Last week, after singing "Love Potion No. 9" and "Don't Stop Believin'", Captain Awesomesauce received the following feedback:

"Beautiful!"--Steven Tyler

"That was... uh-MAY-zing..."--Jennifer Lopez

"Dog, that was HOT! James is IN IT TO WIN IT!!!!"--Randy Jackson

The next night, James got eliminated. 

Which leads me to the writing tip of the century: 

Never. Get. Comfortable.

Finished your sixth draft? 

You can do better.

Struck by a brilliant Shiny New Idea? 

You can do better.

Did you brainstorm ways to add more characterization/conflict/depth/whatever else? 

You can do better.

Feel like giving up after that last query? 

You. Can do. Better. 

James got excellent feedback throughout the competition. He was rumored to be the future American Idol. But he wasn't. Sure, he always topped himself, did much better than the previous week, and he still didn't win. 

Is that stopping him from pursuing his dream?

Heck to the no.

And neither should you :)

Oh, and in case you're wondering how I felt after James's elimination, le demonstration:

Now tell me, blogging buddies: are there times you feel like giving up? How do you convince yourself that you can do better?

Inspire Me

People often ask me where I come up with ideas for my stories. The answer...everywhere. Seriously, watch what you say to me (no worries if you are a writer and start out by saying "this is my idea for a new story" - I'm not going to steal it from you) :D But in every day conversation....yeah, something you say to me may end up in my next book :D

I once showed my husband a scene from my my last book - and he burst out laughing because it was a pretty close rendition of a conversation we'd had once.

For me, inspiration is everywhere, in music, art, people, movies, books (have you ever wanted to write a retelling of a fairy tale or a cool twist on an old story?) When it comes right down to it, I suppose I’m inspired by life in general. Events of the past, my own life experiences, the experiences of others expressed through music, theater, art (a really great painting can get all kind of creative juices flowing – the walls of my house are plastered with historical romance inspiring art), movies, books, etc, watching the world around me, experiencing that world, living in other worlds through vivid dreams….all of this combines to create the stories that run through my head at all hours of the day or night.


A few of my favorite inspirations are:

- Music. Some songs just really hit me hard and make me want to write. For one of the stories I am working on, I pretty much have Apocalyptica's "Not Strong Enough" on repeat. And Ke$ha's "Take it Off" :D A few other bands that always inspire me are Coldplay, Everlast, Rob Dougan, Evanescence….those haunting melodies are just great inspiration for the drama needed for some good fiction.

- Art. My walls are plastered with art. Everything from Renaissance artists to abstracts to photographs. My husband teases me about it because there is not one blank wall in our house. I also troll the internet…photobucket.com is a great place for inspiration.

- Movies. Certain movies just really hit home and tweak emotions that are hard to contain. A big favorite is P.S. I Love You. I’ve watched it I don’t know how many times, because it makes me laugh and cry and drool (Gerard Butler…ummm gorgeous!). It makes me want to write something that will make people feel the way I feel when I watch it.

- Books. I read. A lot. And I mean A LOT. If you are going to be a good writer, I think it’s a necessary part of the process to read. I call it research. It gets me an eye roll from my non-reader husband, but it really is research. Most of the time I get lost in the story, but now, as a writer, I can never really shut off the edit mode. Sometimes I’ll come across a passage or a really good (or bad) dialogue sequence and think, “wow, I love how she did this,” or “ooo, I never would have worded this like this, it just doesn’t work.” Reading other’s work makes it easier to spot both the good and the bad things in my own work. And, like the movies and the music, sometimes I’ll read a book that just inspires me to write, inspires me to create something that will invoke the emotions that I felt while reading.

So tell me...What inspires you?