Writing and the Collage
Like Lani and Krissie, I use a soundtrack to write, but I also use collage. The collages are really important to me when I’m writing solos, but they’re crucial when I’m doing collaborations because they help me see what the others are seeing. So I drag them through a process of “What does your character look like?” pulling pictures off the internet and saying, “Is this her? Does this look like him?” Even if they give me the name of a real person as a placeholder (usually actors), I pull a variety of pictures of that actor and make them go through everything, picking the ones that most look like their character.
Then I start combining the pictures of the characters with things I’ve found that look like the book to me. The relationships that happen when things are glued next to each other can spark scenes or open new parts of the book for me, and the entire collage puts me in the world of the book.
So you can see there are wood pieces on there, and sparkly pipe cleaners, and little pictures of butter cookies and Daisy’s red flowers that got cut from the book, much to my dismay, and stars and paint chips for Shar, and strips with words that were important to the book. It’s just a lot of everything.
Much like Lani’s soundtrack is Daisy-centric, my collage is Shar-centric, she’s the center of my part of the book. I tried to balance all three women in the collage because that’s the relationship of three, three equals, but when it came to the storytelling, my collage is about Shar. And just for the record, here’s my soundtrack for the book, in the order the songs occurred in my head in the book:
Safe Enough To Wake Up and Lady Magic/Ben Taylor
Lani gave me these and they really were anthems for the whole book. And of course, the voice of Noah.
It’s You/Michelle Branch, You Belong To Me/Ben Taylor
Lani gave me these, too, as love themes for Daisy and Noah.
Mama’s Little Girl and Magic Garden/Dusty Springfield
These are Shar’s emancipation songs. Think of the painting-the-kitchen scene and a few other up-yours moments in the first part of the book.
One Night/Elvis Presley
This was Sam’s theme in the first part of the book. (Is this where I say that “A Little Less Talk” is one of my least favorite Elvis’s? The last thing my verbal heroines need is a guy who won’t talk to them.)
Concrete and Clay/Unit 4 + 2
This was Shar and Sam’s love theme. I know, it’s not classically romantic, but it’s them.
Bleed to Love Her/Fleetwood Mac
Sam’s theme for the last half of the book.
Goodbye to You/Michelle Branch
D&G’s break-up song.
Do I Love You?/Jay & the Americans
This is one of those giddy pop songs that just feels happy, so this was Shar and Sam in that ridiculous part of falling in love when you’re just nuts.
The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore/The Walker Brothers
We have a scene sequence in the third act where the weather is affected by what the women are going through: Abby and Christopher start the rain by making love, then Daisy and Noah build it to a thunderstorm with a fight, and Shar and Sam take it out by having sex on the hood of his car. This is the song I played while I was writing Shar and Sam because there had to be an undercurrent of Bad there since Kammani was about to hijack the weather for her own uses. Plus it’s got a pounding beat and a soaring chorus.
The Mesopotamians/Birdhouse in Your Soul/They Might Be Giants
Because the first one makes me laugh and the second one was our partnership theme. Lani made us blue bird nightlights, so I think of this every time I brush my teeth.
Istanbul Not Constantinople
This is one that anybody who’s been reading the blog knows: It’s the music that I wrote the exorcism chant to. I pulled lines from real Mesopotamian exorcism chants and arranged them so you could sing them to “Istanbul.” Still cracks me up.
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Cool! There are a lot fewer dog photos on there than I would have thought. I wonder if that’s because you don’t need pictures to “get” the dogs?
As I scrolled down, I kept thinking “where’s the ziggurat?”, but there it was, in the foreground in 3-D, where it belongs, but takes a moment to see on my wide-screen laptop.
That gray thing is actually a horned altar. The ziggurat/step temple is right behind it with the bas relief pictures on the bottom, Shar on the next step up, Daisy on the next step, Abby on the next one, and then a small reddish box for the last layer.
The dogs aren’t on there much. I think that might be because the relationships between the women and the dogs were pretty stable; Daisy and Bailey’s relationship was the only one that had an arc and it pretty much completed in the first act. Whereas the love stories and the Kammani conflict drove the book.
Still, the dogs are crucial. They’re just not part of the conflict.
As I read this Ben Taylor was singing You Belong To Me on my undercounter kitchen Ipod player, downloaded after one of your song-postings earlier. I don’t have all of them, but several, including Concrete and Clay which everyone is so startled by when they hear it on my Ipod, but which I love. Will have to try some of the others.
Your collages are works of art, Jenny. You should frame them after your done.
Hey! I’ve read this blog more than religiously and didn’t know/remember that about the chants! I love having music to put words to, so thanks for telling me that. Are you going to tell TMBG? maybe send them a copy with a “thanks for the tune, we set new lyrics to it on page…”
Love your collages and your ability to interperet them to work for you.
That really is gorgeous and I love the 3D effect, also love both sets of music, yours and Lani’s, and that is bad boy Russell Crowe, isn’t it?
Yep. I needed a physical icon who looked like a Mesopotamian warrior and strangely enough, there aren’t a lot of photographs of those. I never saw Gladiator, but the poster worked, especially the “A Hero Will Rise” part (stop snickering, Rich) since Kammani called him and Sam rose in Shar’s bedroom (I mean, Rich, I’m not telling you again) so I used that as a placeholder. It really helped that I’d never seen the performance.
And thanks, DUG, but they’re really not. See how weird Shar’s hair looks there? It was supposed to be white and I was too lazy to go get my white paint or find white hair to glue on in magazines, so I used white-out. It’s a lumpy bumpy mess. Plus I have this tendency to peel things off and put them somewhere else, so there are always rips and tears. But I do like them so I keep them downstairs.
Oh, and no, we’re not calling TMBG. Much to my surprise (but not Krissie’s who already knew) Istanbul is an old song, not a TMBG original. Although the TMBG version is, of course, the best.
Now I’ve got The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore as interpreted by Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman going through my head.
I need to download a lotta music.
Because I’m still bitter that iTunes Canada will not let me seven see the Dogs and Goddesses soundtrack, I very much appreciate these posts. I’m hunting down the songs individually but again, “not available in Canada”. I’m going to see what I can manage when we’re in Dayton for the much anticipated D&G book signing. Brace yourselves ladies!