Writing and the Right Brain
So both Jenny and Lani will tell you they’re seat of the pants writers. And so they are. But they’ve got nothing on me. I tend to just sit down at a keyboard and see where it takes me. Sometimes to delicious places, half the time to dead ends and frustrations and hissy fits until I sit and figure out where the hell I’m going.
Fortunately for this book I got reined in a little bit, and I had a safety net. I’m grown quite fond of them. The safety nets, that is. My collaborators … well, they’re my sisters.
I’m not so hot on collages — I’ve done a couple, but basically for me it’s just pasting pretty pictures on foam board and then going back to the real work. Jenny was a art major and art teacher — she’s got visual creativity bleeding from her ears. Her house is a magic castle in an enchanted forest — everywhere you look there’s mystery and beauty. So a collage is like breathing to her. I didn’t even know a collage could be three dimensional.
My creative outlet is quilting and sewing, and I played around with a Mesopotamian costume for book-signings and then got distracted.
So in the end, I had to rely on music as well as my two buddies kicking me in the ass every now and then to focus (I am a dreamy soul).
Since music is my life, I had a much longer soundtrack, but some of the songs are worth seeking out for yourselves.
We all had the songs by They Must be Giants — The Mesopotamians, Bluebird in my Soul, and Istanbul (not Constantinople). Plus Bleed to Love Her –what a great, underappreciated song!
And then there were mine:
Cook with Honey by Judy Collins (honey is Abby’s magic ingredient)
Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townsend (both versions) because Abby’s trying to batter down Christopher’s doors
Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime by the Korgis (gorgeous song — I heard Richard Thompson sing it)
The Ghost in You by the Psychedelic Furs
All is I Want is You — U2
Chasing Cars, Crash into Me, Sober. Tons of others. But the strangest choice was from the Buffy episode, “Once More With Feeling.” I won’t give away spoilers, but when it comes time to deal with the Big Bad I had “Drawn to the Fire” from the OMWF soundtrack.
The rest of the time I use Brainsync tapes that are supposed to increase my focus and creativity (my favorite has always been High Focus). It’s probably just white noise, shutting out my family and my crabby internal editor, but it works like a charm when I can’t concentrate.
It’ll be interesting to see if these songs work for you, or if you have your own soundtracks when you read a book. We’d love to hear if you can think of other songs which feel connected with the book.
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Hey, Krissie. You have my all time fave on your list, Let My Love Open the Door. In the movie, Dan in Real Life (Steve Carell) where he sings that song and triggers the black moment, well I just cry bucketloads. That song is so much a part of that movie it chokes me up every time.
My music track gets me in the mood to write, and to recall my characters, but then I switch to Mozart, or Narada, or something else with no lyrics when the writing gets serious.
I love book soundtracks. Collectively I have to search out the songs you guys listed.
For me I make a soundtrack and then I’m drawn to one song that I play throughout writing the whole novel. So far I’ve played “Doing it to Death” by James Brown, “For all We Know” by Donny Hathaway, and “Bust Out Your Windows” by Jazmine Sullivan until they’ve been imprinted on my brain.
Gotta love being a writer.
I can certainly understand the importance of music in generating (and re-generating) a mood, but, like Robena, I can’t have lyrics while I’m trying to think. In fact, if the thinking has to embrace really complex, unfamiliar stuff, I can’t have music at all - I’m too easily drawn into it. So, I’m basically limited to music when I can sing and/ or dance to it. As for people who can work with the TV or NPR on - all I can say is, “You’ve got better concentration than I have!”.
I find it hard to listen to music when I write because I’m either listening to the lyrics and therefore not writing or I’ve totally tuned it out so there doesn’t seem to be much point. But I think its great for putting me in the right frame of mind for the book - definitely.
I’ve found some great new songs thanks to the 3 lists that have been posted here so thank you.
Hey Robena - loved that movie!!
Oh, for those who can’t listen to lyrics - Krissie mentioned Brain Sync High Focus and I got it, and I really recommend it. While I can listen to music as white noise even with lyrics, there are days when it distracts me, and then I turn this on. It’s very helpful when you don’t want to listen to anything, but still need the outside world to go away. The .mp3 download is only $9.95, and it’s really been worth it for me.
http://www.brainsync.com/product.asp?specific=128
And no, we don’t get commission.
That’s interesting I’ll check it out, thanks Lani. Big wave. Found Maybe Baby in my bookshelf today, and think I might have to re-read it.
And DUG, glad you loved that movie. Got it for the holidays and I’ve seen it five times already. Ha ha.
This is great stuff - fascinating to hear how all your thought processes work and how different the three of you are.
A few entries ago, you asked for ideas of what we’d like to see here. I’d add: more outtakes. Please. Pretty please.
You know, i don’t know if we have any more. We finished the book a year ago, so my memory of this is foggy, but I don’t know of anything we cut.
Krissie? Lani?
I’m not sure we have any truly cut scenes, aside from the stuff with Pia. Everything is evolved - meaning, we have earlier versions of the scenes, but if they were good, they wouldn’t be earlier versions. I’ll keep thinking about it, though.