I cannot write with a house full of noise. Yet, I cannot write with utter silence, either. I must have music. But not just any music. Upbeat, fast-tempo music does not really serve to inspire. To be really creative, I must have slow, melancholy music. Depressingly melancholy. Y'know, the songs about breakups and heartache. Even when working on happy scenes. Seems weird, I know.
An author friend asked me recently how my writing was going, and I was forced to admit that it's not. Things have been really crazy lately. Excuses and all that. Today however, my husband will be taking the children camping. They'll be gone all afternoon, all night, and probably a large portion of tomorrow morning as well. Yes! A house all to myself! To write! Or not!
I started feeling a little guilty that I hadn't written anything in awhile, so I pulled up the manuscript on my computer and started reading through what I've written so far. Every time I do this, I always find things to fix or correct. A way to word a paragraph or sentence better. (At this rate, I'll never be finished.) And of course, I had to listen to my iTunes playlist of favorite 80s and 90s music.
As we've already established my criteria for music to write by, however, I soon found I was skipping several songs in a row because they were too.....happy. The only solution, of course, was to create an entirely new play list of songs. Which I did. Now I have 3 full hours of all the melancholy music I could ever want to listen to. I suspect that after listening to it though, I'll be in serious need of Winnie the Pooh or something equally cheerful.
No matter what does or does not get accomplished today, I'm satisfied knowing that I'm at least in the story. It's not put away. My characters are staring me in the face even now, waiting for me to give them some forward motion.
While depressingly awesome music plays in the background.
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