Music to Novel By.

I like to write to music. Lately, I've been writing to a mix of Elton John, Queen, George Gershwin, Claude Debussy, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Sound of Music, Beatles, Billy Joel, Harry Connick Jr.... AKA Pandora radio on shuffle.
Sometimes the music I listen to while writing reflects what's actually being written.

After the Twelfth Night was written primarily to the Beatles, because I had just discovered them. This resulted in several Beatles song references. (Can YOU spot them?)
During the rewriting/editing process the music tended to be more on the classical side. And not just any classical music – exciting classical music. Music like Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March or Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Music which elicited strong emotions and reminded me of the crashing waves of the sea. Music that seemed to go with the Ivan Aivazovsky seascapes which inspired some parts of After the Twelfth Night (especially the cover part).

Daniel and Varina's first story is, in part, about Liberace, the flamboyant piano player. So, while writing their first book, I listened to quite a bit of Liberace. Also, around that time, I discovered the genius of George Gershwin and his music fueled much of the book. 

Daniel turned into a piano playing spy and near the end of the book, he sits down at one of Liberace's pianos and plays Rhapsody in Blue.

Since Daniel and Varina are some sort of spy (I haven't figured out what kind yet. Haha), I wrote their next two books to the tune of Music to Spy By, a wonderful CD I purchased at the International Spy Museum.

Now I'm writing a fantasy story and have mostly been listening to the Peer Gynt Suites by Edvard Grieg. He wrote the music to go along with a five-act play based on a Norwegian fairytale about a troublesome man trying to figure out who he is. Many people know the first song, Dawn, and the fourth song, In the Hall of the Mountain King. But did you know that those two songs go together in the same Suite? They don't sound like it.

And today I found another "fantasy"-esque song to write my story to. The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas. What a charismatic song! It's wonderful! Just have a listen.

How about you? Do different stories inspire you to listen to different types of music? Or does it work the other way around? Do specific pieces of music inspire stories? Or do you write better without music?

Live long and prosper.

A rainy Saturday

A rainy Saturday... the perfect day to work on my new writing project. I'm just dying to tell people (other than my parents) about it... but I'm afraid that once I tell someone, I won't want to write it anymore. I'm writing it all out on paper, and so far, everything that I've ever tried to write on paper before has never gotten finished.
Of course, that was before NaNoWriMo. And then, more often than not, I would try to pants it and would have no direction of where the plot was going. I'm not a pantser, I'm a planner, so that method never worked for me... and therefore, none of my written-on-paper-books ever got finished (except for one... two actually, if you count the Warriors fanfiction).
My goal for this new story is to have it done by the end of April. My other goal is to write in it every day, and, if possible, write a chapter a day. We'll see how that goes.
So far today I've finished chapter six... I want write chapter seven and chapter eight today also. I've got until 5:00 (that's about five hours) because at 5:00 I need to start getting ready to go to a friend's house to watch How To Train Your Dragon for the first time!


Though I can't tell you much about this story... I can tell you a couple of things.
The genre I'm writing in is somewhere in between fairy tale and fantasy and I'm having fun/am looking forward to having fun with the various mythical creatures that come with those genres.
The "theme song," if you want to call it that, for this story is the Peer Gynt Suites by Edvard Grieg. If you're unfamiliar with it by name... maybe this song will spark your memory:

It's really hard to find good classical music that sounds fantasy-ish. The Peer Gynt Suites fit the bill perfectly, and I was wondering why. So I looked them up and found out something really interesting!
Peer Gynt is actually a play by a man named Henrik Ibsen. It's about a lazy man named Peer Gynt who goes around thinking that the world is his and that he doesn't need to work for it. In one part, he gets drunk and hits his head on a rock and has a "dream" where he visits a troll "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which is where the above piece of music gets it's name...
The storyline is really strange, and it's message is something along the lines of don't procrastinate because at the end of your life, you'll regret not doing anything worthwhile.
Ibsen contacted composer Edvard Grieg to compose the music for the play, and Grieg agreed (though reportedly he liked writing his music from his head, rather than from suggestions). He wrote all of the music for Peer Gynt, but in the end, only the two suites that you normally here today (running approx. 33 minutes) premiered with the play in 1876. The rest of the music that Grieg wrote wasn't published until 1908, a year after he died.
Isn't that interesting? I think it's very interesting.


Well, I'm off to finish my lunch and then get writing! I think I shall hideaway in my bedroom... It's storming outside (not with thunder or anything - yet - but with lots and lots of rain and wind. Glorious! This is my favorite type of weather, especially for doing something creative like writing or reading, and especially if there's some nice exciting classical music in the background) and soon my mom's friend will be coming over the quilt with my mom... My bedroom will be the safest place to hideaway and write privately, while still being able to see the weather outside, since they'll be taking over the living room.


Live long and prosper!