Saturday, October 2, 2010

NaNo Prep! With Music!

Summer Wonderland
Fine Art Photography by Melanie Alexandra
of RetrospectPhoto

October is here! And what does that mean?

LET THE NANOWRIMO PREPARATIONS BEGIN!

And where do I start? With music. Always with music. Every time I begin a story, I have to have a theme song that gets me into my story even when my day has been filled with house cleaning, errands, and endless trips to time-out (my kids, not me).

It's a song (or songs if I can find a few that I like) that captures the tone of the story, so that when my day is a mess but I can steal a few hours to write, I'm able to pull myself away from the real world and into my character's world in less than a minute. This theme song is pretty much listened to on repeat for ... months.

And months. And months. And because I'm pretty slow at writing - add a few more months to that.

This year's NaNo book is a YA (young adult) urban fantasy action adventure which mainly takes place at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. And my theme song?



Suzy by Caravan Palace! Quirky and dizzying and a whole lot of fun... If I can capture the tone of this song in my story, I'll be pretty darned stoked.

In addition to quirky, dizzying action-adventure, my story is also a love story because I'm a romantic at heart ... so I needed a romantic-y theme song...



And Madness has JUST the right feel for this book with It Must Be Love

Another part of prep for me is picking the theme song for the main characters. At the moment, I only have the theme for one, a side character who goes by the name of Vixen but is better known as Aphrodite. Her song - Night of the Dancing Flame by Roisin Murphy.



Now if I can only find the songs that belong to my main characters... Good thing I have a whole month to prepare!

If you are participating in National Novel Writing Month this year, how are you getting ready?

xoxo,

8 comments:

kel said...

I have never done Nano... I am so intimidated by the whole thing!!! Good Luck! Great songs!

Unknown said...

Great songs! Definitely quirky and upbeat, especially compared to the mellow, depressing songs I have to spur my creative juices. LOL!

Good luck on NaNo! I can't wait to read what you've written. ;-)

Jonathon Arntson said...

You have bizarre taste in music. I can dig it.

My nano song list can reach the moon.

Unknown said...

Yeah, Jon. Bizarrely AWESOME!

Heather Kelly said...

MarEEEsa--You and I begin the same. I start with my soundtrack, which I take from the idea of the emotional arc of my characters. Sometimes I even print out lyrics, and write ideas in the margins. It's amazing the depth of connections I can grab from music. Looking forward to NaNo. WOO-HOO!!

Alyssa S. said...

Can I say, it's so bizzare thinking of you writing something other than Sleep :) It seems like the only thing I expect you to be writing! How fun that you are delving into something new. I'm so torn...I want to dust off what I started last year, but I have this urgent sense that I need to rethink my story line and UGH, that's an exhausting thought.

Unknown said...

OMG, Heather, that is what I'm doing with poetry!! Which lyrics pretty much are... you and me - great minds, eh? :D

Alyssa - NaNo is going to be weird, because I've already written a whole story with these characters for this year... not my SLEEP characters, but ones I know even better than C and C!! Also, YOU SHOULD JUST WRITE IT!! Rethink your plot later!!

Tina Laurel Lee said...

I listened to these this morning. Of course I know Madness from way back and love them! I can't wait to feel your book. IT is gonna be awesome!

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