Inspiration - Music

I've written many posts about my affliction to associate a song with almost any situation. It's a family trait. Sometimes, inspiration comes through with both visuals and audible. I see something, the song pops in, and now there's a whole new meaning for what I'm seeing.
One of the first songs that inspired me was Angry Eyes by Loggins and Messina — "What a shot you could be/if you could shoot at me/with those angry eyes." I spent a lot of time listening to that song writing my first novel-length story (it was horrible, will never see the light of day).

Lyrics can be very provocative. If it’s a good song, it was written that way. They are designed to make you think. Novels should be the same, written in such a way that they make you think. I'm always impressed when I hear a simile or metaphor I've not heard before, or the turn of a phrase that makes me stop and think. Some lyrics that come immediately to mind:

1. I love you like a fat kid loves cake
2. Lived her life like a candle in the wind
3. Life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long
4. You change your mind like a girl changes clothes (one of my favorites)

My current work in progress started with a "moment of grace." I was driving down the road and saw one of those scenes in nature that capture your attention. Think of the perfect sunset, or the first silent snowfall over a forest of evergreens. Sun shafts reaching through the trees to the earth, or mist on the meadow. As I was writing, the song popped in. "Even in the Quietest Moments" by Supertramp. The lyrics don't necessarily fit, but the title sure did. That remained my working title all the way through the first draft.

Ten years ago, I struggled to come up with a "catchy" title for The Treasure of St. Paul. When I revisited it to re-release it, I couldn't get Carly Simon's song out of my mind, and so decided to retitle it—Touched by the Sun.

There is a song to fit every occasion, and sometimes musical artists lend inspiration to ideas already percolating, or sometimes they inspire new ideas.

Inspiration - Locations

For some people, traveling is unpleasant and stressful. For others, it's a break from the everyday - a getaway. Those that travel for work might be less likely to notice some of the landscape (largely due to the fact that they're working more than sight-seeing). The casual traveler is usually going specifically to do sight-seeing.

I tend to look for a magnificent landscape. My husbands likes cities. During our travels, we usually combine a little of both. In today's post, I'm going to use my trip the Nevada/Utah/Arizona as n example. DH wanted to see Las Vegas. It is an interesting landscape in the middle of the desert. If you take out the gambling and the shows, there is still the interesting architecture and the oddity of all the tall buildings rising out of the middle of the desert. That was DH's part of the trip. My part was Bryce Canyon, a unique landscape that inspired a book (which will likely never see publication) which I titled "The Legend People." I never came up with a better title, because although my imagination embraced the whole story, I'm not sure it translated quite as well once I wrote it all down.

Bryce Canyon features "Hoodoos," which are spires of rock which glow a brilliant red in the sunshine. I saw photos before we went and immediately imagined everything from the Wicked Witch of the West (the rock formations were eroded by water) to fairies swirling around the rocks to create the patterns. Then there were the grottos and caves carved into the mountains - yes, my imagination went into overdrive.  Imagine an army of warriors, frozen into rocks. We also stopped at Antelope Canyon, which further sparked my whole "fairies" theory. A tourist trap? Absolutely. Beautiful? Breathtaking. I could so see fairies living in that cave, carving the swirls in the walls and diving in the flood waters. Imagine a fairy, caught in the draft of an airplane and carried out of their natural habitat. How would they get back? How would they survive in an "alien" environment?

Other trips have inspired mention in my stories as well. I visited Scotland, which makes a cameo in Living Canvas. I was intrigued by the melaleuca trees in Fort Lauderdale, trees that were imported to help dry out the Everglades until they discovered the trees were working a little too well. The trees were interesting to see, and they had an interesting story behind them. And sometimes it is the history behind something that makes it intriguing. On my bucket list? Easter Island.

Sometimes a location inspires me before I've had the opportunity to visit. When I wrote Touched by the Sun/The Treasure of St. Paul, I'd never been to Italy, but I'd done many research papers on Pompeii. Because I hadn't visited, I had to do interviews and see other peoples' home videos or vacation photos. I did EXTENSIVE research. Ten years after the original publication date, I'm actually going to visit! You can watch for my comparison of the real experience to what I wrote when I do a guest blog for one of my writer friends, Terry Odell (I promise to post details on where to read that when the time comes!)

Mist on the Meadow

Happy Friday. Just had to post these pictures that I took this morning. With the new book "resting," I'm thinking ahead to cover shots. Granted, the story takes place in the winter, and I will most likely take winter pictures, but the mist this morning was perfect, so I just had to . . .

What do YOU imagine walking out of the mist?

Inspiration - Buildings

Do you ever look at a place and begin to imagine things about it? Hear a song and try to figure out what happened to the artist when they wrote it? (Clearly Taylor Swift and Adele let you know what happened!) Visit somewhere and see beyond the landscape? And then I have this mind that wires it all together. I see a creepy house and I hear the theme music from CBS Mystery Theater, or Night Gallery (giving away my age on these, I suppose). I see a landscape and I imagine pixies swirling around hoodoos. These things pop out uninvited, when you're least expecting them. Today's blog post centers around "places" that inspire, and more specifically, Living Canvas.

I got married in a B&B, and we spent a lot of time visiting them (guess where that part of Living Canvas came from?). When I walked up to The Hillcrest Inn, I knew that was "The Place." There was an ambience around it that drew me in. When I was writing Living Canvas, I didn't originally know Audrey wanted to run a B&B, but it started to make sense as the story unfolded and I remembered the way I felt the first time I saw Hillcrest.

Then, as I was driving home from work one day, I passed a house that sparked my imagination. THAT was going to be Castle Valley Inn in the book. The only problem was that I wanted the wraparound porch. The "castle" house would look wrong with a wraparound porch.  So I started an internet search for wraparound porches, and that's when I landed on The Mandolin Inn.

Visuals. That gets the brain started. Can you picture yourself sitting on the porch at Hillcrest? Imagine what the inside of that other house must look like? And I can tell you what the inside of Mandolin Inn looks like. I look at these places and think, "Wow, what a beautiful place." That evolves into, "I wonder what it would be like to live there." Which follows on with my personal catalog of haunted house movies and stories and "wouldn't that be a great backdrop for a story?"

So I "glom" all this stuff together, add in a secret room and an unsolved mystery (wherever the imagination takes you). Now you get an idea of how my mind works. All of these places are just a piece of Castle Valley Inn, along with other more "homey" touches from much less "visible" places. My own personal knowledge stores.

The only thing left is to add characters, throw them into "a situation." Decide what their goals are, how they plan to accomplish them, what's important to them and what stands in their way. To me, this is everyday daydreaming, but when other people ask me about it and I tell them, they are dumbfounded. Not everybody is wired the same way. Looking at a house for some people never gets past, "wow, that place is beautiful." Or it manifests itself more as "I wish I could own a place like that some day." For some people, it's about how to decorate it. Me and my imagination, we move right in and invite you over for tea.

Next week is the travelogue. Places that inspire me.

Audiobooks

Well, I've finished my first draft of "Quiet." And the current decision is that the title will be Mist on the Meadow. What a huge sense of accomplishment, not only to finish the draft, but to finish it in the time frame I'd set and in excess of the minimum word limit I had set for it. Both plusses. So what now? I am continuing to run it through my critique group, whose members are adept at pointing out every time I use the word "that" instead of "who," one of my many stumbling blocks. This also provides me the opportunity to step away from it and let it "set" (like Jell-O). Time away often helps to give a clearer perspective.  These are the times I go to previous works that are sitting on the shelf (Epitaph comes to mind) to determine if they are keepers or crap (pardon my French). It also gives me time to pursue other thoughts and ideas, one of which is audioboooks.

When I took a finished copy of Living Canvas to Amy in Iowa, she mentioned that she often buys audiobooks these days. We had a brief discussion about the different media books in which you can obtain books (she prefers a printed book in her hands to an ebook, fwiw). Interestingly, I read an article the other day that ebooks are now outpacing printed books. I also just bought a book to celebrate "the end" and bought a printed copy. My husband, when it arrived, asked why I hadn't gotten it as an ebook. The answer? It was the same price either way, and it was an easy read (I devoured the thing in a manner of hours - it was Goodnight, Tweetheart, in case you're wondering).  I like the convenience of my e-readers - a stack of stories in the palm of my hand - although I do like still like the feel of holding a printed book in my hand. But I digress. 

My conversation with Amy got me to wondering how many people listen to audiobooks. I mentioned it to my mother, and she said that she enjoys an audiobook from time to time, especially now when it's harder for her to read. And then there are the commuters . . . So I'm thinking about putting together an audio version of Living Canvas during my "recovery period." This is the period of time when I try to reaquaint myself with the industry and all the changes (which are happenening faster these days). New options, new avenues, not to mention new story ideas. What do you think about audiobooks? Thumbs up? Thumbs down?  Meh?