Thursday, April 7, 2011

Music as Muse

Music for me tends to be an inspiration for writing a lot of times. My genre of choice is country music, and as a fellow Chicago-North member once said, "With country, there's a story in every song." And it's so true. The idea for my free read "Mistletoe and Folly" came to me while I was listening to one of my favorite Toby Keith Christmas songs. My recent submission to TWRP "A Christmas to Remember" was inspired by the song of the same title sung by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
Right now I'm in the middle of a story about a rodeo man: a bull rider. There are plenty of bull-ridin' songs out there, and whenever I hear them, my fingers get itchy for my keyboard.

While I write, sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I don't. If I do it's usually to block noise coming from other areas of the house: the tv especially. For this I like to listen to scores from movies. It definitely has to be music without lyrics, or I'll start singing along. (Something we don't want to happen for a whole variety of reasons!) My favorites are "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Twilight", and "Star Wars".

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

5 comments:

  1. Good idea, Debra. I forget that soundtracks don't have all that many lyrics. And music is so emotional. If a movie is too suspenseful, I mute the sound. Much less scary.

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  2. Music can invoke (is that the right word?!) many emotions. One day I was playing one of my "Twilight" scores in class in the morning before the kids arrived. As they started to walk in, one commented, "Ooooh, this sounds scary."

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  3. Hi,

    When driving on motorways songs can make a journey seem much shorter, and when the girls were pre-teen they loved to sing-a-long to Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton tapes. Of course, in their teens they had individual tastes in music. But, later on before they got bogged down in wedlock, on occasion in mid-winter we'd nip out for a curry take-away and head for the beach. On the way they'd play KR or DP and sing like they were kids all over again. Happy days! ;)

    best
    F

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  4. I never thought of getting ideas for a story from the words of a song. Must try that sometime!

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  5. Songs do tend to stir up memories as well. Music holds a lot of power.

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