A Song For Every Story.
I don’t know about you, but I find creativity contagious. A song lyric here, a painting there, and suddenly, I have a head full of characters clamouring to tell me all about their lives and adventures. It’s how I’ve always been. I remember a friend once asking me where I got my ideas from. I was a bit surprised, to be honest. I assumed everyone had ideas for creative adventures all the time. I was more interested in how they could ignore them, but they didn’t have that problem. They never had any.
I guess it comes down to the way our brains are wired. For me, sitting on a crowded train is the catalyst for wondering about the adventures of fellow passengers. Partly overheard conversations whispered confessions accompanied by the metallic sound of air conditioners and train electronics. All of them pop into my head, stir the pot, and then move on to do whatever they do next.
I love music. I love to sing along with whatever I’m listening to, even though I’d be hard-pressed to carry a tune in a bucket. It doesn’t matter whether I’m good or not. I’ve always believed committing to the act of singing was important. I may be rubbish, but I’m loud, which surely makes up for it.
Music inspires me a lot. I remember sitting on a train once listening to Enya in one of my attempts to destress before another day in a job I hated. Enya sang along in words I didn’t understand, but the tone would carry my brain to misty, mythic lands filled with adventure and magic. One afternoon while listening to the CD - I’m old, shut up - I closed my eyes and the image a young woman, who looked to be about 16, but whose energy was much older, popped into my head and told me to follow her. She had a fern frond marked across her face and soft wings draped down her back. She showed me a tunnel, and at the end of it was a large pool of energy. It was soft purple, and the stone chamber was bathed in amethyst light.
When I opened my eyes, Feyria and the pool burned into my brain. From that initial occurrence, a full epic fantasy unravelled into my ‘I’ll write this someday’ folder. I still have the outline. Whether I’ll write it or not doesn’t matter for this post. I might if I find the time.
The point I’m trying to make is about how creativity is an interconnected universe. One creative thought triggers another, which crosses time and space and flits across your brain. Some people are fast enough to catch those thoughts, others aren’t. For me, I find a spotify playlist is really helpful when it comes to working on my novel. I can’t write in silence. The sound of my own breathing annoys me. So, it’s soundproof headphones and a Spotify playlist that I add to, or delete from, as the story progresses.
As I began preparing to start the second draft of Remembering Summer, I found myself creating a new list to inspire new adventures for Jared and Zachary, new fun, new tears, and new steps on a journey to a happily ever after. The Spotify playlist can be found here if you’d like to have a listen.
