Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

Tell you a secret: I don't really write stories.

I make music videos in my mind.

Then I try to transfer them into written text. (It doesn't always succeed.) The result is a novel, or short story.

That's why I almost never write a longer story or novel without listening to inspirational music. It's the soundtrack of the video I'm composing in my head.

(You should ask other people who write, if they also work this way... I'd really like to know.)

Right now I'm listening to Robyn's latest album, and thinking: "Now, what stories would go with these songs...?" I'm sure I'll think of something. (Thanks, Robyn.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't write without music either. I don't think about the process as 'writing' a music video so much as I do 'writing' a movie. I need the soundtrack. And then I start the filmstrip and write what I see. There's a drawback to this, though: it tends to put the language second, rather than first.

A.R.Yngve said...

True! But on the positive side, visualizing counters the tendency to write "talking heads" fiction -- you know, the sort where characters just stand around and talk until someone comes to a conclusion.

Anonymous said...

Bingo--you know, it seems like a lot of the short science fiction falls into that category. Give me an EVA chase.