Music

I know I just posted a little while ago but as I was working on my next novel  Sharing Strength I was struck with further inspiration. This particular book is emotional. More so than any project I have ever worked on in my life. There is triumph and defeat. Hope and agony. Discovery, loss, torment and redemption. And that is just in the first half of the book.


I have a playlist just as most writers I know do. I tailor each playlist to fit the project I am writing and there are times I have to actually mute the music with this book because the feelings from the book and the emotion of the lyrics and melody can almost be too much to handle. The blending of the mediums if something that can lift or sink a writer when bringing life to a story.


I am no stranger to the transformative powers of music either. Not just from a writing perspective but I also grew up dancing. As a young girl I took the stage and used the movements of the choreographer to tell a story with the contortions of my body. It was my job to capture and transport the audience to the visionary world of the musicians and show designers.


I then added the element of modeling. Again I used my body and the music to showcase the art of the clothing I showed. You could change the entire mood of the show by altering the tempo of a song in order to convey the emotion of the designer. The hair and makeup even the models as we walked the runway or posed for the camera became secondary. We would take what we wore and what we heard and use it to send a message to those that would one day wear these same items.


Now as a more serious writer I take the feelings I get and transfer them into the worlds and characters I create. I know my characters inside and out. I not only have songs on my playlist that capture the tone of the book as a whole but also songs I believe that the characters themselves would have in their own playlists. I listen to the music and allow myself to become those that I am writing about. It is my hope that my reading audience will feel transported that same way my dance audience used to tell me the felt when they watched me on stage.