Musical Inspiration

I finally made a playlist of songs to get in the writing mood for my current project. I've been hearing about this technique from other writers for awhile now. Find music that puts you in mind of your project and play, rinse, repeat until the project is done.

So far it sort of works. I used songs I already own, downloaded them onto my laptop, then onto a cd for my car and my Ipod for when I got out running. My protagonist is female, so there are a lot of songs by and about women that are vaguely linked to her in my mind. I also keep in mind the setting, the vibe, the overall theme and plot, and any song that lends itself to them in my mind gets thrown on there.

Here are a few of the songs:

Hollywood Bitch by Stone Temple Pilots
I Fought the Law as performed by The Clash
Can't Change Me by Chris Cornell
Don't Wanna Know by The Donnas
The Long Way Round by The Dixie Chicks
Bad Reputation by Joan Jett

I recommend making your own playlist if you've got access to ITunes and a need for inspiration.

Random Cool Thing This Week

I got an email today asking permission to maybe use one of my photos in a free guide to the city of York. How cool is that? The guides are from Schmap. I've already bookmarked them to use for my own travel reference in the future.

The photo is below. I'll find out soon if it actually gets picked to be in the guide. It's of the Mickelgate in York, England, one of the medieval entrances to the city. They used to put heads on the spikes of this gate to warn all who entered to behave themselves. That's my travel pal, Wendy, grinning under the streetlight. We had a great time!

(Singing) Rewriiiiiiiite!

So I'm taking this fabulous online course to help me with my novel writing. It provides incentive with deadlines, a supportive chat weekly, and feedback from a published author and your fellow students. It's one of the courses from MediaBistro, and I recommend them highly.

But it's work, man. My teacher gave me feedback that made complete sense and will make my book a lot better. BUT - it involved a lot of rewriting. It STILL involves a lot of rewriting. I feel like I'm going to be rewriting and then writing and rewriting some more until osteoporosis overtakes me, and I can't type from the arthritis.

The good news is that the course is aimed at helping you to actually finish your book. And the rewrite I'm doing is streamlining my novel, making it shorter, sleeker, and (hopefully) better. So that should mean less overall writing to do, right?

Most of my energy is focused on churning out the pages right now, so I won't be posting quite as often. But I'll check back in soon!

Grocery List

I found an old hand-written grocery list on a post-it in my purse the other day. A quick glance at my terrible hand writing made it look like this:

Blue sky homes
lemur
2 purr to mates
Pansy
Mint
grim pippin
cayrrrr
humms
piles
Nuts

I actually had a recipe in mind when I wrote all these things down. If you're really intrepid and have nothing else to do in your busy life, maybe you can figure out what it was.

Personally, I'd really like a blue sky home. And possibly a lemur. If you find one at the store, let me know.

Photos by Tanja

This has nothing to do with writing, but I love these photos! Maybe I'll write a story about a photographer who works at a wolf sanctuary. Oh wait! That'd be Tanja Askani's life!

I wish I could read German. If you can, take a look at her site.

And she's got a book out called Kinship with the Wolf I may have to buy.