I started Book 6 this week.

The actual beginning: writing a solid outline, a few thousand words and a playlist of songs to help my creativity. Prior to this, I had been busy thinking and planning out the book in my mind for a number of weeks.

As the process is still fresh in my mind I thought it would be the perfect time to explain my early stages of planning a book and how I use music to help my ideas for the story line and characters evolve.

I don’t just jump from the idea, to writing the story. Every writer has a different process to writing and personally, I need time with an idea, to live and breathe it for a while, see how it plays out in my mind’s eye before I write too much down.

I do make notes as inspiration strikes, but these are adhoc and may not form any part of the story I write: They are possibilities, that help mould the final story, but there are still so many unknowns.  I don’t yet know the full story; it may just be one idea or a scene that I can picture clearly in my mind. I may have no idea of the beginning or the end, I definitely don’t know all the plot lines. I don’t even know exactly who my characters are, but I have an idea whether they will be male or female. I don’t know how many points of views I will tell the story through, though I will have an idea who the lead protagonist is.

“The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do.” Donald Barthelme

George Saunders: What Writers Really Do When They Write.

Exactly! I am at the start; I have the idea – what next?

Book 6’s story idea comes from a scene I had written in my creative writing course about a guy at a wedding. The scene had stayed in my mind the past few years and I knew that I would like to use that scene in a story at some point. Once I was committed, I revisited the words I had written.  I thought I had written an elaborate scene, full of exquisite details: the wedding dress, the dancing couple, the environment, the way they were dancing together – the intimacy of the whole scene, but I hadn’t. It was 200 words only, but somehow the feelings that scene had emoted in me, had evolved in my mind, into a whole scene that I hadn’t actually written!

 It is amazing how time and distance can distort the reality of the written word.

 I had created a world for the guy that I hadn’t yet written, details which weren’t actually there in that passage, but I was not deterred. I still had an idea: an idea and I had a feeling. The feeling of what it would be like to watch the girl you love more than any other in the world, dancing with her husband on their wedding day.  How gut wrenchingly sickening it will be for him to watch that man twirling his girl around the floor. The depth of emotion and love flowing from each of them as they danced together, the polar opposite to the guy’s heart break and desolation.

All I had to do was work out why the character wasn’t dancing with the love of his life: what had happened between them in the past and why was he at the wedding? What would happen next? Had he been invited, was he gate crashing, would he cause a scene, was he their friend? So many unanswered questions swirling around my mind. A jumble of thoughts to put into some order and to find an exciting and believable plot line to keep the reader engaged.

“Go where the story takes you: I hate this piece of advice because it’s like love – you’ll know it when you find it – but it’s impossible to anticipate.”

Marian Schembari:
How to Start Writing a Book: A Peek Inside One Writer’s Process

Whilst I am contemplating all these ideas, I use music to guide me.

Songs help me to visualise the story because I need to be in tune with my feelings and emotions that express the story I hope to write. Songs grant me access to their world. I will use the music I hear around me to inspire the formulation of the story, especially my characters. I will hear songs that sound like my characters expressing their inner emotions, songs that resonate with them as I let the characters develop in my mind. I spend time with the characters and see if they fit to the story, tweaking them as I go. Who are they? What do they look like? What are their behaviour traits? What are their names? What motivates them? What do they do?

The songs become the essence of the characters and the book. Songs that provoke something deep inside that I can tap into, a wealth of feeling and emotions. The songs and the words bring my characters to life.

As a song writer tells a love story in their own words and music. Their love song is then weaved into my book so that the artist singing becomes my character’s voice. The heart break, the romance, the unrequited love, their own. I still may not know exactly how my characters look but I do know exactly how they feel.

Each writer has a different facet to creativity -some use images for example. I love to get wrapped up in the music as I write, listening to the same set of songs on repeat for a few weeks while I write and set out my outline for the story. I will also use them when I need to write specific scenes as the story becomes more detailed later.

This is my playlist for book 6:

So why these songs? What is it about these songs that speak to me of the characters and the story I am writing?

• Heavy Stone by Kyla La Grange: “Hide me safe away, I wanna see myself painted an invisible grey. Now feed me to the years and I will make myself harmless as a drawn on tear and please don’t hold me in your soul like a heavy stone. I am carrying my cold heart home.” – something went wrong but I am letting you go and I don’t want to hold onto the past.
• Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen: “I look at you and I fantasize, You’re mine tonight. Now I’ve got you in my sights with these hungry eyes.” – wanting someone you can’t have.
• Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler: “Every now and then I fall apart and I need you now to tonight and I need you more than ever.” – needing someone so much, it over powers rational thoughts.
• Somewhere only We Know by Keane, sung by Lily Allen: “This could be the end of everything, so why don’t we go somewhere only we know?” – thinking about the past, what was, the end of something, a simpler time.
• Rolling in the Deep by Adele: “The scars of your love remind me of us. They keep me thinking we almost had it all.” – heart break.
• Jar of hearts by Christina Perri: “I learned to live, half alive and now you want me one more time.” – heartache, pain, a past love merging with the future.
• Extraordinary by Idina Menzel: “I made a lot of mistakes, I’m not a kid anymore, But I’ll never forget that I couldn’t be yours… I always wonder.” Revisiting the past and what could have been.

These songs give a flavour of the story: Heart break, wanting something that’s not yours, revisiting the past, breaking up, trying to move on from the past, living half a life, regret.

They definitely sum up the mood of the story and I have been listening to them a lot.

I have some fantastic plot lines already envisaged by these songs and I will be using my imagination to bring to life this story.