Aug 22, 2017
The soundtrack of my writing
The process of writing is a search for one voice among the many that announce themselves in the writer’s head — presuming that voice to be informed and interesting, of course. The one that keeps reminding me that there is a quart of ice cream in the freezer is invited to shut up. The editor in me always has something to say, but contrary to the usual advice from writing teachers about silencing that voice, I’ve found that slow but steady progress in the construction of written worlds.
And yes, I mean written worlds. Writing is an act of creation as magical as any in the foundational myths of humanity’s religions. But the process of isolating the worthy themes from the random and contrary noise requires its own attention.
Some writers turn to strong drink. The Irish playwright, Brendan Behan, said that he was a drinker with a writing problem. And he’s one of so many boozers who live by their words. It may seem that I’m heading into a message about teetotalism, but not so. If, for example, the distillers of Lagavulin would like me to endorse their product, I am for sale. That being said, the lubricating effect only enables the flow. It doesn’t set things in motion.
What’s a writer to do. For me, music is a natural companion in the labor of putting words on the page. That’s been true for humanity for as long as we’ve been writing — or, to use another word that describes what we’re doing, composing. Poets prayed that the Muses sing to them, and many ancient languages had tonal quality as an essential aspect. Stories and philosophical texts were done in verse, with prose coming along later.
To illustrate, consider my book, A Draft of Moonlight.
It’s a story about terrorism and political intrigue in a lunar colony whose first draft I started writing in the summer of 2001 — yes, the attacks on 9/11 came as I was nearing the end.
Do I have to explain why The Dark Side of the Moon was the soundtrack? A theme of the Pink Floyd album — the search for meaning in a world gone mad — has been with me for a long time, but my book and those songs are not parallels. The run time was a good length for writing — I have the concert album, Pulse in mind here. The writing of fiction is something that I can sustain for two or three hours at a stretch, and concert recordings are just right. And the atmosphere and words of Dark Side helped to write a tale of a spy fighting against the world to save it.
As a side note, I thank Roger Waters for letting me use some quotations from The Dark Side of the Moon. They added to the feel of one chapter, and his graciousness reminds my fellow authors that creative people are often willing to be generous.
Then came No Easy Road and If You Want Peace.
They were originally one book by the latter title, over 130,000 words, and a lot of music went with the writing.
The foundation soundtrack were a number of Rush albums, both studio and live, particularly Vapor Trails and Rush in Rio. The music and lyrics of that band have spoken to me since my days in college when “Subdivisions” took hold of me, and the committed humanism and philosophical depth of their whole body of work exactly what I needed for novels about natural philosopher and a captain in the Centauri Navy fighting for humanity’s purpose and survival among the stars.
Beyond the music of an intellectual rock band, I also had Bach and Cole Porter playing. One of the two point-of-view characters, Bertrand Lile, listens to The Goldberg Variations while weaving his plots, and he and another character share their music collections in celebration — no spoilers here. You’ll have to read to find out what they did.
Westerns require different music. I’ve described myself as someone who writes westerns for college professors — short stories and one novel, The Willing Spirit so far — since my character, Henry Dowland, earned his degree at the College of William and Mary before joining the Army of Northern Virginia as a calvary captain to escape his parents.
But when his sister and niece die in a fire set by Sherman’s soldiers, he flees his demons by going to the west, and the only music he has access to, outside his memory, is that of the railroad camps and saloons.
Some music of the period is available, but we still have the spirit of rebellion alive in today’s songs. The soundtrack of my Dowland stories is made up of Johnny Cash and The Dubliners. If Dowland lives to 1916 — he’ll be seventy-seven then — and finds himself in Ireland, he may take part in the Easter Rising, and “The Foggy Dew” would be the perfect song.
How to sum all this up? Writing is hard work, and each writer must come up with an individual method, and much good may it do us all, writers and readers alike. My technique is to let the noise or rather the songs play so as to allow the Song to emerge.
And if that distraction doesn’t work, there’s always the cat who declares that she’s in charge and I must pet her.
