What's Making Me Happy This Week, 12-13-14

1) Messiah singalongs. Yes, that's plural for a reason. Last night I sang at the Garfield High School Orchestra's, tomorrow night I'll be at the Music Center of the Northwest's, and on December 26 I'm going to the one at University Unitarian Church. Why isn't one enough? The music is just too glorious, and each event has its own personality. With the Garfield one you get a really amazing, well-rehearsed orchestra (they're better than my high school concert band by far, and we weren't half bad), a beautiful setting, and the chance to sing the Hallelujah Chorus twice.  Music Center of the Northwest is more intimate and casual, and they include more of the solos (without actual soloists, so, for example, ALL of us altos get to sing "Oh, Thou That Tellest Glad Tidings to Zion"). This will be my first time at the Unitarian one, but apparently there you sing the whole thing, not just the choruses or the Christmassy bits.

Anyway, if you love to sing choral music but don't get a chance to do it often enough, see if your community has a Messiah singalong.

2) Martha Washington candy. I finally found a recipe for the version my mom used to make, without coconut, and I'm going to attempt it this weekend.

3) Wrapping paper with gridlines on the back. I know it's been around awhile, but it's the best thing since sliced bread, especially if you're me and are kinda meh on hand-eye coordination and visual-spatial relations. I do fine with driving and such, and I'm not visibly clumsy, but cutting paper in a straight line without some kind of marker to guide me is not among my talents.

Looking for music

I don't come up with soundtracks for all my books, but it's becoming clear the New Shiny Paranormal/Fantasy wants one. So far I've been listening to "Love the Way You Lie" (Eminem/Rihanna) and "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" (Richard Thompson) when I want to think about the story. However, I could really use some nice angsty doomed love songs where the guy isn't an abuser or a robber, because the male half of my own angsty pairing makes grumbling noises in the back of my head every time he hears Eminem and insists pedantically that he most certainly has NOT fought with the law since he was seventeen nor robbed many a man for any purpose whatsoever, so why do these songs make me think of his role in my story, pray?

(Yes, I talk to my characters, and occasionally they talk back. This one is turning into one of the mouthier figments my imagination has produced.)

So. I'm looking for some good intense songs about more or less doomed complex relationships. The New Shiny is going to have a love triangle at the core of what I think will be a trilogy, but we're not going to meet the guy the heroine ultimately ends up with till Book Two or so, so for now I'm focusing on the man she'll eventually have to walk away from. On some levels they're good for each other, but for a whole host of reasons they can't be together permanently. So I think a lot of their relationship is going to be about pretending they have something between what we'd call friends with benefits and what they'd think of as her being his mistress. All about denying to themselves and each other just how much love and mutual loyalty they feel, you know? Because then they'd have to look the We're Doomed and We Have No Future thing in the face, and who wants to do that?

Obviously there won't be any songs that EXACTLY fit my characters, but I'm open for suggestions to expand my angsty love repertoire. Nothing too sweet and cloying. Celtic is good, both in terms of what I like to listen to and for matching the atmosphere of the story (either the classic trad stuff or punk-folk like the Pogues rather than breathy New Agey Celtic). But I'm willing to try just about any genre if the song works. For what it's worth, I love the sound of both songs in the first paragraph.

Music for my novel, part one

Many writers write to music. I'm not one of them. I've tried, but I get distracted from my story and start singing along.

I do, however, develop a soundtrack for each book. I listen to it while I clean house or fold laundry, and I burn it to a CD to keep in my car. The soundtrack helps me think about my work-in-progress even when I'm far from my keyboard, and I think it makes me a more creative and emotional writer.

The Sergeant's Lady ended up with a lonnnggg soundtrack, about half of it period songs my characters themselves would've sung or danced to, the other half a bit more contemporary. This post will focus on the latter set of songs--the ones those of you reading this are likely to have heard of!



If there's one single song that sums up The Sergeant's Lady for me, it's Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" from the Don Juan de Marco soundtrack. Partly for the sound--the style and all the gorgeous acoustic guitar work fit my Spanish setting just right.

But it's really about the lyrics. Allowing for sundry differences of vocabulary and style of expression, it's exactly how my hero, Will, feels about the heroine, Anna. She's the recently widowed survivor of an abusive marriage, and over the course of the book Will helps her heal not just because he loves her, but because of why he loves her. From the first he recognizes that she is above all a woman of courage and integrity. To be valued for those qualities, when in the past she'd been sought after for being pretty and rich, gives Anna the confidence to live into her strengths--and then to defy her world for Will's sake.

So. That's my core song. But there are others. I can't leave out Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers In a Dangerous Time," whose lyrics also fit my story well. My favorite line: But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight -- Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

I listened to the West Side Story Soundtrack a lot, because it's perfect music for star-crossed love stories even when you're writing one with a happy ending. I'd play the whole thing, but "Tonight, Tonight" got the most repeats. Also included were bits and pieces of Les Miz, mostly because I love it and will use any excuse to listen to it, but "On My Own" is the perfect song for a section of the story where Anna thinks she's never going to see Will again.

Writers, do you make soundtracks for your books? Readers, do you read to music?