Soundtrack to My Life
Thursday night I met up with Megan, my fellow MFA student and writing partner. Each month we have to turn in a critical essay and 10-20 pages of creative writing. The week before it's due we swap pieces and get together to give each other feedback. In one of her chapters she seamlessly incorporated some Alanis Morissette lyrics and I was blown away by how well she handled bringing sound into her writing and using it to move the scene along.
In a piece on Catapult Mary Gaitskill talks about the first time she heard the song Nowhere Girl. She says the song didn't necessarily touch her or change her, "But each time I heard it, it touched me in that peculiarly light and emotional way, with the quality of something small that is trying to get your attention, though unconfidently, from somewhere off in a corner. Or from nowhere." It is the way with so many songs and generally it is nearly impossible to weave music into writing unless you're producing a movie with a soundtrack, yet it is inevitable that there is music in the back of the author's subconscious as they write.
In other news, this morning's LitHub digest included a piece about author Andrea Kleine's choice to use a neighborhood murder to fuel the plot of her novel Calf which is now definitely on my "Want to Read" list on Goodreads. Kleine says that she felt nothing but dread the day her agent called and told her there was an offer on her novel; she hadn't told her family what her novel was about and wasn't sure how they would feel about her using the murder of her sister's childhood best friend as the pivotal plot point in her work.
I have yet to use real people and real events in my writing, though the murder that inspired my current novel, White Elephant was, as they say on Law and Order, ripped from the headlines. I read an article about a young boy murdered in the heart of Brooklyn, his body cut to pieces and stuffed into a suitcase and I immediately knew that I wanted to weave that into a novel. However, I don't know if I could ever write about those closest to me, though I've frequently tossed around the idea of writing a memoir about my career as a special education teacher. I sometimes wonder how I would handle breaking the news to a real life person who just happens to appear in my novel. Maybe someday I'll find out!
xoxo
Poison
In other news, this morning's LitHub digest included a piece about author Andrea Kleine's choice to use a neighborhood murder to fuel the plot of her novel Calf which is now definitely on my "Want to Read" list on Goodreads. Kleine says that she felt nothing but dread the day her agent called and told her there was an offer on her novel; she hadn't told her family what her novel was about and wasn't sure how they would feel about her using the murder of her sister's childhood best friend as the pivotal plot point in her work.
I have yet to use real people and real events in my writing, though the murder that inspired my current novel, White Elephant was, as they say on Law and Order, ripped from the headlines. I read an article about a young boy murdered in the heart of Brooklyn, his body cut to pieces and stuffed into a suitcase and I immediately knew that I wanted to weave that into a novel. However, I don't know if I could ever write about those closest to me, though I've frequently tossed around the idea of writing a memoir about my career as a special education teacher. I sometimes wonder how I would handle breaking the news to a real life person who just happens to appear in my novel. Maybe someday I'll find out!
xoxo
Poison
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