Writing for me is a mood. I can sit down anytime and write, but I write my best when I am in the mood of my characters. Music soundtracks constantly fill my background throughout my day, giving me fodder for my characters and their plot lines. How to Train Your Dragon is one of my favorites. A significant portion of my stories were written to that soundtrack.
I am one fourth Swedish, one fourth Norwegian, and one half mutt, which I think is why I enjoy Scottish/Viking music. The little bit of Viking madness running through me shows up in my audacity to decide to write books without any prior knowledge or training. It also makes me confident that I CAN write something worth reading. I don’t need anyone to tell me whether or not my story is good. I think my story characters often feed off of this emotion. Perhaps in the beginning they don’t believe in themselves, but by the end they are sure of their identity.
Music is what keeps me and my characters sane. As long as I have a good playlist to keep me going, I can write for hours at a time. If I go too long without listening to a good soundtrack, my story suffers. My poor characters become dry, and my world building is flat. Yet when the music runs they quickly fly off the page, taking on a life of their own.
The volume that I listen to music is also important. For me, 2022 was the summer of Top Gun. I absolutely BLASTED the original soundtrack nearly everywhere I went. I spent a great deal of time thinking about my latest story character. She’s a flawed heroine running from the ghosts of her past, like Pete Mitchell. Redemption is going to be her theme, just like Maverick must realize in Top Gun.
Not everything is sunshine and fast jets though, in my second book some of the main characters have lost loved ones dear to them. When I wrote that storyline, I had gone through the recent loss of several of my own family members. I could write sympathetically to my leads as I was suffering through my own grief. Using those emotions was an opportunity to grow as a writer, to let my characters be an extension of my processing. Again, music was a huge part of my writing. Go Rest High on That Mountain by Vince Gill played over and over as I wrote. Tough to wrestle with, but a positive experience in the end.
For me, writing is not just one single thing. It’s not just my imagination. It’s music, places I’ve been, movies I’ve watched, books I’ve read and the people around me. Throw all of these together in the crazy place called my brain, and stories start to appear.