Thursday’s Children 2/7/13

Inspired by Adolescent Boys (and Music)

A weekly blog hop where writers share their inspirations. Please join us!

My book TENDRIL is written in dual first person POVs, one of which is that of a seventeen year old boy. Humans are more similar than they are different, but still… I joked around on Twitter about listening to Green Day and eating Doritos to get my brain in the right place.

That wasn’t entirely a joke. One of the primary ways I got into my narrator Dylan’s head was through music. Fortunately for me, his character plays guitar and he had a brother, also a guitar-player, who died in the early nineties. Music is Dylan’s way of connecting with a brother he never got to know. Nineties music is his sweet spot for that reason, but he likes more current music too.

Listening to music while I write doesn’t work for me. I get easily distracted by it. I need silence, or white noise – the sound of clothes flopping around in the dryer, or the grinding hum of the dishwasher, or the snores of two temporarily exhausted terriers.

Listening to music BEFORE I write is inspirational.

I’d write a Dylan chapter, then I’d find a song for its title. Then I’d listen to the song, and sometimes the music inspired some revisions. A couple of times I knew what song I wanted to use, and wrote the chapter with that in mind.

Here are the songs

1. Disappearing Boy (Green Day)

2. Creep (Radiohead)

3. Endless Deep (U2)

4. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)

5. Violet Eyes (Meat Puppets)

6. Trouble (Eddie Vedder cover of Cat Stevens)

7. Longing to Belong (Eddie Vedder)

8. Beautiful Freak (Eels)

9. Brother (Alice In Chains, unplugged)

10. What We Don’t Know (Linkin Park)

11. You Can Close Your Eyes (Eddie Vedder cover of James Taylor)

12. Butterflies and Hurricanes (Muse)

13. Plush (Stone Temple Pilots)

14. Lights In The Sky (Nine Inch Nails)

15. Be Still My Love (Bush)

16. Collide (Howie Day) shout out to fellow Maine-ah…

How many of you have playlists for your books? Or maybe a single theme song?

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