The Process: Soundtracks

All right, to get it out of the way - Happy Easter to anyone reading this on the day I write it. My family's Easter festivities don't kick in until later this afternoon, so I'm taking a day off from my self-perpetuating To-Do List to just write.

Three things I'm working on in earnest these days: First off, I'm still trying to polish the current draft of Infinity, but I'm getting closer to satisfied. I'm at the picky-picky step of running a search on the whole manuscript for word crutches (words I overuse) and revising around them or eliminating them altogether. Incidentally, my biggest crutches are, in order: "that," "very," and "really." Imagine the fun of closely examining the 769 occurrences of one particular word and then trying to decide whether or not each one is necessary.

Project 2 is the book I'm writing for my cousin "Mav" out in Afghanistan. Happily the whole thing finally came together in my head yesterday as far as story outline, so no longer am I just struggling to get something done by just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and what doesn't.

Project 3 brings us to today's topic: Soundtracks. About 10 years ago I wrote a little manuscript called Grandpa, which was a nice little heartwarming bit of middle grade realistic fiction. I revisited it not long ago, and saw that, surprisingly, it didn't suck half as much as I remembered. In fact, it was worth revising into a really (see, there I go with the crutch) solid book. And, since I gave up on my self-imposed write-a-book-in-February project, I thought knocking Grandpa into respectable shape was worth my time. This way I will both be able to provide a bit of realistic fiction for that one particular student who occasionally gets in my face about writing realistic fiction that isn't sad (i.e. Infinity) and I could get one more title in the rotation for hunting agents.

But the first time I started looking it over, it was a daunting task. "Take this book you wrote ten years ago, and dissect the whole thing, and then make it better." Not a ride around the lake right there. But then I had a moment of inspiration: Get the Hornsby back out. See, when I wrote Grandpa, I listened to absolutely nothing but Bruce Hornsby when I was writing, because in my mind, his music evokes the same sense of tone and emotion that I was going for in my writing, and having that as my soundtrack helped me get there. And wow, as soon as I did that, everything I was struggling with about revising that book suddenly made perfect sense.

Different people have different methods behind their creativity. For me? I gotta have a soundtrack.