Untethered From the Dock

 All right. I've taken a nice little break, and I'm back.

Have I made progress on my vampire novel? Hahahaha! No. 

I have, however, had another idea. Probably more of a short story.

So here's what happened.

I was listening to a song. This song. And I said to myself, there's a story idea in this somewhere. I'm just not sure what it is. And then it occurred to me, after hearing the song, I don't know, 20 more times.

Music for the Road

I've been thinking of all kind of interesting ways to divide a story. Chapters, sure, but that's so… ordinary. One thing I wanted to do with The Long Road is to group the chapters into sections named after road feature. Like "dead end" or "hairpin turn." I don't know if that's going to work, but it's a thought.

Another thought I had was to break up it up by the song that's playing at that moment of their road trip. But that would make for very short sections and is probably not a very good idea.

I have been thinking about road trip music, though. Each of the characters is going to have their own musical taste, just like real people. And sure, there's bound to be some overlap, with some bands or genres that everyone likes. But then maybe one person really likes Nine Inch Nails and no one else really gets what the big deal is. So then you have fighting over control of the radio.

Apropos of Nothing

Titles are important. That's the first thing anyone sees of your book or short story. It has to be catchy, and good, and it has to mean something.

Well, that's the goal, anyway. I have a history of working titles that don't necessarily mean anything. They sound cool, and somehow reference something in the story or in its creation, but don't necessarily make sense for the finished project.

What do I mean? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's some examples:

• Locking Up the Sun: This was a superhero story about a guy who could teleport. The title vaguely made sense because the main character was sent to rescue a superhero named Supernova. But really, it was just named after this song.
• Secrets and Thieves: A post-apocalyptic adventure with a wide variety of strange characters. And while yes, there are secrets, and at least one thief, I don't know that they were central enough to get a spot in the title. It's a line from this song, which has nothing to do with anything. It's just a good line.

A Project, At Last

I have no ideas. Zero. This isn't even writer's block. This is just writer's meh.

I want to work on something. Anything. I've been going through all these writing prompts and nothing has ignited that spark. I'm trying to make a fire with wet paper over here. Any little inkling of an idea I get quickly drives itself into the ground in a spectacular show of boringness. They never even have a chance. As I try to develop them, the creative part of my brain just fucks off, leaving the part of my brain that ruins things.

I had this whole plan at work today. I was going to come home, pick a prompt from my giant list, and talk a bit about its possibilities. What I could do with it. What sort of characters might be called for. And then I'd write an actual short story for Friday. Then I got home, looked at the prompts, and thbpbp! Nothing good.

Open Doors

So it has come to this.

The Waffle House.

Now, I don't know a lot about Waffle House. We don't have them here. What I do know is they never close. Even in the face of natural disaster, if they can be open, they will be open.

I also know that the Waffle House is a nexus between dimensions.

You Were the Song Stuck In My Head

I picture my stories as movies in my head. I've said this before. It's not so weird. But I also picture them as little fan-made YouTube videos where someone took a bunch of clips and set them to music. And maybe that's a little weird. But it's because I'll assign certain music to certain things.

That's nothing new. It's called a leitmotif. A piece of music represents a person, place, concept, whatever. Darth Vader has "The Imperial March," the Shire has "Concerning Hobbits," Davy Jones has that music box/organ piece, Jaws has, you know, the thing. The idea is, they make you associated the music with the person, place, or whatever, and then when you hear it again, you think of the thing. Basic mind control.

Well, I like to have soundtracks for my stories. It helps me get into the right mindset. If I have a song that I associate with a certain scene, I'll listen to it on repeat while I write that scene. When I was finishing last year's NaNo novel, Cold Blooded, I was down to the last day, 4,000 words to go, just trying to wrap up some loose ends. And I think I listened to Secondhand Serenade's "Goodbye" on repeat for an hour while I dumped all the stuff I hadn't resolved onto the page. And it helped. I figured it out.

Two Parts Heartbreak, One Part Explosions

Something amazing happened yesterday (Monday). I learned some fascinating things about my character. It all started with Reddit. Something mentioned that Jim Croce had died in a plane crash. "Why do so many musicians die in plane crashes?" I asked myself. I mean, Patsy Cline, John Denver, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd… And then I thought, maybe one 1980's (or so) punk rocker got "lucky" and was got help from an unlikely source. Namely, vampires.

So then I was at work, and I suddenly had this whole story going in my head. They're in a plane, on the way to some show. Something goes wrong. They crash in the forest. One survivor. But he's not out of the woods yet, literally or metaphorically. He's not doing so good, but he's going to try to find his way to civilization. Spoiler alert: he's not going to make it. Suddenly, vampires. He has to be turned if he wants to make it out of there more or less alive.

Setting a Foundation for Urban Fantasy

I’ll be honest, most of my time lately is spent on trying to become a real adult, and desperately trying not to be a real adult. So I've been slacking in the writing department. I was trying to do some plotting while I was at work, but people kept coming in and wanting things. Very distracting.

It falls into the realm of urban fantasy, in a contemporary world with supernatural elements. This involves something called the Masquerade, which is the outward appearance that the world is normal. The public at large is unaware that creatures of the night roam the streets or what have you. So I can have an ice cream parlor, but no one knows it's run by vampires. Because that would make people uneasy, to say the least.

This saves me, like, half of world building, since half the world is already, well, built. It's just the supernatural underworld that I need to work on. And of course raises the question of whether there are creatures besides vampires in this world. But that's a slippery slope. First you add werewolves, then ghosts, then rakshasas and shtrigas. Then angels and demons. You get my point. Once you add one thing, it's hard to know where to stop. So I think we'll stick with strictly vampires for now. We can always add later if we have a good reason to.

Face the Music When It's Dire

I don't know what we’re talking about today. I was working this past weekend, and it's a lot of standing and walking and carrying things, as opposed to all the sitting and thinking about things that I've been doing since August. So there was a lot of sleeping when I wasn't working.

I have also been listening to a lot of music. Mainly a band called Marianas Trench. Literally, 95% of what I have listened to in the past week is them. I even ordered one of their CDs as a graduation present to myself. Not going to lie, I'm more excited about that than my diploma being mailed to me.

Anyway, maybe a little more on topic, music is a huge part of my writing process. Sure, I like to have something playing in the background while I write to drown out all the background noise (and trust me, I can't hear a damn thing with my headphones in). But, music also plays a more direct role in the narrative process. I have, in my highly organized collection of story ideas and elements, a page entitled "Song Bits" with little snippets that I find particularly inspiring or compelling. These can lead to a scene or even a whole story. I have a couple of stories that owe their entire existence to a single song. I'm only going to tell you about one, because I can actually share it with you.

This came from a creative writing class I took. The details aren’t important, but the particular exercise involved using a song title as a story title, then writing the story from there. I ended up using Breaking Benjamin's "Unknown Soldier," and wrote a whole story based on it (found here). It's not a perfect story, but I did write it something like eight years ago. Although I was about 20 at the time, so it's not a great excuse. Unless I was 12 or under, I expect a higher standard of quality from past me.

Even when it's not directly influencing the plot, music is super important to my process. I tend to make playlists for each story that I'm working on. Since I imagine all my stories as movies that play in my head, it only makes sense for them to have soundtracks. There could be songs that fit the overall mood, or a particular scene, or a particular character. I haven't done this as much lately, for whatever reason, but some of my past stories have extensive playlists. An example for you is The Midnight Carnival's playlist. The protagonist was a teenage girl, so there's a lot of emo type stuff in there. When (if?) I try to revise that story this summer, I'm sure I'll be adding to it. I have a lot more of that sort of music than I did two years ago.

I've considered adding a regular feature to the blog where I share the music I'm into at the time. But I don’t know if I can consistently relate that back to writing without getting repetitious. Sometimes I just want to fangirl about a new band I found. For some odd reason, I try to cater this whole thing to the readers and what they want to see. But I don't know what that is. I'm just throwing spaghetti here. I need a little feedback if you want this to stay interesting. This isn't a monologue, it’s a conversation. And if you've ever met me, you'll know how terrible I am at keeping a conversation when I have nothing to work with.