I have a confession to make. I'm one of those writers who's inspired to write because of songs, plays, movies, and books. I don't need those stories; I need the way those stories and songs make me feel.
The first novel I ever wrote, a really horrid epic fantasy very much in the style (okay, fan fiction) of David Eddings, I wrote to the soundtrack of Return of the Jedi. One of the projects my agent is shopping now was written to Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera—but only a specific version of POTO, with a specific cast, and a specific and set lineup of songs that doesn't mirror the order in the show. Another of my current projects I am writing to Sheherazade by the nineteenth century Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. But then, for fight scenes (I like to kill stuff), I always use the same playlist and the same songs, highlighted by "Battle of the Heroes", composed by John Williams for Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.
So, yeah. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I have theme music for my books.
I'm not the only author to do this. In fact, I know quite a few authors who have theme songs or playlists they write to. I tend to prefer orchestral music without vocalists for most of my writing music. Phantom is the big exception to that, but after years of musical theater, I learned to block vocals from my mind. It's a defense mechanism if you get cast in three successive productions of The Sound of Music, believe me. But The Phantom of the Opera sparked an idea for me—not a riff of Phantom, mind you. But the play and its music inspired me to set my magical realism series in the world of professional American theater—a world I know very well. And why not? Phantom has plays within the play, and all the action of the plot takes place backstage. I've seen multiple productions of POTO, on Broadway with three different casts, the movie version with the best-looking deformed man in history (Gerard Butler—I would totally have picked your Phantom over Raoul! Totally.), and now the 25th anniversary London production DVD. Every time I have seen Phantom—and particularly as a member of the audience—I have left the theater in an uplifted kind of reluctance. I wanted the play to keep going. I wanted to know what happened next. I pictured my coloratura self in the lyric soprano lead and created new adventures in my head. The show, and particularly the music, made me want to create. On top of that, however, the music from Phantom ties me to a tragedy from my youth. A school friend of mine from the sixth grade on was killed in an accident, and at his viewing, the POTO songs Music of the Night and Journey to the Cemetery were played over and over.
So the music has a specific meaning to me, both with my history in the theatrical world and also with an event that even now, I look back upon in sorrow. Those emotions, those personal claims upon my history and psychology, are evoked by the music—and I use that to fuel my writing for certain projects or for certain types of scenes.
It's not just music, though. Occasionally, other things will strike a spark in my imagination. A passage from a letter written in the 1800s gave birth to an alternate history set in the Tudor era. A lighting direction from a new play festival a decade ago stuck in my head and birthed the Darkshifters of my dark fantasy series. If it weren't for a recurring nightmare, I'd never have been able to conceptualize a story based upon an evil Harlequin.
And Obi Wan Kenobi stating emphatically, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" set off an entire satire based on a writer's lack of comprehension of absolutism that will probably never see the light of day.
What? A girl's got to make a living somehow. Sorry, Mr. Lucas—but the line was funny.
So why does inspiration work this way? Maybe some writers can sit down and say to themselves, "Today, I'm going to write a space opera about cats that fly space shuttles and shoot mouse-shaped asteroids out of the belt between Mars and Jupiter." I'm not one of them…although that sounds like a good idea for a YA. After a lifetime spent in the arts, I find my inspiration in the moods that art or literature or music create in me. I can put in my Les Miserables CD in and let the music from that show serve as an accompaniment to the story I "see" in my head—the story that unfolds like a movie in my mind's eye and graciously permits me to relate the characters and the plot in a Word document file that someday, after much revision, editing, and beta reading, might just become a book.
There's a reason why the Muses are the patronesses of the arts in Greek mythology. Their responsibilities encompass the arts as known to the Greeks, and whenever a writer puts pen to paper, we pay homage to the idea of the Muses—we credit them with inspiring our work. Our word 'music' is derived from the Muses—so for me, at least, it's an easy leap that wonderful music can motivate an author to create an equally wonderful story.
But then there's the down side. How many times have I heard a writer, frustrated and nearly desperate, waiting fruitlessly for the Muse to appear? How many times has a writer blamed the absence of the Muse for the silence of their pen, the stalling of their stories?
You can't wait for a mythical Greek goddess to show up in your office and open up the cupboard in your mind where your story is kept. Got some bad news for you—mythical means "doesn't exist", and the fact of the matter is that inspiration, regardless of how it's sparked, is internal. Music from Phantom doesn't make me write. The response that music evokes in me—that's what makes me write. The magic onstage during a production of the show make me leave the theater feeling like I, too, am magical—and that magic is released in the form of a story.
So the next time you're sitting at your computer, playing never-ending, mindless games of Spider Solitaire while you wait for the Muse to descend in a cloud of glitter and magic and lead you past the plot snag that's got you stymied, perhaps the answer isn't floating on Mt. Olympus. Perhaps the answer is in a song, a book, a film that makes you feel like a magical moment was created. Perhaps the answer is in the scene where Severus Snape finally reveals his heart and story to Harry Potter in a tear. Maybe, that last beat where Rhett Butler says, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" will evoke that creative response in you. Give yourself and your imagination time to relax in someone else's world—or words—creations that have always spurred that artistic synchronicity in your soul Because in the end, while the spark may be external, the fire that blazes in every writer is decidedly internal.
In other words, don't be afraid to search for it in places other than the wall over your desk.
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