Research

If research were a Transformer it would be named Distractionator, but it would be an Autobot because it's totally necessary and good.

NaNo. *Sigh* If you've been reading along on my blog, you know that I already have my songs and lyrics, and have created something of a poem to lead me. As of a few days ago, I have my characters named (purposefully) and am now writing little blurbs and summaries of each chapter. Generally I do this as I go, but with the goal of 2000 words a day and the estimated chapter size of 4600 words, I'm feeling like it'd be best to have something to work with ahead of time. So I can finish. And so I can celebrate Thanksgiving without excessive guilt and freaking out.

Anyway, I'm planning Chapter 1 and my MC (Laurel- $5 for real if you can guess what/why) has Bunco plans for her Friday night. (Because she's a suburban mom and that's what a lot of suburban moms do one Friday night a month.) I actually have never played Bunco, but I understand it uses dice and a ton of wine must be involved. So now I have to look up Bunco and figure out how to play. And I'm considering hosting a party one night this month so I can see how it plays out. Or you could just invite me to your Bunco night and I'll bring a bottle. Whichever.

So I'm only in Chapter 1 planning and already totally distracted, and it reminds me of all the research I've done for past novels. With JALR I was all up in Millennium Park, the Shedd Aquarium, and running.

WCP had me researching dresses, dresses, and more dresses. And baseball. The story takes place during the 2003 NLCS/ALCS and World Series. I now know more than I should about those games/series. Truly. Want to see my notes?


ATW takes place mostly in MC Amanda's condo, so I had to do Chicago neighborhood and housing research (and am still getting listing emails), then had to figure out how the condo's interior looked. I spent an entire morning drawing a rough sketch.

And then I had to decorate, so spent over an hour looking at Persian rugs. I found the perfect one, and at a deal. Amanda was so proud of me.

It's a huge time-consumer, but I think that the extra research I do as a writer makes me more able to see my character's world. I want to understand how she lives. And I want my readers (all two of you) to be able to experience it as well. Just like you're there, like you've fallen into a Pensieve and are watching, rather than reading words on a page.

Listening to: my NaNo playlist

xo. kb.

Method Writing.

I read somewhere that James Dean would so go into his character that he, when playing a drunken, would fool his cast mates and crew into thinking he was really inebriated. I also read that Bjork, following completion of DANCER IN THE DARK, was so absorbed by her character that she vowed never to act again. It had broken her heart. I love this idea, of being so entrenched in your character that you become them. It's something I do every time I write a book.

I didn't set out intending to write this way. Frankly, I never actually set out to write, I just sat down one day and began writing. With my first novel, it was easy for me to write as though I was my main character. JUST A LITTLE RAIN is a very fictionalized, semi-autobiographical novel. It's not all me, but it's enough me that I *got* Eliza right from the get-go. I never had to ask myself, "How would she behave in this situation?" or "How does she feel about this?" or "What things does she notice when she looks at the world?" I just thought about how I would see, feel, and react, then wrote it.

WHERE CURRENTS PULL was more difficult for me to get into, because my intention with that novel was to tackle a problematic area of my own personality (my inability to make big decisions, and my near-obsession with the small ones), but to assign it to a character who was very much not me. I found myself writing in Eliza's voice for a while, before I realized I had to change my approach for Natalie. I changed the music I was using to write to, and thought long and hard about her voice. Natalie spoke in run-on sentences; she began sentences with "So" and "And" a lot. She over-explained and over-thought everything. She was detail-oriented to the point of being either annoying or charmingly strange.
The more into her character I got, the more I behaved like Natalie. I started dressing in dresses exclusively just like Nat, started talking long, noticed all the small details of everything around me, appreciated sparkly things (not vampires) and the color blue, and- even more weird- developed a very easy, breezy attitude with life. Actually, I was probably the happiest I've been in a long time when I was writing Natalie, just because she's, generally, a very happy person.

Then we get to ABOVE THE WAVES. When I started on this novel, I already had it in my mind that I become my characters as I write. I found Amanda a specific playlist (which was difficult- I wrote a blog about it some long time ago), and set out to discover her. Amanda's a tough one, because she starts out this totally confident, dry, and hot girl. When I wrote the beginning, I curled my hair in waves every day, exercised twice a day, and limited my drinking. As the writing progressed, Amanda devolves into a huge mess of depression. So did I. It wasn't specifically intentional, but when you're trying to understand how a character will behave when she's feeling that way, you have to tap into something. It's interesting, because I imagined her depression to be this heavy sadness, but it didn't end up that way at all. She(we) felt a general numbness to the world, interspersed with fits of anger. Actually, it really worked for her character and, I think, was tons more authentic than weepiness would have been.

*It didn't work very well for me, however, and I'm finding it very difficult to break away from Amanda. I guess it doesn't help that the story doesn't end all rainbows and unicorns.*

Anyway, I wonder if other writers do this? I mean, I know I'm a weirdo, but there have to be more of us out there, right?

Listening to: Mates Of State "Re-Arrange Us" again. I'm a Tuesday, remember?

xo. kb.

Every book needs a playlist.

I wrote recently that I wanted to go back and rewrite JUST A LITTLE RAIN. Last night I got the BIG IDEA! I figured out how it's going to start. It's perfect, and I'm excited to write. The only problem- I've been inside Amanda's head for so long, and before that Nat's, I don't know if I remember what Eliza sounds like in the first person. The best way for me to get to know her again is to listen to her music.

Every MS I've written has its own playlist. Each character I write has their special songs, or songs that I listened to on repeat while I was writing her book to help me set the tone. So I put on her playlist. Except it was a big mess, full of songs that didn't really follow the story well, or that were so overplayed that I can't stand them anymore.

It needed editing. And since I was going to refine it, I had to go ahead and complete the other two as well, because I couldn't leave them unfinished. It's taken me all morning, but I think they're ready. I'll share them with you now. Get excited!

JUST A LITTLE RAIN
Rain Song- Sunny Day Real Estate
Red House- Shudder To Think
Wouldn't It Be Nice- The Beach Boys
Unravel- Bjork
Lover, You Should Have Come Over- Jeff Buckley
Tearing In My Heart- Sunny Day Real Estate
Buildings & Mountains- The Republic Tigers
Transatlanticism- Death Cab For Cutie
Carry The Zero- Built To Spill
Run- Amy MacDonald
Rhinoceros- Smashing Pumpkins
Ghosts- Sleeping At Last
Tatseo Show- Jeremy Enigk
Big Jumps- Emiliana Torrini
Just Like Heaven- The Cure
The Rain Song- Led Zeppelin

WHERE CURRENTS PULL
Chocolate- Shudder To Think
Kool Thing- Sonic Youth
Theo B- Sunny Day Real Estate
Anxious Arms- The Jealous Sound
Positive Bleeding- Urge Overkill
Head Over Heels- Tears For Fears
In The Garage- Weezer
Martha My Dear- The Beatles
From A Balance Beam- Bright Eyes
How Soon Is Now?- The Smiths
Abigail Anne- Jeremy Enigk
Broad Shoulders- The Jealous Sound
Gigantic- The Pixies
Falling For You- Weezer
You Were Right- Built To Spill
Learning To Fly- Pink Floyd
Currents- Sleeping At Last

ABOVE THE WAVES
Coat Check Dream Song- Bright Eyes
Abandon! Abandon!- The Jealous Sound
Growing Old Is Getting Old- Silversun Pickups
Save Me from What I Want- St. Vincent
Something Of An End- My Brightest Diamond
A Dream For Us- The Appleseed Cast
Cannons- Jeremy Enigk
I'll Never Leave You- Rogue Wave
Burning Photographs- Ryan Adams
Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd
Creature Fear- Bon Iver
A Skeleton Of Something More- Sleeping At Last
Cubism Dream- Local Natives
Ahead Of The Curve- Monsters Of Folk
My Life Is At Home- The Promise Ring
Bowl of Oranges- Bright Eyes
Above the Waves- The Jealous Sound

It came upon a midnight run. Okay, not midnight, but it was dark.

My best ideas always come to me when I'm right about to fall asleep or when I'm exercising (more often when I elliptical or walk than when I run). Kind of inconvenient, since I love sleeping and I never have a pen on me when I workout, but what do you do? I never turn away a good idea.

So good idea tonight came while running. Yes, I run at night. I've tried to run during the day, but the sun seems to sap my energy and I can never go as far. So tonight, after dinner, after putting the kids to bed, I went for my run. The weather's perfect right now- cool, low humidity- the air has just a hint of autumn in it (but I can still smell the aroma of sweetgrass, which is my favorite scent of all time and the only thing I really like about summer), and the moon was near full, casting enough light for me to see in front of myself.

My workout's been wonky since my back freaked out, so I was ultra pleased to find myself running with ease, with minimal pain and a lot of energy. It gave me the opportunity to think. I try not to focus my mind on anything when I'm running, and I tend to float from idea to idea. Tonight my brain was all in my book. I'm reading it through for the first time, and I have no idea if it's going to flow well. Oh, and make sense. That's a big one. Because it's not a plot-driven book, it's character-driven (they all are) and I hope I've done right by Amanda in telling her story.

Then, because my brain floats, I started thinking about Twitter. @Crzywritergrl had a tweet today asking writers when they bench a book or start over? I replied, because JUST A LITTLE RAIN has always been the story closest to my heart, and also the one I feel will be the hardest to sell. The reasons are simple. It's 150K and spans the MC's life from 16-30. Sure there's a 10 break in the middle, but that 10 year break also separates it into two books. Still, I love Eliza's story. And these three books I've written are a collection. They go together, and I want to keep them that way. So I'm always faced with the dilemma: how do I tell the story in a way that is publishable?

My answer came to me while running, and it's so simple, I can't believe I didn't see it before.

I've already written Eliza's story. I've already told the story I needed to tell for me. The details are all there, written down like a memoir, saved in a file and on several memory sticks. I got it out. Now I just need to shape her life into something people want to read. I need to simplify and give direction.

That, I can do. And I'm so freaking excited I can hardly stand it.

Listening to: St. Vincent "Actor"

xo.kb.

Music and writing.

I write to music. Actually, I do almost everything to music. When I was younger, I used to wish life was like a constant musical, or a movie and there could be a soundtrack playing at all times. Kind of like on Ally McBeal, where everyone had their own theme song, or in Dancer In The Dark where songs just erupt from the every day. It's now possible for me to do this. I have a good chunk of music on my iPhone, which goes with me everywhere, and I almost have the iPod function on.

So I am just slightly obsessed with music. It's not a big deal. It's not like it hurts anyone.

But I know that some writers need absolute silence to formulate thoughts, while some need the TV in the background. Some people can't write to music, but need it to edit. I need the TV off, the kids away or asleep, and the music quietly on. And the artist I listen to has to be just right. This is a very big deal for me. I have had a muse for each book. Each one has been different, maybe based on the tone of the character.

JUST A LITTLE RAIN was written exclusively to my Jeremy Enigk playlist, which includes all his solo work, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Fire Theft. I'd start my writing day by picking a song to begin with, then shuffle through the rest.

When I started WHERE CURRENTS PULL, I started with the old JE playlist, thinking it good luck, but I found I couldn't get into my new character Natalie. Everything I wrote sounded like Eliza. I tried switching to Pete Yorn, because I'd recently seen him in concert and he looked just like my vision of Sawyer, which blew my mind. But his music wasn't right either. It took a while to find my muse, and happened unexpectedly, as usual. Every time Panic Switch came on the radio, my kids and I would freak out. So I downloaded the song. Then all the Silversun Pickups albums. (Legally, because artists should get paid for their work.) The book and character came easily to me then, and I wrote the rest to the SSPU playlist, this time not on shuffle, but in song order, album order. Although, the last chapter (that furious writing that comes at the end when you both want to see it come together and hate to see it over) was written to a mix. Matt & Kim, Monsters Of Folk, Pete Yorn, The Promise Ring, The Republic Tigers, the sea and cake, Shudder To Think, SSPU, Sleeping At Last, SDRE, Tegan and Sara, Timbaland, White Rabbits. I listened to that mix on repeat until I finished. It was a couple days, I remember, but the music didn't get stale. It was like a cheering section.

ABOVE THE WAVES has proven to be difficult. I've tried a number of bands that have worked for a while, but not enough to keep me going for the long haul. I started with SSPU, which was no good for Amanda at all. I still love the band, but they don't work for her. I have used the following bands: The Appleseed Cast, Local Natives, Bon Iver, Band Of Skulls. To no avail. But I think I've found what I'm looking for. I have two playlists I've been alternating between and, between them (and my JE playlist, which I use for times I'm feeling stuck because it's uplifting to me in the way Gospel music is for church-types), they're doing the job pretty freaking well.

Playlist 1: The Jealous Sound/Knapsack. Reasons: I love Blair Shehan's voice (which is why I include Knapsack, because TJS doesn't have enough music out there- *finish that new album, boys*), but the band is so fantastic. Energetic, and interesting. Emotional and thoughtful lyrics. Oh, and the fact that I named the book after one of their songs. Yep, love them.

Playlist 2: A Conor Oberst collection. It came to me either in the middle of the night or in a dream, I can't remember. But when you wake thinking of something, I find it's best to hold onto that thought because it's poignant. The something that hit me was the song "Bowl Of Oranges," and I knew I had to reference Bright Eyes in this book. Amanda has a Conor Oberst obsession, and now I do as well. This is a good thing.

Listening to: Playlist 2

xo. kb.