Sunday, July 15, 2012

How do you get in the mood?


How do I get in the mood? Wait, what, is this a trick question? Oh, of writing. Of course that’s what was meant. What was I thinking?
      How I get in the mood to write, well I must say that it’s different depending on the scenario that’s surrounding me at that moment in time. To get my creative juices flowing, I usually have two ways; 1: it has to be extremely quiet, or 2: I need to jam out to some music.

Let me go over the first one, “Silence is Golden.”

      This is how I usually get my writing done. No noise, no work calls, no children fighting over their toy light sabers (granted my wife usually sees my struggle and intervenes), nothing but the sound of my fan. So once the noise is…wait what was I writing about? Oh that’s right, I forget everything and have to retract my work and find out what I was trying to portray out into words to begin with. Like right now, the children are going on about some toy carrot and umm…what was I saying?
      But hey, that’s just one of the joys of being a parent. Also as being a parent, my bed time surpasses that of the children (insert evil laugh here). During that time, I have almost 100% of uninterrupted brain storming, but there’s a downfall. There’s always a downfall.
      Yes working late at night gives me the chance to get my create juices flowing with the joys of silence, but there’s something else that lurks in the night. Its name is, “The Sand Man”, and he doesn’t take kindly to those who try to stay awake longer than one’s capability.
      Once I start fighting the “The Sand Man” and continue writing, I read it a day later when I’m more awake, and I’m like, “What was I thinking? Did someone slip some LSD in my coffee or something?” Most of it is usually bad but there are times that I create something so farfetched and strange, I can chisel off some of the “Crazy” and make something of it.

Now let’s move to the second one, “Setting the Mood.”

      Music, it sets the mood for many different scenarios in our lives. Such as jogging down the road, driving in our vehicles, or setting at our desks while typing up a blog. Music makes a scene come to life in a movie. You want a good action scene; you need to have an upbeat tempo to rock out on.
      So for me, if I’m really into it, I pick a bunch of random songs that I like from my massive playlist, start skimming through the list, and choose what I think would best fit my scene. On a personal note, I’ve already mentally picked a song for my main character in the “Within” series. Yeah, call me nerdy.
      Anyway, back to the music. It helps me get into a “feel” of the scene. Like what would I want to see right now during this certain section of a song? I try to mimic the songs rhythm into actions and feelings, that way I can hopefully transfer what I’m feeling at that time, with what I think should happen in a scene, and put it all into words. After that, I hope the reader can feel the same way I did, just by reading it.

Music is the universal language after all.

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