Putting in the time

Tonight, I had several things I could be doing: writing, marking late Novel 2 assignments, marking Editing assignments, correcting student writing from Editing, workshopping Novel 2 chapters, reading and making selections from a Poetrix folder, rewriting my last section from the group novel, doing submissions (which I'm atrociously bad at making time to do, but seeing as I had a poem accepted today, I might feel inspired for a couple of days -- so must grab this time while I can), writing material for my online unit, writing material for my website, and catching up with blogs and emails. Instead, I found myself doing homework -- and while I have been at a training course for three days with work, this was homework for my piano teacher.

I've always wanted to play piano. When I was small, friends of ours had a piano, and I always thought it the most lovely of instruments. Our friend, Neville (really Mum and Dad's friend), still lived at home, and the piano was his mother's, and she would let me play with it. As a teenager, I learnt how to play a simple tune that involved rolling my knuckles back and forward along the black keys, and if people asked if I could play I would jokingly say yes and then perform this. It usually left them flabbergasted, though at the time I don't think I realised this wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Throughout my childhood, teen years and early adulthood, the piano remained this exotic, almost mystical instrument -- one we couldn't afford to own. I dreamed of playing, but knew it was futile to ask for lessons. When my friend Julie had guitar lessons, I secretly envied her parents' investing in her musical education. But we had no piano to practise on in any case.

My husband had an electronic keyboard -- and while his father is a great proponent of the electronic keyboard over the piano, I loathe it for its inferior sound. When we had kids, we sent our oldest off to have lessons. My husband raced off and bought a piano for her to practise on, unaware that halfway through her first lesson Princess Sleepyhead's teacher would halt her and tell her that was it, and to have a good life. Fortunately, two years later we found her another teacher, one who was wonderfully patient. In the meantime, I started to teach myself to play, and although I was enthusiastic, I was trying to write so spare time went into writing, not practising.

Years later, frustrated at children who were obviously musical, but unwilling to practise, I took up lessons too, which first of all meant unlearning all the bad habits I'd taught myself (but, on the other hand, left me with a strong propensity for sight reading). Soon, I was playing far more difficult songs than the children were -- but I might add with far less fluency than they were capable of -- something two years later I still struggle with, because I'm so busy thinking about where my fingers should be going next.

At first, wanting to inspire the children, and perhaps frustrated by my burn-out after Clarion, I practised often. Maybe playing offered me the creative outlet that writing had refused me; maybe it salved the creative frustration I was feeling. Others might call it the perfect procrastination tool. I don't know. I never saw it as this. But I know as my writing drive has grown strong again, I'm practising less and less. It's not that I don't want to practise, or that I'm lazy (and I quite like the challenge of scales, which I see more as pattern recognition), just that I don't have time.

To be a concert pianist (not that I'm aspiring towards this) we all know you have to spend hours and hours practising. I'd settle for something far less ambitious: just to play songs I like, fluently and without mistakes. Most writers, though, are aiming for concert pianist level with their writing -- that is that they want to be published, want people to pay to read their work, want the acknowledgment of their peers. Yet many writers aren't prepared to do those long hours of practise. I can see this is what I've been doing in the rewrites of my book: spending the time, learning and honing the craft. I don't mind this -- I've enjoyed putting in the long hours. I'm serious about my writing in a way that I'm not serious about my piano. I have done and continue to do the long hours -- and I derive a lot of enjoyment from these hours. I cannot see why other writers do not -- but I see this in my students all the time. Perhaps it is laziness, perhaps fear, perhaps it's just not the obsession for them that it is for me. To achieve exalted level status, you have to be prepared to work. Bum on seat. All of that. All those hoary old chestnuts: it's 10% inspiration and...

We know how it goes. We know how easily it can go wrong. We know sometimes it can go right. What we need to decide is how much we're willing to put in to make the dream happen. I don't know if I'll ever achieve even the level of proficiency I want in piano -- because I'm not driven enough. That's okay. That's my choice. But I do know with writing, I'm going to continue to give it all I've got.

Seven things that inspire me: one: music

Some of my writer friends recently have blogged about seven things that inspire them, and I wanted to follow this up with an analysis of what my inspirations are for my writing, but I wanted to do so when I had some distance between reading their posts and composing my own, just because I knew there was some commonality, and I wanted time to be sure that what I was putting up was really coming from me.

My first inspiration is music. I know I've blogged about this before, so forgive me the indulgence, but I really can't look at my writing inspirations without starting here. Music is so important to me. Other friends listen to the radio while they drive, or to audio books (I should do this, I know), but for me it has to be music. My series working title "The oracle of the mountain king" is directly drawn from music -- from Grieg's "In the hall of the mountain king" from his Peer Gynt Suite. I wanted to capture the frantic frenetic build up of energy and pace in a fantasy setting. For a reader to feel the tension, to be flipping pages so fast that they would get paper-burn on their fingertips.

If I'm really stuck and facing down writer's block, music will often unblock me -- especially a good soundtrack like Gladiator and its sequel, or any of the Lord of the rings films. (I recently found a little handmade autograph book that Kaz, one of my Clarion buddies, gave me at the end of Clarion, and I had everyone sign it. My friend Cat wrote that she never wanted to hear Return of the king again -- because I played it everyday. I had meant to take up two soundtracks (I was travelling light), but when I opened the other, the case was empty. Repetition for me is a good thing, though it drives my husband bananas, particularly because he thinks there's no such thing as a good soundtrack.)

I've seen the powerful effect music has on writers through getting students to do writing exercises to music. Music helps establish a mood to write in, and helps bring out the mood in a piece. What I've done for these exercises is pick out several songs from different albums with the same feel to them. Interestingly, I had one student complain that each song felt so different they couldn't possibly get a consistent feel to their writing -- so perhaps one person's "feel" is quite different from another's.

Recently, I've found another musical source of inspiration: the Victorian State Singers. Yes, my daughter's one of them so maybe I'm biased, but choral music is new to me, and I can't tell you how much I love listening to them. The voice of youth is so pure. At their most recent performance, where they were the guest performers with a lot of local school groups, someone not attached to these singers gave them a standing ovation, so I'm not alone in my admiration. I listen to some of their songs and feel my throat close up and my eyes well. I have four short films taken on my el-cheapo digital camera, and the sound is just exquisite, even if the picture quality is pretty crappy. Blogger won't let me upload AVIs, so instead I'll post a still of them rehearsing for the schools' concert. They're not all there, not all in their black yet, nor wearing their coloured scarves. If only they would cut a CD, I'd be able to write to that -- if I could keep just the tears from my eyes.

Writing to music

I love writing to music. Nothing is more effective for getting me in the right frame of mind than choosing a piece of music with the same atmospheric feel as what I'm trying to create. The mood of the music then flows into the mood of the writing. Some of my students like to write to modern music, but for me there's only one type of music that does it. Soundtrack music. And I guess I'm thinking about this because of the trailer on the previous post, and thinking how much I love the music already.

My husband hates soundtrack music. He says it's not real music. My kids love it, but maybe I've indoctrinated (read brainwashed) them. Favourite soundtracks to listen to are Gladiator (the original and the "more songs from") and The lord of the rings (all three of them). Along the way I've bought lots more soundtracks. Most are music only: Excalibur, Star wars (the original trilogy, but I also have The phantom menace, Capricorn One, Battlestar Galactica (from the film/original TV series), but I also have some that have singing as well: Cold mountain, Moulin Rouge, The bodyguard, Rocky (the first three soundtracks). Really, for writing though, it has to be a fantasy movie. Maybe the science fiction movies feel too "technological"? I don't know. They're neither more nor less dramatic, but the mood isn't quite right.

The other piece of music that has been inspirational is Peer Gynt -- especially "In the hall of the mountain king", which really encapsulated the feel I wanted in my novel, and inspired the series name (The oracle of the mountain king), though this of course may change if the series is published. I wanted the mad dance of that music, the franticness, the frenzy of escalating tension. I often think of this when I'm writing.

When I was teaching first year classes and sometimes in Novel 2, I would get students to write to two pieces of music. Each year I would tape different selections from my soundtracks. The first time I used this exercise was in a Short Story 1 class. I had twelve students, all of whom were writing contemporary stories. For one of the pieces I chose music from The fellowship of the ring that involved the black riders chasing Frodo to the ferry. Eleven of my twelve writers wrote about being chased by horses, yet none of them had recognised the music and only one (strangely enough) had seen the film. That really drove home to me the power of music. I had expected twelve contemporary but dark, frightening pieces, and instead I got eleven horse chases. How bizarre.

I find now that whenever I'm feeling stuck, putting on a piece of music can help me make the segue into words.