Music to Write By

One of the things that I find helps me get into the mood when I'm writing is music.

Personally, I prefer lyric-less, soundtrack-like music, though once in while I find myself in the mood to write to the sound of people singing - though it slows down the speed of my writing since I have to focus on the words I want to write while being bombarded by a voice singing words at loud volumes right in my ear.

Of course, what determines what I listen to when I write depends on what genre my novel is and what is happening in the novel when I sit down to write it.

For example - when I'm writing my steampunk/sci-fi mystery novel A Murder of Whimsey, I would choose music that reflected the atmosphere I wanted. The album I ended up abusing during NaNoWriMo July in order to get out 20k words before the end of the month was Euphoria by Revolt Production Music.

This album is the perfect mix of dashing Victorian elements and energizing Sci-Fi melodies. I lived on this album, and it serves to remind me that I have to go back to that story someday.

Which I will.

When I have the brainpower to fully outline it, since I can never hold my focus long enough to do so. haha

I also find myself listening to Lindsey Stirling's musical epics, because they often fit certain moments and scenes in my stories. Her music filled my mind in July almost as much as Euphoria did, and it applies to all my works of fiction that I happen to be working on.

 

Another artist I find myself turning to is Peter Hollens, an acapella superstar who does a cover of an already existing song every two weeks or so. He's done many covers of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit songs, which I just can't stop listening to!

My favourites from this album would have to be "Misty Mountains ft. Tim Foust", "Hobbit Drinking Medley ft. Hank Green", and "Gollum's Song"! Outside of this album and far out of my reach, his cover of "Song of the Lonely Mountain" is another one of my favourites, which, alas, I cannot buy on the iTunes store!

These songs are currently helping me plow through a short story I hope to publish in the coming months, which I'll publish once I'm finished the final project of my Advanced Photography class, which will be the story's cover.

There are so many songs you can choose from and build your stories' playlists. I have so many, it's ridiculous - though I haven't had the mind to compile them into a playlist yet. I will here, tomorrow, but there is one more song that I want to show to you, one I enjoy listening to when I write, and a gem of a video I found containing several Steampunk-y/Victorian-themed songs.

The Video

The Song

The song is "Celloopa", as in 'cello–opa', by The Piano Guys, who are musicians, though not all of them play the piano. Like the guy in the video, he plays the cello. 

I love listening to the Piano Guys' music - as it is just as inspiring as the music I mentioned before - though I feel that I've yet to scratch the surface when it comes to the sheer quantity of their songs. 

I can guarantee that their songs are excellent to write to - though everyone's tastes are different. Every song I featured in this post reflect my taste in music and writing music.

Tomorrow, I hope to post a post about "playlists" some writers make while in the process of writing their novels. I have so many, and I feel I will learn something when I write it.

Thanks so much for enduring this rambling post!

– Mikaela

Writing Update

It's days like to day, ones where I spend the time doing what I want while anxiously dreading the coming week, that I think about my original stories while keeping an eye on Deep Space Nine as it plays on a window seperate from the one I'm writing this blog post on.

Yeah, I can't seem to stop multi-tasking. My mom says I'm a master at it.

Well, it's a skill I got from my mother, so I can only blame Mom, haha.

Usually I don't like to talk about my stories since they usually fall through and fade away like "A Galaxy So Fickle" did (though it's an idea that has been archived. I would like to recycle it again). But, since this is my blog, I should really write something other than book, movie, and TV show reviews. That's all it's been for the last few months, and people read my blog, so...

Yeah, I'll write about something. I want to expand the horizons of this blog (if that makes sense), and in the future I want to write about the differences between Science-Fiction-Steampunk and Fantasy-Steampunk. But right now, I'm going to talk about my latest novel project.

Over the last couple of months, I've been working on the backbone and outline of a novel project I've submitted to Camp Nanowrimo as "The Sceptre of Raja-dûmé" (pronounced: rah-ZHah doom-may). It's about a gentleman thief named Fletcher Broome (one of those characters that have been on reserve, waiting for their story to come along).

I've been following how-to's written by K.M. Weiland (yes, the authoress of Dreamlander!) that can be found on her website www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com, and so far I kind of know where the story is going to go. But I don't exactly know what's going to happen after Fletcher gets to the sands of the Endless Desert on Dekartaal... will he wander the sands for a week before he's found, or will he run into someone right away?

I'll have to keep planning. Camp Nanowrimo April is coming up fast, so the story has to have a better background before April 1st. So, yeah...

Thunderstorms

Today is the second day in a row, and the second time this season, that I have listened to the rumblings of distant thunder - a sound I've missed over this last winter. There's something about the sound of electricity hotter than the surface of the sun while it's ripping the sky apart that I find so fascinating.

When there's a thunderclap, I listen as it echos on forever. There's something comforting to me about listening of the acoustics of the sky as if it were a massive instrument...

These thunderstorms remind me of the project I've been working on for the last couple of months. It also reminds me of my love to listen to rain as I read a good book. It has been raining a lot here, and I'm grateful since Fort McMurray wasn't all that far from where I live. With the rain we've been having, we're just a tiny bit less like a tinderbox. I hope.

I currently have three novels on the go, but I've stopped to focus on only one since it's the one Bethany House Publishers sent me to review. It's titled From This Moment, and it's by Elizabeth Camden. I am absolutely in love with it. It's a Victorian mystery, and boy, it feels like a mystery. I believe that you guys - if you like mysteries - will absolutely devour it like I am.

The other two novels, the ones on hold, are The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux and Star Trek: From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward. I'm enjoying them both, and I look forward to getting back to them once I'm done the review novel.

The project I'm working on is a collection of poems about spring, titled Blue Jays & Rainy Days. I was inspired to write it after seeing two Blue Jays in one day not long after the snow disappeared and buds began to appear on the trees. It's spring themed, and I hope to have it published through Pronoun before I head off to college in August.

I find myself enjoying writing poems a lot more than I did when I was younger. I guess, back then, I just didn't see the point of criptic messages strung out in the form of a poem.

But I love writing them now - and the haiku of all forms is my favourite! I just hope I'm structuring them the right way... lol.

The Beginnings of The Scavenger

Recently, I came up with an idea for a novel series revolving around a family, and maybe  some unrelated characters that might come into the lives of this family. I'm really quite interested in it, and I thought I would share some spoiler-less bits with you.

I was inspired to start creating this story, titled A Galaxy So Fickle: The Scavenger for now, after watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens again with some friends. The whole concept of having to scavenge on a nigh-inhospitable planet struck my muse, which began to formulate and create a world totally different than Jakku, but still inhospitable enough that my main character would have to scavenge.

I didn't want my character's story to sound too similar to Rey's on Jakku - and in all honesty Scavenger is still in development - so I decided that my story would take place on a snowy world to distinguish it from Jakku. The difference between my world and Jakku is that on Jakku, the scavengers had to work and scavenge interesting ship and technological parts in order to trade for what looks like a gummy/Jello hybrid and instant bread (just add water!), which is pretty much the only food you could get on that world. I don't know where the water comes from, really.

On my world, water is common, because all you have to do is scoop up some snow, put it in a pot, and heat it until it melts. And half the time scavengers are scavenging for food in the forms of trapped animals (wild animals are something Jakku blatantly lacks), and fruit that hangs from trees that have adapted to the cold.

Speaking of the cold, that's the main danger that the denizens of my world have to compete with. Instead of having to worry about staying hydrated or getting too hot on Jakku, the people of my world's main worry is that they have to stay warm. They can't stay out too long or they may freeze.

The name of my world is Torvel, the only planet in the hospitable zone around its parent star Monovella. I'm having so much fun worldbuilding for Scavenger, and I hope that one day I'll feel comfortable enough to write it out and have it published :3

Everything's Okay at 20k

Once again I found myself lowering my total NaNoWriMo word-count. It has come to rest for the rest of the month at 20 000 words, because my month has been too busy for my original word counts of 25k and 30k.

Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't going to make it to 30k. But I understand also that my family needs me and my brain can't stay focused enough to go the whole way. I'm a slow writer, and sometimes pressure doesn't work.

I'm going to skip Camp NaNo in July so that I can focus on other things. I need to get ready for college, and that means saving any money I can. I also need to focus on losing weight so that I can enter in to college without having to worry about how I look all that hard - and by then I should have THM down pat.

Writing may slow so that I can find time to read (I need to finish The Reluctant Duchess before May 1st so that I may review it and send the review off to Bethany House Publishers). I have so many novels in my To Be Read pile that it's ridiculous! And I didn't a request a novel for review in May because none of the novels they presented to me were of any interest to me. So May is open for whatever novel I choose to read.

I need to finish reading the last book in The Dragons of Starlight novel series by Brian Davis so I can move on. I have several ebooks I would like to crack open, such as The Secret of Pembrooke Park or The Dancing Master by Julie Klassen, or A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, or Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I should also crack open The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hobbit, or Murder on the Orient Express so I can review another classic for the Back to the Classics 2016 Reading Challenge I'm in.

There's so much I want to do, but so little time, lol!

Well, I better get back to writing. I've got laundry to fold and change over as well.

P.S. Maybe I should devote time to learning German and French on top of all this...

Just a Pause

Camp NaNoWriMo April 2016 has now been going on for 14 days. Coffee and several Trim Healthy Mama-worthy treats have kept me going, and I can't believe how clear my mind has been! Thank goodness I was able to get through the "withdrawl" stage of the plan before I had to crack down on writing!

If been hitting a bit of a stall with my novel, so I thought I would talk about what's going on in my novel for a bit.

Well, when I began my NaNo novel project on the first of this month, I was going to write about a girl who came across a manor in the middle of the Ontario countryside and found out there was something timey-wimey about the place. But then I realized that I was horribly ill-prepared for it.

So I changed my mind and began to write a novel with themes referencing to World War II and the Holocaust, but set in a futuristic scene.  I'm enjoying it immensely, but I've hit a bit of a snag and the expected word-count of the day. Oh well, I'll just have to keep plugging on.

Right now, my novel is titled "Winter", and it takes place on a planet in a binary planet system called Desrosiers (pronounced: des-rosy-air, I think...). Its sister planet is Amsel, and its parent star is Miaplacidus - a star you can't see in the Northern Hemisphere (oh yes, it's real).

I got the name Desrosiers from the French last name meaning "of the rose gardens", so Desrosiers is the "Planet of the rose gardens". For indeed, Desrosiers is supposed to have some of the most beautiful rose gardens in the known galaxy, which is unfortunate, since the Miaplacidian government has decided to shut the Miaplacidian System away from the galaxy due to what they consider a national crisis - which is not really a crisis at all since they're basically hunting those with superpowers and arresting them because three rogue superhumans decided to attack the Prime Minister.

There's a lot more that I have to worldbuild about this story, so my NaNo might be nothing more than a skeleton-story until after. Yay.

Thank's for reading. I often find that if I write about the story, sometimes I find hidden gems that would allow me to pick up and continue on :)