…… Sophie finds music helps editorial panic
This week I have been surprised by music and its unexpected beneficial effects on the editing process. It lit a candle for me over some very dark and chilly hours.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am deep in the editing process. This is complicated by the fact that I set off to write this book umpty-um years ago, I was only certain about three things in it: the names of two main characters, the first scene and the last.
When I eventually stopped writing that first continuous draft it was 235,000 words long. (Unpublishable or what?) It held multiple story lines, most of which had only just started. This, you may well say, was not a story at all. It was CHAOS.
MUSIC AND WORDS AND CHAOS
My only excuse is that it didn’t feel like chaos in my head. There were key scenes I saw vividly. Real spotlit stuff. (And yes, one of them included a cat. I had no plans for him. He just muscled in.) I don’t know where they came from but I know they have to stay.
There were conversations in my head that rolled me out of bed and straight to my desk at four in the morning. Equally vivid.
This sort of editing, mean 
carefully removing scenes and bits of stories that belong in a different volume. And putting them somewhere safe, sensible and clearly labelled.
And then I smooth out the hiccups and supply any gaps in the main story I am telling this time around. When it works it’s a fabulous feeling.
The downside is the you have to be intuitive, alert, creative and careful. All at the same time. I spent a couple of hours every morning just to brace myself to read the words on the page.
And then I remembered something I’d made a note of months ago about preparing yourself to respond to the moment. Not plan. Not set objectives. Nor make any assumptions. Just listen and – well – respond.
The only problem was the route in. Empty your mind, they said. Yeah, right. Minds like mine fight back. And I remembered how I made my busy brain detach itself from the day job before launching into writing a romantic novel.
Mozart. Specifially the Clarinet Quintet in A Major. The essence of rational understanding; warmth, acceptance and gorgeous fun. A sunlit road, travelling gently. Hope.
It worked like a charm. No more bracing myself. I step happily into the book every morning.
MUSIC AND WORDS AND THE WORLD OF THE BOOK
One of the problems with the way I’ve been writing this book/these stories, is that spotlights are all very well in their way but after a while they start to feel relentless. My hero has a load of shit to deal with, fair enough. But he still does a job and runs his life and even occasionally bumps into people who aren’t causing him major angst. What about the world he inhabits?
I’ve shelves of books on all sorts of historical aspects of that world. There have been places in the mss where I had a serious risk of info mudslide swamping everything else. The book starts at the end of the 1930s.
Again music came to the rescue. Astaire and Rogers’ glamour and Cole Porter wit on the big screen; big themed Wagnerian opera getting the Nazi seal of approval; big band swing; the lindyhop; jazz.
I’m picking the song for each new scene I have to write in my Smoothing Out the Bumps exercise. It really helps.
MUSIC AND WORDS AND DIALOGUE
This one is really interesting. I must emphasise that I’m not talking about background music as a sort of white noise to distract the thinking brain. I’ve done that and it was a complete waste of time.
I listen to the music first, then write. Oh, I may put on the odd ballad while I’m having a coffee and thinking about where next. But I’m still listening properly.
Actually one of my characters has a favourite 1933 ballad, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I quite often listen to that before I bring her onto the page.
And I admit I’ve long had my own special ballad of the time. It has even inspired a big slug of this story. Some of my readers will know that.
But as that bit of the story is probably going to be in the last of three books, I’ll not go into that now.
Music surprises
What has surprised me about listening to music as part of my writing day is that it really, really adjusts my natural feeling for rhythm. You will probably think that’s obvious. But it had never occurred to me before.
The big risk of the info dump is not just that you drown the reader in pointless factoids. It’s that you work so hard to shoe-horn in everything you’ve learned, you completely lose your sense of he natural rhythm of words that people can readily understand. Read a doctor’s letter or a financial report to see what I mean.
But once you’ve listened to dance music — or a structured song – or Mozart – your body has its natural sense of rhythm back again. It can accommodate pauses, silences and even long, luscious set pieces like Crash Davies testifying to his beliefs in Bull Durham. It can slow down, speed up, whirl you away and come to a dead halt. And every movement is amazing.
The one thing your natural rhythm won’t do, can’t do, is info dumps. Your body won’t let it. And when I’m reading that stuff, my body starts hiccupping like an engine with dust in the tank and finally closes down. Result!
Right now, with my six shelves of books on everything from Spitfires to ration books, I tell you, it’s a life-saver.
.Sophie
Thank you for the Tony Bennett, Sophie. Delightful start to the day and I’m playing the Mozart Clarinet, which is one of my own favourites, as I write this. I absolutely love the way you are using music to set your mind for the scene you are working on. An inspired idea and especially useful for a period time setting.
This is so interesting. I’m really looking forward to reading the trilogy when it is done.
Thank you Jan. I would love you to read it.
Rediscovering music in this way has been a great blessing, especially this last week, Liz. Gives me hope.
Glad you like the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I remembered someone singing it from my childhood but had the devil’s own job tracking it down, not least because there’s now another song with the same title. In the end I remembered “gigolot and gigolette” and put that in the search engine. Even so, I groped my way down several blind alleys before I unearthed it.
And I’m still looking for a poem about rejoicing in the boulevards after the Armistice and how it felt to someone who had lost the love of their life. It’s by Mary someone and so far I’m drawing a blank. It should be on my computer somewhere but …
Sophie, could this be the poem you are looking for: https://maywedderburncannan.wordpress.com/the-armistice/
It’s not quite about rejoicing or boulevards (though going out to celebrate in Paris is mentioned) but is by a “Mary someone” and the Armistice and lost loved ones.
How very interesting, Mike. Thank you. I’d just found her and, indeed, have been reading her account of arriving in Paris and her first day in the British office there.
I think you could be right – and also that I have conflated two poems. I certainly remember the phrase “as you go dancing down the boulevards”, which isn’t in either of the two poems of May Cannan’s that I’ve read about that moment. So I’m now wondering where I found it.
But she is a great find in her own right. I knew a little about her sister, Joanna, who was best friends with Carola Oman and the much younger Georgette Heyer. But May is new to me. Oh dear, research is so tempting and I have to EDIT!
But many thanks to you for the suggestion. I could scream at myself for finding the poem and then losing it again. How I wish I were a better filist!
I did a bit more searching and found this: https://maywedderburncannan.wordpress.com/for-a-girl/
which is actually a better match than my first suggestion (and the same author)
Mike
That’s the one! You’re a genius, Mike. Many, many thanks. Cheering and singing down the boulevards, not dancing. So my memory let me down. But you still found it!
Thank you for this, Sophie. One song I remember we heard together was sung by Louise, when we had tea at The Savoy. Appropriate not only for the trilogy, but for today, when the radio is awash with nostalgia.
That’s the one, Lesley.
I look forward to reading the books and then coming back to the music to hear your inspiration
Oh, that is really interesting, Nancy. I know an author who always used to give her agent and editor a playlist when she submitted a ms. It had never occurred to me to do so. But then I’ve never really leaned so heavily on music before.
I certainly know what the key music has been. Maybe I should keep a list and make it available to people who really want to know, like you?
Hadn’t thought about using music in quite this way but I see that it could work. Shall store the idea for future. Thanks for fascinating blog.
It’s really helped me, Joanna., especially this week. Must be worth a shot if you ever get stuck.