Music and Lyrics Part Two (Or how my weird mind works...)

I did say this subject was going to be one I return to. So if it bores the pants off you, feel free to walk away now...

Although I never thought consciously about being a writer till I was really quite old, I have always made up stories in my head. Of all my children, in this no 3 resembles me the most. I often find her squirrelled away in corners talking not to herself, but to all the imaginary people in the fantasy world she is inhabiting. I still do that now. I have just said goodbye to Gabe, Marianne, Cat and Noel who are the four protagonists of Last Christmas, and am currently getting to know: Doris (or possibly Dorrie as my ed thinks Doris is too old fashioned, but I have a personal reason for calling her that), Caz, Beth and Sarah. Caz and Dorrie are currently the strongest characters chundering away in there, but Beth who is the quiet one is coming out of her shell, and Sarah I know has a lot she wants to tell me. In anyone other then a writer, admitting that should probably get you sectioned, but although I have a healthy fantasy life, I fortunately have four offspring, a very down to earth husband and aged mil to keep my feet firmly on the ground.

The first time I can remember consciously thinking I wanted to put some of the stories that unfolded into my head down on paper was when I was at university. And perhaps not unsurprisingly, given my previous post on the subject, it was music that inspired me. I was in a bar in Liverpool with Spouse, one warm spring evening. I was wearing a turquoise dress I loved at the time, with black pointy boots, and he was wearing his long dark trademark 80s student coat, probably a black shirt (can't quite remember), black jeans and black pointy boots. I can remember the stools we sat on, the bar we leant against, the low lighting, the 80s glitz, and the reason I remember it so clearly is because the song that was playing: Addicted to Love by ZZTop has cemented it in my head forever. (Except, I have misremembered - ZZ Top appear NOT to have done a version of this, I must have been thinking of Robert Palmer's version. Thanks to Persephone and Political Umpire for correcting my mistake!) I came home and wrote a corny story about a girl who couldn't commit and as a result lost the love of her life. It wasn't very good. And lacking the necessary confidence to pursue writing, desperately needing to earn some money post uni, and more importantly not having any of the requisite life experience to write the kinds of stories I write now, I kept my fantasy and real worlds separate. Then I fell in to publishing and spent ten years using all my creative juices on other people's ideas, which was fun, but didn't leave me any room for creating stuff of my own. I cannot tell you the sense of liberation I got when I sat down to write my first novel and realised that from now on I could keep all my good ideas to myself.

When I started thinking about the way music inspires me, I genuinely thought that I had only started using it with Pastures New, but thinking back to my early attempts at writing, the music thing has always been there, but I just didn't realise.

The first novel I completed, White Wedding is even named after a song - again I can see a moment in time in my own life, where I sat on the floor in Spouse's room at uni listening to Billy Idol telling me it was going to be a nice day for a white wedding, while I felt utterly desolate that I was going to spend the summer away from him. I just have to hear that song now and those feelings of desolation come flooding back (not unnaturally, I have it pegged down for the soundtrack of the book I am embarking on, which is about weddings.)

The next book I started working on which I never finished, was going to be called Losing my Religion - thank you Michael Stipes. And while the second book I finished, Coming Full Circle which never got published, didn't have a musical title, there were definitely songs hovering about in my subconscious as I wrote it.

It wasn't till I got to Pastures New though, that I realised that music was part of the process for me. (Spoiler alert here if you haven't read it.)

Pastures New was originally going to be in six parts, and (thanks to discussions with some of my RNA writing chums, in particular the fabulous Elizabeth Chadwick who brilliantly soundtracks her mediaeval stories to rock) I chose a song for each part of the book. The story really began with Justin Hayward's Forever Autumn, another song from the soundtrack of my young life. At one point early in our courtship, Spouse and I split up. I was convinced it was all over and I remember listening to that song on a train feeling that my heart had broken and would never recover (which of course was arrant nonsense, but melodrama works when you're 20). It seemed the perfect song for my heroine Amy, recovering from the death of her partner. I also used: California Dreamin' by the Mamas &Papas(another soundtrack song - Spouse played it to me on our first date), Soak up the Sun by Sheryl Crowe, Here Comes the Summer Son by Texas (last two came from listening to them on long car journeys - a common source of finding inspirational songs I find), Sing by Travis and Fix You by Coldplay. I did blog about why ages ago, but I can't inconveniently find the post in my archives at the moment.

All of the songs were chosen for the mood they inspired, their part in advancing the story and for some significant line that led into the character's behaviour. Forever Autumn includes the lines my life will be forever autumn/cos you're not there, which is how Amy feels about losing Jamie (and pretty much how I'd feel if anything ever happened to Spouse, god forbid): California Dreamin' includes: All the leaves are brown /And the sky is grey /I went for a walk /On a winter's day/ If I didn't tell her /I could leave today , which fit both the wintry mood of the beginning of the book and the hero Ben's dilemma about his love life; Soak up the Sun was chosen for the lines:Its not having what you want/Its wanting what youve got which fit Amy's burgeoning reconnection with the world and acceptance of the good things in life, while Here Comes the Summer Son contains the lines: Before you take my heart, reconsider/Before you take my heart, reconsider/I've opened the door/I've opened the door, which fitted Amy's nervousnes about indulging in a new relationship. The last two songs, Sing and Fix You were chosen for the pain and anguish they engender - Fix You, particularly stayed in my head as Ben's song, as it summed up what he feels about Amy and why she keeps him out of her life. High up above or down below/When you're too in love to let it go/But if you never try you'll never know/Just what you're worth/Lights will guide you home/And ignite your bones/And I will try to fix you (ok the ignite your bones line is not Chris Martin's finest hour, but it is a song that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up).

When I was writing Pastures New, I tried to weave some of the song lyrics themselves into the story (quoting verbatim from songs is a very expensive thing to do, so I generally try to avoid it). So Amy remembers walking in golden fields with Jamie, Ben at one point does stop into a church, Amy hears Sheryl Crowe singing about having what you want, and wonders later on if she should go through the door of a new relationship. I didn't use Sing so much, but at the end, I did literally have Ben lighting her way home. However, I realised after I'd done it, I was trying too hard to bend the story to fit the song, plus when I came to write Strictly Love (more spoiler alerts) I wanted my characters to have a theme tune each and that rather then having one theme song for each part of the book, I also wanted to highlight certain key moments, like soundtracking a film.

So in Strictly Love I worked it slightly differently. Each part had it's own theme song: Part One had The First Cut is the Deepest, for Mark who was mourning the loss of his marriage; Part Two was The Weakness in Me for Emily who kept going back to an unsuitable boyfriend and for Katie who was being tempted by Rob: Part Three had Can't Get You Out of My Head for all my protagonist's as they attempted to control their feelings and Part Four's theme was Song for Lovers, which makes me go slightly weak at the knees.

Additionally, I used :

Abba's heartbreaking Slipping through my Fingers for Mark's relationship with his daughter Gemma (I have sobbed EVERY time I see Meryl Streep singing that in Mamma Mia!- it's also turned up as a theme for Cat in Last Christmas)
Feel for Rob, which helped me hugely give depth to his character. He started off as a happy go lucky character, who lacked commitment, but I always knew he was hiding a dark secret. Then I heard Feel on the radio one day and suddenly I knew Rob so much better. I listened to this song obsessively every time I had to write a Rob scene, and in the end he became my favourite character because of it.

I just want to feel real love
Feel the home that I live in'
Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste

I don't want to die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her
I scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

The Miracle of Love - by the Eurythmics. I love the Eurythmics and this song about the wonder of finding love again was a perfect soundtrack moment for the first time Emily and Mark get together. I had this scene in my head for months before I wrote it- it unfolded as if I were watching a film. And had I been watching a film, then this song would be what you'd hear...

Fields of Gold- Sting. Again, I had a scene in my head with Emily and Mark lying in fields of gold watching the sun rise, and this poignant song just fitted the mood perfectly. I also played Sting's Shape of my Heart alot for this particular moment, more because of the way it catches at my heart then the lyrics.

The boys also got two theme songs: The Boys are Back in Town for their attempts to get laid and Fifteen Years, which is a great song about booze and regret and lost opportunities, and perfect for anyone who has ever sat in their local, looked around and thought, shit, is this what my life's come to?

A last minute addition (thanks to watching an episode of Ashes to Ashes) was Body Talk, which worked really well both as the song that Rob and Katie danced to when they realise their true feelings for each other, but the perfect accompaniment to a rumba. I even choreographed the steps (Marie, you may remember, I was emailing you as I did it), with the use of a little handbook of dancing, myself on my own inf ront of a computer trying out both the male and female steps, while I listened to the song. Sometimes I probably should be sectioned...

For Last Christmas, I've gone less for major theme songs and more for key moments of the story, where again, if it were a film you'd have an apposite piece of music playing (I had a completely eureka moment when I went on the Being Human website - currently my favourite place in cyberspace and read about how they chose the music for each episode, a subject I think for another post - and realised this is what I aspire too).

So this time around (I am trying not to give anything away here, because of course, in October I want you all to go out and buy the book!), I had alot of songs about tension in relationships, as one hero and heroine: Cat and Noel are in a long term marriage which is fraying a bit around the edges.

Their songs include:
This is Where I Came In by the BeeGees. I belatedly realised when they brought out their last album before Maurice died, that I totally heart the Beegees. And this song is just amazing. The lines: I lie and you lie /And who would get the sharpest knife, I'm sure will resonate with anyone who's been in a longterm relationship. There are certainly days when every couple is scrabbling for the sharpest knife, but usually the wounding is with words. But I also love it for the reality of these lines: Hope rides on/But I’ll go anywhere/Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you/Time has gone/But I’ll go anywhere/Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you. The point is, however rough the ride gets, however much you sometimes are hard pushed to like each other, if you LOVE each other you will go anywhere, through thick and thin. That's why those pesky marriage vows are in there. We never imagine the worse when we get married, but boy oh boy, the better is worth the occasional pain. Well, I think so anyway, but then I do write romantic fiction.

Cat and Noel also have: Bryan Ferry's Let's Stick Together for similar reasons, but for moments when the going is tough, another song for them is the Manic Street Preacher's Your Love Alone for the lines: Your love alone - is not enough not enough not enough/When times get tough they get tough they get tough they get tough. Because despite what I said above about love making you go anywhere with your partner, it isn't enough, on its own to see you through the tough times. You also have to hang on and remember the good times. Which is why I've also given Cat and Noel Coral's Put the Sun Back. This is absolutely somewhere I've been emotionally, and I think it's brilliant:

I caught you crying
Trying to hide your tears away
And all the whileI never knew you felt this way
I've loved you from the start
How could we let this come apart ?

We've got to put
The sun back in our hearts

For my other couple Marianne and Gabriel, I have the wonderfully perky and upbeat She's Got You High by Mumm-Ra (with huge thanks to Persephone for pointing me in the right direction with that one) , which is one of the most perfect falling love songs I have ever heard, even if I mistakenly heard the lines this world has turned to seethrough as this world has turned to seafood, till I googled the lyrics.

Gabriel is in a difficult relationship with his mentally unstable wife at the start of the book, and I have two songs for key moments they have together. The first if Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, which is such a painful, sad destructive kind of song:
When the routine bites hard
and ambitions are low
And the resentment rides high
but emotions won't grow
And we're changing our ways,
taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again

And I also had the wonderful KT Tunstall's Other Side of the World, which is another song which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and also is brilliant for catching the insolubility of their problems.

Cat has a lot of me in her. She is the mother of four and has I hope a moving storyline featuring her own mother, which turned out to be a damned sight more personal then I intended when I thought of it. So she has Angels as a theme tune. Which makes me howl. Which I also hope is the reaction of my readers to this part of the storyline...

At the last minute I've brought in I Can See Clearly Now and Love Resurrection for Marianne, for two key moments for her.

And I also had a sudden wow moment and used The Streets of London for a hugely important scene for Noel.

But the heart of this book, belongs to Noel and so my favourite emotional stirring song of the last year (till I heard Johnny Cash's Hurt) is Neil Diamond's Pretty Amazing Grace, which is relevant not just for Noel, but in their own ways all the other characters too.

Pretty amazing grace is how you saved me
And with amazing grace, reclaimed my heart
Love in the midst of chaos
Calm in the heat of war
Showed with amazing grace
What love was for.

No book about Christmas would be complete without some cheese. So I've also got Wham's Last Christmas as the title song and Marianne and Gabriel's theme tune(I was always partial to those Wham boys). I've even pinched the lyrics for my part titles which are: I Gave you my heart/You gave it Away/To Save me from Tears/Someone Special.

I'm just working on the soundtrack for my next book, about weddings, and will report back in my next musings on this subject, as well, I hope posting some coherent thoughts about the Being Human soundtrack and how it's inspired me, and when I get round to listening to the four CDs Lisa has been kind enough to send me, I shall be posting on that too.... But for now I really really must get to Sainsbury's. Sometimes my real life is dead inconvenient...

Music and Lyrics Part One

A while back I was mentioning here, as I do periodically, the way I use music to get the old creative juices going, and Marie asked me to explain how I do it. As I've been a bit busy finishing the rewrites to Last Christmas and generally playing catch up from having had too many children at home too often of late, I've only just got round to it. So thank you, Marie for being so patient. You've probably forgotten you even said it by now...

I think I may have rather a lot to say on this subject, so I probably need to write more then one post about it. You are very welcome to skip these posts entirely if you don't find the way my creative synapses work that fascinating. (And let's face it why would you really?)

At the risk of being a tad self indulgent, I'd like to start by giving you some background to my interest in music and why it's so important to me when I'm writing.

In some ways it's highly amusing that I do now find music so important in my writing . As a child, coming from a vast family (there are eight of us. Yes, I know. I did say eight.), and being a twin to boot, I was always desperate to find my own identity. I was also incredibly pig headed. So as all my siblings bar one took up a musical instrument, I went my own way and decided not to. I even went out of my way not to learn music properly. So while I recognise what a double clef is to look at, I can't read a note of music, because, though I found it relatively easy to learn, I just mentally switched off. Much to the disgust of my music teacher who awarded me the only D of my academic career.

I regret this of course now. Particularly now the sprogs are all learning the piano and no 1 is also having singing and guitar lessons. I so wish I could join in with them. I did go through a phase of wanting to learn the guitar when I was fifteen (mainly inspired by a boy I fancied), and my fantasy life would involve me being a rock chick a la Chrissie Hynde (in fact, I have that all lined up for a book some time in the future), but sadly I never pursued it, and while I can reasonably hold a tune, I cannot count musical talent among my accomplishments.

Having said that of course, you don't have to be any good at music to appreciate it.

My parents were never keen on pop music, but loved classical, and while I couldn't claim expertise in this area, I do recognise Beethoven, Bach, Mozart et al, and have some firm favourites from the classical canon (Pachabell's Canon in D, Vaughn Williams Theme from Thomas Tallis, The Carmina Burana to name but a few). Thinking about it the Theme from Thomas Tallis, is probably the first music that inspired me creatively. I used to listen to it obsessively when I was revising for my A levels, as I found it incredibly soothing. Try it if you're stressed, it's very calming. But it also makes me think of green rolling hills, and English countryside, and probably because I was revising it at the time, Far From the Madding Crowd. I can remember "seeing" images in my head very clearly as I listened to it, of grand sweeping landscapes rolling out before me like the opening credits of a film that could be adventurous, heartbreaking, romantic , stirring. It was the sense of incredible yearning that that music still engenders, which somewhere taps into the creative part of my soul. I haven't used that music for any writing yet, but I will one day.

As my parents weren't that keen on pop music, I was a bit of a johnny come lately in that regard, and whereas most of my peers were probably buying their first singles in their early teens, I didn't actually buy much music till I was much older. I was also very wary of stating my preferences, because at that time in my life you always had to be "for" a particular kind of music - you couldn't like ska and disco for example, if you were into heavy metal as I was, you couldn't possibly like pop, and you dared not mention anything as naff as enjoying a Cliff Richard record. If you opened your mouth and said the wrong thing you faced endless ridicule. So I spent a lot of my teens piggybacking other people's choices and passing them off as my own. The result I think is that I have a hodge podge of different kinds of music that I now like, so I'm fond of the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud, but I also like Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs. I love Bon Jovi so much I used to play it to no 1 when she was a baby, but I also love the pathos of Gary Jules' version of Mad World.

Spouse's influence has also been incredibly important. Growing up in the 80s when there was a big nostalgia for sixties stuff, I was of course familiar with the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but Spouse got me into the Animals, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Zombies and most importantly, the Kinks. As he has fairly eclectic tastes, I can also thank him for Lords of the New Church, Sisters of Mercy, Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division and New Order.

There aren't many types of music I won't listen too, although rap has never done much for me, and I can't claim to be all that keen on country, but generally speaking I am always keen to find new stuff where I can. My current new obsession is a band called Fleet Foxes, whose Mykonos I absolutely adore.

I do know the exact moment when I got turned onto pop music. I was thirteen, it was a youth club disco, and a boy asked me to dance for the first time in my life, to Roxanne by the Police. Being incredibly naive of course, I didn't really understand what it was about, but something about Sting's plaintive wailing lodged in my psyche and I was hooked.

As I suspect is the case for many of us, so many of the songs I heard growing up had significance at the time, and I hear them now and am instantly transported back. I listened to Ultravox's Vienna for the first time while doing my art O level a claywork project which took three weeks over lunchtimes. We'd sit in the art hut with our lunches, working on our pieces of art, listening the radio. Vienna was number one for weeks, and I cannot hear it now and not see my fifteen year old self, getting frustrated because my fingers weren't producing the grand vision in my brain. One of the reasons Ashes to Ashes worked so well for me was because they played Vienna as Alex wakes up in 1981. I was there instantly...

Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits album reminds me of the sixth form and my best friends then, and all of the various traumas we had with the boys we fancied ourselves in love with. Careless Whisper is the summer before I left home. Like a Virgin is my first term at university, and don't get me started on the numerous songs which formed the soundtrack to the time Spouse and I got together.

I'm sure everyone has similar experiences with music. Because music above all other mediums, it seems to me, has the power to evoke emotions, inspire, reduce us to tears in a way no other medium can. It is pure and primal and rips out our souls.

And THAT is what I try and tap into when I'm writing. It isn't a structured kind of process. More an organic kind of thing. Sometimes I hear a song and it inspires me to a particular plot line, for example, ever since I heard Keane's Somewhere Only We Know, it's spoken to me of starcrossed lovers for some reason, and it's down on the list for the parallel universe story I plan to write some day.

Other times, a song takes me into the heart of a character. In Strictly Love, Rob, who started off as a jack the lad when I first envisaged him, suddenly turned into something else entirely and it became obvious that his theme song was Robbie Williams Feel, which seems to me to be all about wanting to be better then you are and not being able to escape your nature. You have to hand it to Robbie, he does know how to turn out gutwrenching stuff, I've used him again in Last Christmas, which is a lot about mothers and daughters and the moment when you start mothering your mother. Angel was perfect for that, and as it happens has turned out to be particularly poignant.

The way I write seems to be that I always have a pivotal scene at the latter half of the book, already worked out in my head before I even have a whole story. I don't know why that is, but it's the way the process works for me. So in Pastures New (if you've read it) it's the rainy scene in the allotments, and in Strictly Love it's the picnic scene on the downs. Both scenes had a song at the heart of them.

In the PN scene it's Travis' Sing, which seems to me to be a painful acknowledgement of the impossibility of ever truly reaching another human being, however much you love them: For the love you bring won't mean a thing/unless you sing, sing, sing. It was just perfect for the situation in which my characters found themselves, and I tried to capture something of the pain of the situation. That is the most frustrating part of the process for me. I know how a song makes me feel. Try to put that into words? Eek.


Mind you I don't think I'd have felt the same way about this song if I'd seen this video first. Sometimes it's better to have the song without pictures...



In Strictly Love, the song was Fields of Gold by Sting, which makes me think of long lazy summer days, and falling in love, and wanting to be together, with just a hint that maybe the love won't last: You'll remember me when the west wind moves/upon the fields of barley/You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky/As we walk in the fields of gold. That's so beautiful it makes the hairs on my back stand up every time I hear it, but it also has a poignancy to it, which again was perfect for the scene.



For Last Christmas (coming out this Christmas) I have another pivotal scene which I won't reveal because it would give too much away, but again I had had it in my head for months before I wrote it. I didn't have a song for it for a long long time. Then I heard Neil Diamond's Pretty Amazing Grace and it totally blew my mind, and I knew I had my song. This book is a little bit (I hope without sounding preachy) about the claims of the spiritual versus the material, and these lines encapsulated the heart of dilemma of one of my characters.
Stumbled inside the doorway of your chapel/Humbled and awed by everything I found/Beauty and love surround me/Freed me from what I feared/Asked for amazing grace /And you appeared.



I'm just about to start book 4, and already have my pivotal scene. This book is going to be as much about the love of friends as it is about romantic love (though as it's about weddings, it's going to be about that too). I have already alluded in an earlier post to some of the emotions I find myself tapping into for this story. And when I heard Hurt by Johnny Cash for the first time (having entirely missed my twin sister's attempts to introduce it to me) I knew I had my pivotal song.
I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel/I focus on the pain/The only thing that's real


When I saw how they used the song to great effect in Being Human, I knew I'd chosen the right one.

There is like I say, an awful lot more I want to write about this process, so I'm going to leave it there for now, but in the meantime I'll leave you with my favourite song of the moment. I have no idea what the video is all about. Like I say, sometimes it's better just to hear the song and let your imagination do the rest...