How Do You Write?

Exactly how do you write?  I mean, what is the mood, the environment... what makes you want to write?  Is it music?  A view? 

I've been writing for [mumble, mumble] years and I've moved about that many times.  My serious writing has been the last almost twenty years.  In that time I've had lived in about 5 different locations, each of them unique, I think.  I know they've offered different environments.  I lived in a small rural town in NW Ohio, a small bedroom community outside of Washington, DC, an apartment in a suburb of Detroit, a small community near Monroe, MI and finally, a small country acre back in that rural community of NW Ohio.  The cycle is complete.  Each of those places offered me a different 'mood' when I wrote.  But yet there was a constant.

A constant you ask?  Yes.  Music.  Not necessarily the same music but almost the exact same music over the years.  I am a creature of habit.  I enjoy the golden oldies (60s/70s/80s) plus what some call New Age, a little country, Big Band, classical and then just whatever catches my fancy.

So what do I listen to?  Beach Boys.  Pet Shop Boys.  Elton John.  George Strait.  David Bowie.  John Tesh.  Liza Minnelli.  Bestor & Cardon.  Brule.  Enigma.  Dwight Yoakam.  Benny Goodman.  Garth Brooks.  Mannheim Steamroller.  Michael Jackson.  Tangerine Dream.  Vangelis.  CCR.  Glenn Miller.  Bach.  Tchaikovsky.  Rimsky-Korsakov.  Rachmaninoff.

Needless to say, there are others which include Richard Harris' MacArthur Park (the long version) and island music like Na Ka Pueo or flute music from the Andes by Cuzco. 

Don't get me started on what I'd like to call the "Indies" of the music world which have created some truly interesting and beautiful music which I listen to on a regular basis.

The style of music, for me, doesn't always match the writing. For instance; while writing my Celtic fantasy "Three Steps: The Journeys of Ayrold" I really thought some great Irish tunes would increase my productivity.  Wrong!  Strangely, and I do mean strangely, it was Liza Minnelli's "Results" album which was a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys really got my imagination going.  And to make it seem even stranger, I also found Tangerine Dream's "Underwater Sunlight" to be an incentive while writing that same novel. Go figure.
Now, give me a view; be it a busy street, a deserted factory, or a wooded backyard.  I really enjoy writing when I'm traveling in the RV.  I can't wait to get parked at some fantastic place and then sit there for hours gazing out the window, letting my mind drift.  When we visit my SIL at a private lake up in northern Michigan, if I'm not out fishing, I'll be sitting in the shade, staring out the quiet lake with my laptop ready to write when Miss Muse finally finds me and slaps me silly for running away and apparently hiding... or so she thinks.  Currently I live out in the country and my desk sits by a window and I look out to the back of the house where the woods are.  Birds, squirrels, deer, raccoon and other creatures wander through and I find peace and solace in writing while sometimes staring out the window.  You have no idea just how exciting it can be to watch a bald eagle land in a tree less than 100 feet from you.  Talk about grace, majesty, total awesomeness!!!

So what invigorates you?  What inspires you to write?

Enya's "Orinoco Flow" has just come on, following Enigma's "Principles of Lust" which was preceeded by Dave Grusin's "Mountain Dance."  I already know Jackson's "Thriller" is next. 

Be sure to read my latest book-ette -- Barry Hargrove and the Case of the Lunar Orchids. It's free. Just click on the title up in the right hand area of this blog.

Until next I ramble on...