Tag Archives: Playlist

Strike That Spark!

December 18, 2023 By in Writing Advice, Writing Toolbox Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The eight days of Hanukkah celebration this year were amazing as we filled them with love, laughter, and light! Read any of my posts from the past week, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

We also had the pleasure of extending our celebration an extra day when we dined with our dear friends, Doug and Jeanette Nelson, for Erev Shabbat. What a lovely evening that led to a most peaceful and restful day of attending services and coming home to relax.

Naturally, Havdalah followed, and as I extinguished the candle in the poured-out wine, I thought to myself, “Okay, what’s next?” Surely, I need to be baking bread, mulling wine, or at the very least, making a grocery list! But no, everything had come to a glorious, satisfying conclusion.

My husband and son were out of the house, so I sat down at my laptop and whiled away the time creating an ‘80s playlist on YouTube. It may sound like a terrible waste of time, but I love the memories that are attached to my favorite songs, and I dredged more than a few that night. Besides, music is the backdrop of my life for just about everything I do.

The next morning is when it really hit me that I was free to resume daily life. Allow me to rewind a bit at this point to say that I set aside my writing during Hanukkah because trying to maintain both would be impossible, and I was devoted to making Hanukkah great this year. We really needed the light and still do!

Permit me to go back even further to say that depending on when Hanukkah begins, my mother and I begin planning elaborate celebration about two to three weeks prior that require lots of shopping and preparation. Not that we mind because what follows is terrific, but I mention this because now that it’s over, I need to find a way to slip back into my good habits of writing.

I’ll start slowly with something easy like the “Thank You” notes I need to write. The little notes may not seem like much, but it’s important to express gratitude at every opportunity. I love to ponder mine for a moment to make sure I’m conveying my deep appreciation in the small space provided, using the very best words this writer can conjure to do so.

Then I dig deeper and write a blog post such as this one. It’s a great way to organize my thoughts into intelligent, interesting comments that I hope my followers will enjoy reading. There’s a story here but also tips for my writing friends on my method of jumpstarting the creative juices, tapping into my writing muse, etc.

As mentioned, music is an important part of my life but very much so when applied to my writing. Classical music wakes my brain and provides a general soundtrack, so to speak, until I reach the point where I’m ready to dig into my current WIP.

A specific inspirational playlist must be cued, preferably a long one, as I pull up the last two or three chapters of my WIP and the document titled Next Chapter Notes. I start by re-reading what I wrote, never assuming I remembered everything perfectly, and then I edit a titch and/or double check my notes to make sure I included everything in the past chapters before I set my face forward, open a black document, and place my fingers over the laptop keyboard.

Sometimes more notes come out, which will be transferred to the main note-keeping document, and sometimes the actual writing flows, whether as dialog or prose is anyone’s guess. In either case, I’ve successfully resumed writing.

Three to five cups of tea will be enjoyed during however long I give myself toward the day’s writing. I’ll complete a few chores when I need a physical and mental break. I graze until I need to make dinner. And mostly importantly, I thank Adonai for whatever amount of writing I achieved for the day.

I’ve written upward of a thousand words in one session that lasted an hour, and I’ve fought for a mere three hundred over the course of the entire day. Both are deserving of praise not because I did something miraculous but rather because I was afforded the opportunity to create in imitation of my Creator.

There are obstacles to overcome during this process (for me the biggest are guilt over not doing something I think might be more important than writing and playing on social media), but the understanding of what I’ve been given by Adonai, as mentioned above, and my dear husband (time to write without having to work an outside job) places me squarely back on track. I will not squander this precious gift.

And so, dear followers and writing friends, I offer this simple advice on how to relight the spark of your writing, or any task, and I bid you farewell as I return to my own endeavors.

Rewind to the Future

December 11, 2017 By in Lightning Juice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times:  there are advancements to technology, but they aren’t always advancements to the quality of our lives.  Yet every day I find myself more dependent on some form of technology, and I must admit that a few have become quite the convenience.  Take my laptop, for example.

About six years ago, my parents surprised us with a laptop because our son had reached the stage of his schooling where he needed one to complete his homework.  Then there was the fact that the school insisted communication with students and parents be conducted mostly, if not solely, via e-mail and homework sites.  We had an old desktop model, but it just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

Since the generous gifting of the laptop, I have come to enjoy it for online banking, communicating with friends (although I still argue that social media makes people who once met for socializing somewhat lazy), watching movies, and my favorite, ripping CDs into custom-made playlists.  And then one horrific day, the DVD/CD drive thingy stopped working.

At first I couldn’t open it.  Not even with the cool trick using a paperclip the guy at the store showed me.  And when I placed a DVD or CD inside and shut the drawer, the laptop no longer read it.  Imagine my dismay.  My playlists would grow no more, and worse, it may be time to look for another laptop.

There was the option of an external drive, but even the sales clerk thought the price his employer was charging to be a little outrageous.  He suggested I try shopping online if I absolutely needed one.  At least he didn’t try to sell me a laptop I wasn’t prepared to buy at the moment.  Our finances aren’t ready for that commitment yet.

I’m not exactly technologically challenged, but I’m not savvy either.  Perhaps with all this streaming, DVDs and CDs were going by the wayside.  One day while running errands, I consulted our in-house IT geek also known as our son.  When I posed this thought to him, he agreed that an external drive would simply be a convenience for old-schoolers like me.

“You could rip all your CDs, Mom.  They even have external connections for those other things you and Dad have.”

“What other things?”

He cupped his left hand with a U-shaped slot between his thumb and fingers and inserted his other flattened hand inside, mimicking something.

“You know, those square things.”

Images of 3.5-inch floppy disks sprang to mind, but they had nothing to do with our discussion.

“What things, Joshua?”

Again, and with much exasperation on his part, he mimicked some bizarre function by rotating his index fingers in circles going the same direction.

“Those things that are square and go ‘round and ‘round.”

“You mean…cassettes?”

Let the laughter begin.  I rarely get one up on this kid these days.  He’s a titch smug from time to time with all he knows technologically, so when I have the opportunity to laugh (and I’m talking Precious Pup, wheezing type laughter as I’m driving) I take it.  Joshua is a good sport, though, and after turning beet red, he joined in the hilarity.  Still, he’ll never know the satisfaction of saving a favorite cassette from destruction by rewinding it with a pencil.

The Music of Life

January 31, 2017 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

the-music-of-lifeSeveral years ago while shelving AV material at the library where I used to work, I came across a CD titled The Goat Rodeo Sessions. What caught my eye, besides the unusual title, was Yo-Yo Ma on the cover. I was familiar with Yo-Yo Ma as a classically trained musician, but here he was featured on a CD devoted to music of a completely different genre. Without hesitation, I checked out the CD and couldn’t wait to listen to it on the drive home. What I heard started a love affair with a type of music I’d previously tiptoed around.

Probably what kept me from exploring this genre earlier was the fact that much of it was labeled Bluegrass. My opinion of Bluegrass included all things twangy and hick-i-fied. Yes, that is a word. What I discovered that day was something called Classical Crossover. Classical Crossover is a genre that hovers between classical and popular music, and is usually targeted at fans of both types of music. In the most common type of crossover, classically trained performers sing or play popular songs, folk music, show tunes, or holiday songs.

Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan also contributed to the CD’s eleven tracks of music based on English and Irish fiddle music that gave birth to what we know as Appalachian fiddle music. The closest I’d ever come to anything like it was the little bits of fiddle I’d heard in songs by Clannad and The Chieftains.

After listening to The Goat Rodeo Sessions, I went in search of other CDs by the same artists or those featuring similar music. I discovered Appalachian Waltz, Short Trip Home, Appalachian Journey, and Heartland: An Appalachian Anthology all of which are now in a playlist that became the soundtrack of my mind as I wrote my novel, The Secrets of Dr. John Welles. One song in particular, “Sliding Down” featuring Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and Mike Marshall, epitomized John Welles’s experience in the later years of his life.

By the time John lived in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, his life had taken so many downward turns that he believed he’d never dig himself out from under them. Yet through it all, he retained a shred of hope buried deep in his heart. “Sliding Down” is the musical representation of what John felt during those years:  melancholy with a touch of optimism on the horizon that he was too afraid to reach for.

Other tracks from the above-listed CDs also played perfectly to the scenarios I wrote whether it was John as a boy on the family farm, as a student at the University of Maryland, during his relationship with the beautiful, enigmatic Garland, or the months following the D-Day Invasion. I don’t doubt that the music shaped what I wrote as if the songs were indeed a custom-made soundtrack. However, I finished writing over a year ago, so I haven’t accessed my Appalachian playlist in some time.

Last week, I had the opportunity to re-read To Kill a Mockingbird. It had been over thirty years since I had done so as an Honors English student in high school, but thanks to one of my book clubs, we revisited the classic. During one scene, Scout mentioned that Atticus liked listening to fiddle music on the radio. Suddenly my forgotten playlist rushed back to my memory. A quick check on Google confirmed that the Appalachian Mountains extend as far south as northern Alabama. As I read, all my favorite pieces became the background music for Scout, Jem, Dill, and Atticus’s adventures, and I listened to my playlist for two days straight.

By the way, the term goat rodeo refers to a chaotic event where many things must go right for the situation to work, a reference to the unusual and challenging aspects of blending classical and bluegrass music. Yo-Yo Ma described a goat rodeo saying, “If there were forks in the road and each time there was a fork the right decision was made then you get to a goat rodeo.” In the case of The Secrets of Dr. John Welles and To Kill a Mockingbird, the right choices weren’t always made, but somehow life worked out for the majority of those involved. This fact further reinforces my belief that the music of Appalachia is truly the music of real life.