Music and Muses

I have friends who swear that they can't write a specific character without music and playlists. I've never been one of those kind of writers...until now. I've been in a slump, but not from writer's block. Nope, no big wall staring me down. I've been writing, but the characters seem flat and lifeless to me. Definitely not what I'm going for as a first-person oriented author!

So I did something I rarely do. I borrowed a page from someone else's playbook. My friend, Colleen, is a wonderful inspiration to me. She uses music for every muse and swears it gives life to her characters. So, I dug in and started looking for a musical style that would help me bring my vampire heroine to life. Just when frustration was about to convince me to toss the piece into the trash and decide NaNoWriMo wasn't for me, CW came to my rescue. I know, television and music? I promise I wasn't drinking. *wink* I was streaming Life Unexpected in the background while I sorted through some Christmas projects and Kate Voegele came on to sing. BOOM! My muse started making comments.

I was FREE!! Literally. I loaded up my WIP, and went to town. Reading back through it, I edited, toned, and reworked it. Suddenly, it wasn't so flat and lifeless...and my heroine began to look a frightening bit like Kate Voegele. *grins* Hey, life is life and I can live with that. Physical appearance is a minor thing to trade off to have the personality spring to the forefront of the manuscript.

So now, I'm pounding away at the next St. George book and thrilled to know that music really does work when the chips are down.

What about you? Have you ever read a character that made you think of a particular musical style, or artist specifically?