BookLife

Jane Candia Coleman is the author of many books, including Bandit Queen and Range Queen (due out next month).  The daughter of classically trained singers, Coleman has played piano and harpsichord for most of her life.

For more about Coleman, check out “Content Dictates Form,” an interview in the Writing the West series here at BookLifeNow.
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First I hear the opening line, then I see the story.  The sensation resembles being awoken by voices or being carried into a dream by a lullaby.  After that first sound, the audio and visual tracks start to (or at least try to) sync up.

That first line may not be the first line in the final draft but it remains the access point into the world of the story.  It is the wedge, the lever.  It comes first, gets me in the door, but then runs away from me.  And I must chase after it, across the internal landscape.

Real world sounds – voices, traffic, sirens, birds, etc. – can yank me from the secondary world of my writing, can interrupt my pursuit.  Yet music helps me stay with the chase.

I’m still trying to figure it all out.  How and why music helps with writing offers me no end of fascination so I am still asking around to see what other writers have to say on the subject.

Below, novelists Jaleigh Johnson, Matt Mayo, Lettie Prell and Jane Yolen talk about silence, photography, and the seduction of music.

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Jaleigh Johnson is the author of fantasy novels The Howling Delve, Mistshore, and the recently released Unbroken Chain.

Matthew P. Mayo writes fiction and non-fiction, including the Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Hardscrabble New England. According to Mayo, he “plays guitar and concertina poorly—but with great gusto!”

Lettie Prell is the author of Dragon Ring.  She served as the editor of Broadsheet, the newsletter of Broad Universe, which “promot[es] science fiction, fantasy, and horror written by women.”

Jane Yolen has written more than 300 books, most of which are for children.  She has been a folksinger and has written lyrics for Boiled in Lead, June Tabor, Cats Laughing, Lui Collins, The Folk Underground and others.

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In what ways do you or have you used music to enhance your writing and creativity?

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Matthew P. Mayo: At a basic level, music and writing and any other creative act are all the same. It’s the methods of pursuit that differ. I find it interesting that while sometimes I can listen to someone else’s creative efforts while pursuing my own, most of the time I prefer silence when I write.

Total silence is impossible, so I settle for birds, passing cars, my own breathing (difficult to avoid). Even if I’m not listening to music, I’ll still hear music in my head. More often than not, it’s the Indiana Jones theme song. Don’t know why, but it could be worse.

Sometimes I can write while listening to certain types of instrumental music (surf or jazz or slack-key guitar), but don’t do so well with sung songs. This tells me that in order to build something worth inhabiting—in order to write something worth reading—I don’t want to hear anyone else’s voice but my own. Either that or I’m just cranky.

Lettie Prell: I took up photography as a hobby at about the same time I began writing science fiction in earnest.  I loved photography as a way to go non-verbal.  I absorbed line, color, shape, and created from those elements.  There was not even a stream of self-talk in my head when I looked through a lens.  It was deliciously freeing.  Yet within that stillness, in my head, tone and atonal passages would play – the music of my own emotions.  This inner music was fueled by one of my favorite solitary activities back then.  At night I would put on music and turn out the lights, and do my own, unschooled and spontaneous version of Tai Chi.

Jane Yolen: I love music–folk, folk rock, Early Music, the Romantics, lots of jazz, R&B, 60s rock, cabaret, musical theater, some opera, very little pop, and no hip-hop at all. But when I am writing, I need absolute silence. Music is too seductive and suddenly I am writing to its beat instead of my own. And writing lyrics to it in my head as well.

Jaleigh Johnson: I usually have to have some type of music playing while I write. The only time I ever like it silent is if I’m doing a tricky bit of editing, and the song lyrics are getting stuck in my head. But the right music, whether it’s a blood-pumping rock song or a soft ballad, can really get me in the mood to write an appropriate scene. The mood of whatever piece I’m listening to gets inside me, and those feelings come out on the page. The time when I most need this effect is after a long day, when I’m tired and on deadline and I simply have to finish this scene or panic sets in. That’s when the music takes me away from everything else and shoves me fully into the scene and the setting. It fires the imagination.

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And/or what has music — listening to it, seeing it live, playing it, writing it, whichever — taught you about writing fiction?

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Jaleigh Johnson: Music taught me–and it reminds me again and again–that art, at its best, can evoke emotions that carry people away from their troubles and the stresses of their daily lives. Good music and good fiction can be a breath of fresh air, pure and vital.  When I write, I strive to give that experience to people.

Matthew P. Mayo: Music has always been a large and welcome presence in my life, from listening to my mother’s record collection as a tot (Herb Alpert! Bobby Vinton!) to building my own record collection (Kiss! Ramones! ‘Mats! Husker Du!) to being in bands (Toxic Crotch, anyone?) to playing college radio-station DJ to playing acoustic instruments now. It’s always been with me, working to override the tinnitus (also always here), and has probably taught me to be adventurous, take risks, and pick a few wrong notes in order to find one that sounds good.

Lettie Prell: When my writing achieved novel-length proportions, my photography waned.  The verbal arts won out in the end.  I never play music when I write, and if I did I would probably cease to hear it after a few minutes.  My capacity to focus to the point of being unaware of my surroundings is well-known at work among my colleagues.  Yet when I pause in the writing to dream a scene – not the dialogue because that is listening to my characters talk in my head – when I see the scene, it is as if through my photographer’s eye.  I go non-verbal in those moments, and my torso sways in the chair, because the music of my emotions is playing.

Jane Yolen: Certainly music has taught me how important (and seductive) rhythm is. It has taught me something about voice: how each character’s tone, timbre, rhythm, speech patterns is a distinguishing characteristic. Someone may be an oboe, a basso, a tenor, or a fife. It has also stretched me. When I was younger, I only liked folk and classic. My husband opened me to opera and jazz. My son Adam made me appreciate folk rock. My friend Babbie showed me cabaret. And while I’d loved the great musicals of my childhood and adolescence and can still sing many of the songs (though only in the shower these days or alone in the car) it took Stephen Sondheim to reacquaint me with the form. And so I have learned over the years to love different styles and kinds of writing–and tried many of them myself.

I think any time one starts to understand structure of any kind, since it plays such an important role in storytelling that it is of great benefit. I don’t think it’s happenstance that I published my first novel not long after I started taking music lessons. I think my writing improved in a way I could not have predicted–or forced.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

“I’m lucky in that I just love what I’m doing,” said novelist James Reasoner.  “Writing has always been fun for me.  It keeps me entertained.  On a practical level, I know that there will be times when it’s not as easy, and I’ve learned not to obsess about them.  I just keep working and do what I can, because I know it’ll get better.” 

Reasoner has published more than 200 novels.  He writes under his own name and nearly three dozen pen and house names, such as Dana Fuller Ross, Brett Halliday, Tabor Evans, Jon Sharpe, Jake Logan, and Gabriel Hunt.  He’s been writing stories since the late 70s and novels since 1980.  Over the years, he’s written Westerns, detective stories, action-adventure, military, fantasy and just about any other type of novel and story.

“The author of the cult classic P.I. novel Texas Wind under his own name, James Reasoner has nevertheless made his living writing books he received no credit for,” said Robert J. Randisi author of The Ham Reporter and, as J. R. Roberts, the Gunsmith series. “But I give him credit. The best thing I can say about him is this:  he’s a helluva Professional.”

Reasoner moves among the genres seemingly with great ease.  Though I suspect a lot of hard work goes into making it look so easy.  From book to book, series to series, Reasoner’s stories seem to follow one pattern – good character, good story, and good fun. 

Below, Reasoner and I talk about entertaining himself first and writing the West. 

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What do you enjoy about writing the West?

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James Reasoner:  Traditionally, Westerns have both strong characters and strong plots, and I enjoy combining those two elements.  Plus, I grew up reading Western novels and watching Western TV series during the Fifties and Sixties, and it’s just great fun being able to follow in the footsteps of creators whose work gave me so much pleasure and entertainment over the years.

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And what is the biggest challenge in writing the West?
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James Reasoner:  Getting all the historical details correct.  Readers will let you know if you get something wrong.  I try to be as accurate as I can in my writing, but mistakes still slip through from time to time. 
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What sort of Westerns do you write, and what are they key elements?
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James Reasoner:  I write traditional Westerns that are not that much different than the ones published in decades past, although I think the characterization in today’s Westerns (not just mine) is usually deeper and better developed than it was during the pulp era.  Of course, there are exceptions to that, since some of the pulp writers were very good at characterization.  I’ve also written quite a few books for several of the so-called Adult Western series, as well as big historical sagas that are more concerned with actual events and characters in Western history. 
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How have your novels and/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?
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James Reasoner:  My style has evolved over the thirty-plus years I’ve been writing, but it’s been a gradual process that’s still going on.  I’m constantly learning new things about how to make my writing more effective.  My approach is still the same, though:  I try to do the best I can on each project and write books that would entertain me as a reader.  If I’m not having fun, the readers won’t, either. 
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You write both under your own name and under pseudonyms and house names.  Do you approach writing “as someone else” differently?  What does it allow you to do that writing “as yourself” doesn’t?
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James Reasoner:  I touched on that in the previous answer.  If I’m writing for a particular series, I’ll definitely try to make my book fit in with the others in that series.  Each series has its own way of doing things.  But as far as my general approach to the work goes, there’s really no difference.  When I sit down in front of the computer to produce my day’s pages, that my book I’m working on.  I have to like it and enjoy it.  When it’s turned in, of course, I’m professional enough to accept that sometimes it’s not mine anymore.  But in my heart, it still kind of is.  That’s why I can look at a book in the store that doesn’t have my name anywhere on it, but if I wrote it, I’m still proud of it.
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You wrote the first novel in the Gabriel Hunt series.  How much freedom did you have in shaping the character and the direction of the series?
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James Reasoner:  Charles Ardai, the creator and editor of the series, wrote a fantastic bible for it, one of the best series bibles I’ve ever seen.  So he had developed the character of Gabriel Hunt pretty extensively before I wrote my book.  However, I was able to add some touches of my own that Charles adopted for the rest of the series.  Writing that book was a very enjoyable experience.
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What are you working on now, and what’s next?

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James Reasoner:  I’m writing a traditional Western novel that will be out under my name next year, plus developing an outline for a house-name book also scheduled for next year.  The next manuscript in the schedule after the current one will be a house-name Western.  I have quite a bit of work lined up, and that’s the way I like it.

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What can a writer who doesn’t usually read Westerns learn from reading within the genre? 

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 James Reasoner:  How to balance plotting and characterization, and how to get the details right.  Plus a lot of Western authors are just really good storytellers and know how to pace a book so that the reader wants to keep turning the pages. 
 

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. 

“The West is vast and varied,” said Western writer Jane Candia Coleman.  “It has mountains, desserts, great rivers and small ones, endless sky, pine forests and cactus, cliffs and canyons that beg to be captured in words.  (I am a frustrated painter, so I do it in words.)  In my books the land is always present, as much a characters as the human protagonists.  In short, I love this country and all in it and find it endlessly captivating.”

Jane Candia Coleman writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.  She is the author of such books as The Silver Queen, Bandit Queen, and the forthcoming Range Queen.  Five of her 21 books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and three have won the Western Heritage Awards given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.  When not writing, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow University.

“I first discovered Jane Candia Coleman in Louis L’Amour Western Magazine,” said Johnny D. Boggs, author of Whiskey Kills and other Killstraight stories, “first with her short story ‘Lou,’ which I thought was brilliant, then a few years later with another short story, ‘Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?,’ which also blew me away. She’s an absolutely amazing writer — whether she’s writing short fiction or historical novels — with a strong sense of place, and wonderful characters. Her prose often reads like pure poetry. No surprise there. She’s also an incredible poet.”
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