Everything I have written has started with a melody.
Before I even sketch out an outline, before I come up with a premise, before I type a single word, I start to hear the story.
It might be a line in a song. Or a chord, or a chorus, or even the memory of a song that I recall when I am thinking about the next writing project and I then have to search. For me, it is in music, and not words, where everything begins. It’s like the shape and feel of what is coming, but in no way distinct. Kind of like trying to hold water… you can’t grasp it.
And eventually, the story starts to take form in a song. And then another song, and then many songs, which eventually turn into what I call a mixtape.
For those not familiar with a mixtape, let me take you back to the 1980s. When I was a teenager, we would record songs onto cassette tapes—sometimes from another cassette so that we had all our favourite songs in one place, or taping tracks off the radio, and sometimes from my Dad’s record collection, and by the time we arrived in the 90s, from CD’s too.
There was an art to making a good mixtape. They had to be in the right order, and have upbeat songs broken up by ballads and slower tracks, and the most agonising decision of all—picking a song for the end of side 2, knowing it was going to be cut off midway.
I apply this same thinking to making a mixtape for each of my stories. I don’t use a cassette! I use Spotify, and there I make a playlist, but I apply the rules of the mixtape to it. Each playlist can only be a little over 60 or 90 minutes long. It is never intentional, but I find that novellas are usually 60 minute mixtapes, and novels 90 minutes.
I start collecting songs early, before I’ve written a word. Sometimes, I will hear a new song, and I’ll think of a character, or I’ll hear a song that I’ve heard a million times before and will think, yeah—Iris or Benton or Charlise would hum that tune if it had been around in their time. And in those moments, I add it to a list. By the time it comes to doing the writing, I have something of a starting off place.
I’ve been known to lose an allocated writing morning to searching for tracks, becoming lost in the songs or just enjoying an album. And I can’t quite explain it, but by the time to book is well on its way, the soundtrack is also in good shape.
When I am writing, I listen to my mixtapes on hardcore repeat. While driving to and from work, sometimes while walking through the paddocks with the dogs, definitely when drafting. Just those same songs, over and over. Every now and then, I get frustrated with the music, which often coincides with an ‘I don’t know what happens here’ moment in the manuscript. A break from the music to listen to something new—along with a break from the writing—and the loose bolt gets tightened, the blockade is blasted, or the problem is solved.
But for me, the real magic of the mixtape happens in the editing. Once I have packaged up the novel, it gets sent off to my brilliant editor Amber Night. During the weeks when it is off with her, I do not listen to that mixtape. I tell you, I have had ENOUGH. But when it comes back, the mixtape is cued again, and I am immediately back in the emotion and feel and weight of the story.
I usually post my mixtapes onto social media once the ARC copies are sent out. Those two things — officially posting the playlist and releasing the story to readers—are, for me, the official end of the process. The story, the characters, the world, everything—they don’t belong to me anymore. And that’s okay. It’s time they went out into the world on their own.
And after the release, when I hear a song, either on random play or because it’s a banger that has made it onto my Liked Songs list, I cannot help but think of that story. It’s kind of like getting a letter or phone call from an old friend. And even though I have let go of that story and sent it out into the world, those songs are my special connections to those characters, and they remind me of the time when they were just mine. As if Julian or Vivianne or Enzo are dropping me a line that says Thanks for asking. Yes, we are still intolerably happy.
I couldn’t imagine writing anything without my songs accompanying me.
If you’d like to check out some of my mixtapes, they are all public on Spotify. My favourites: