Love Me to the Bone
Draft 1
Words Added: 1,220
What Happened in the Story: A jump scene–Devon invites Madeline upstairs, back into the living world, to look at the stars again. They test that this is possible, that she won’t fall apart or turn to dust if she does so, and she goes up into the summer night. But while Devon is thrilled to show her the moons of Jupiter, Madeline feels the intensity of the living world too much, and flees back down to the land of the dead, overwhelmed by the sounds and smells, and the memories they conjure. Will their budding relationship survive this?
Additional Notes: Actually wasn’t planning to write much today, so I’m thrilled to have hit my 1k minimum anyway! I take a pilates class on Thursdays, and usually, the reformer machine and all the yanking/pulling/stretching wears out my hands so that my typing is GARBAGE afterwards, so I’ve been using Thursdays as pseudo art/Etsy days. But today, I was having coffee post-school bus, pre-pilates, and thought: hell, why not write by hand again and just see what happens?
I knew I didn’t want to tackle the VERY next scene, because I’m still hammering that one out in my head, but while listening to the playlist I’ve created for this story, one line stuck out to me, and I thought: Oh–that’d be a cool scene. It takes a bit from an earlier draft in its framing, but is a wholly new scene, which deeply re-envisioned characters, so I ran with it for fun, figuring, worst-case scenario, I had a scene I wouldn’t be able to use later, best-case, I’d have another chunk of the later book done. And it worked! Surprisingly! I got it finished before I left for class, and managed to type it up after, and hit that lovely 1k goal.
I’m realizing how vitally important music is to my writing/scene generation process. I’ve read about lots of writers who create playlists and whatnot, but it always struck me as too organized/not spontaneous enough, somehow, to appeal to me. I also don’t write well TO music, particularly the music I like, which is more likely than not lyrical. The words in the music mess up my ability to think in words if they’re happening at any significant volume in the background. THAT SAID: every story I’ve ever written, especially long-form, that I’ve *loved* and felt was super emotionally vibrant are stories I had a LOT of music associated with. Thief Dilemma was Breaking Benjamin’s Diary of Jane and Glitch Mob’s We Can Make the World Stop, and a touch of Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark.” My sci-fi novel draft for Shadow Games was a whole slew of Shiny Toy Guns’ Stripped, Eve 6, In Flames, Lindsey Stirling, and a bunch of random other songs. The spec-fic novella, Aleyut and the Enemy (which I plan to actually revise sometime here…) was heavily Conjure One. The new Thief Dilemma novella (yeah, you heard that right–it’s in the formation stage to give me something fun to work on) is a mix of Foster the People’s “Sit Next to Me,” Taylor Swift’s “Style,” Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop this Feeling,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good for You,” and The Cannons’ Fever Dream. Frosthaven was all Birthday Massacre and Florence & the Machine.
Anyway, you get the picture. I’ve always used music as a brainstorming trigger, usually while driving. But this is the first time I’ve used music to prime the pump BEFORE writing. I won’t listen to the whole set of songs I’ve gathered for Love Me to the Bone, but I *will* listen to a few that suit the mood I’m going for. And yes, sometimes I’ll dance. No, I will not film that. It’s horrible. Nobody needs to see that. But it seems like a really effective way to get in the right writing headspace, so I’m going to keep experimenting with that moving forward.
If you’re curious, the songs I have so far for Love Me to the Bone are:
- Magdalena Bay – “Ghost” and “Kill Shot”
- Rรถyksopp – “Oh, Lover”
- The Neighborhood – “Softcore”
- The Strike – “Reckless”
- Alice Merton – “run away girl”
- London Grammar – “Non Believer”
- Cannons – “Come Alive” and “Strangers”
- *Myles Smith – “Stargazing”
*Can you guess which song inspired today’s scene? Also, I picked this song in part because when I heard that line–“Love me to my bones”–it was so on-point with the title of this project (decided prior to hearing the song) that I just had to include it.
Thanks for following along, and I hope you enjoy the ride! I’ll try and make these daily updates (on writing days), but I’ll probably miss a few now and then. Sorry about that in advance, but I’ll do my best to be consistent. If you’re craving some personal stakes in this process, feel free to toss me a “You Can Do It!” donation at my Ko-fi shop! I’m going to need a lot of coffee for this…
