Our formative years, our formative music – The Undercover Soundtrack, Ricky Monahan Brown @ricky_ballboy

Most of us, when we use the term ‘formative years’, are referring to our teens, the time we began to discover who we would be. The music from that time is always stitched into our identity. My latest guest on The Undercover Soundtrack has a second set of formative years, with its own soundtrack – which began on the day he suffered a catastrophic stroke. The memoir he published was one of The Scotsman‘s Scottish Books of 2019 (and he is now a big noise in the world of edgy live storytelling… just look up Interrobang?!) Ricky Monahan Brown is on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack – and watch out for the special discount for readers of the column…

 

Using pictures and music to inspire your writing – Ep 15 FREE podcast for writers

Although our medium is words, our inspirations don’t have to be. In this episode, we talk about ways to use pictures and music to help our writing along. This was such a creative episode – storyboards to help map out plots, collecting photos of strangers who suggest mental images of our characters. And music – so much to say about that. (As you’ll know if you’ve seen my blog series The Undercover Soundtrack.)

Asking the questions is independent bookseller Peter Snell. Answering them is me!

Stream from the widget below or go to our Mixcloud page and binge the whole lot.

PS If you’d like more concentrated writing advice, try my Nail Your Novel books, especially my workbook, which includes prompts to help you build your own personal inspirational library. If you’re curious about my own creative writing, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, find my latest newsletter here and subscribe to future updates here.

‘The atmosphere to express the inexpressible’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Rebecca Mascull

If you’re friends with me on Facebook you’ve probably seen the post where I remarked how every guest on this series seems to end up writing the following phrase in their emails to me: ‘reliving the heady drafting times’. That’s what this series is all about; the joy of discovery, the celebration that we can create a story out of impressions, hopes and dreams. My guest this week is no exception. She describes her two novels and how they were shaped by songs that challenged and changed her intentions for the stories. These songs suggested new time periods, characters and locations, and key story events. But most of all, she says that music makes her reach and search; hence the heading of this week’s post. She is Rebecca Mascull and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.