Posts Tagged undercover soundtrack
Our formative years, our formative music – The Undercover Soundtrack, Ricky Monahan Brown @ricky_ballboy
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in The Undercover Soundtrack on August 15, 2020
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
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in How to write a book on April 8, 2020
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.
‘Music is the conduit through which we can discover ourselves’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Marcia Butler
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in The Undercover Soundtrack on November 13, 2017
My guest this week has written a memoir of life as an international concert oboist, juxtaposed with a parallel narrative of a precarious and troubled personal life. I first came across her on The Literary Hub, where she wrote about how she left the very worst experience of all out of that book. It was so haunting that I contacted her and asked if there was any way she could write a piece for this series. She has, and the result is a trip through music that has helped her remember, or dredge up the times she preferred to forget, and moments when music helped her make life choices because of the clarity and discipline of playing. Stop by the Red Blog for the Undercover Soundtrack of Marcia Butler.
‘Tibetan oms and child prodigies’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Leslie Welch
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Nanowrimo, Undercover Soundtrack on October 29, 2017
My guest this week began her novel as a NaNoWriMo project, appropriately enough for this time of year. But its true seeds were at a gig in the late 1990s where an eight-year-old fiddle player stole the show. Years later, the author sat down to power through a manuscript idea for NaNoWriMo. She used songs of the 90s and early 2000s to take her mind back to the night with the fiddle player, but nothing would make the words flow until an album of Tibetan chants popped up on her music library. She found the zone. She is Leslie Welch and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.
‘Music is as crucial as the ramblings in my notebook app’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Andrew Lowe
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in The Undercover Soundtrack on July 18, 2017
My guest this week says his entire novel was triggered by just one song – Nobody Wins by Kris Kristofferson. He’d had the idea rolling around in his head as a vague kind of fancy, but the Kristofferson song was a sudden technicolor epiphany, making sense of the half-formed ideas, giving him a final scene. And after a lot of thrashing, editing and a good deal of other music, he has a psychological thriller about a group of guys who decide to take a voyage of self-discovery to a deserted island. If you’ve followed this series for a while you’ll recognise his name as he’s been here before – he is Andrew Lowe, and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.
‘A dead soul, a journalist in a dystopian Scotland, and painful family memories’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Philip Miller
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on May 13, 2017
My guest this week has a novel of three complex threads – as you can probably guess from the above description. He says music was as much a part of the process as his notes, plotting and character building. Indeed, he found his way to a music style he’d never before warmed to – prog rock and, specifically, King Crimson. I’ve seen this before with contributors to the series – experiences and interests that you never took much notice of become suddenly essential. As you work on the book, it works on you. Other musical essentials for this author were Kate Bush, who I could never disapprove of, and he says the novel was so essentially ‘Bush’ that he began the edits by playing Hounds of Love on his iPod. He is Philip Miller and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.
‘The unrelenting passage of time’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Theresa Milstein
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in The Undercover Soundtrack on April 2, 2017
My guest this week has just published a collection of vignettes. They’re linked by a sense of time passing, anniversaries both happy and sad, and nostalgia. Music was the way to capture and preserve the essential moments and personal memories she wanted to examine, so the soundtrack was a soundtrack to her life too. She is Theresa Milstein and she’s on the Red Blog now.
‘Music is both my on and my off switch’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Andrea Darby
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on February 5, 2017
My guest this week is a musician as much as a writer – she teaches piano, and she says that playing is the closest she ever gets to a state of mindfulness. Her debut novel was sparked by the uncanny conjunction of a magazine article and a piece of music. The former was a piece about a couple who had signed up to have their bodies cryonically preserved after their deaths, in the hope that they would be reawakened and reuinited. And the latter? A haunting, icy piece of music by Ennio Morricone that seemed to urge her to write a story about a couple who sign up for preservation, and the tragic situation that ensues. Drop by the Red Blog for the Undercover Soundtrack of Andrea Darby, and her novel The Husband Who Refused To Die.