Inspiration.

It’s what drives us to make a difference. With our family and friends. With our work. With our writing.

I’ve known for a while what inspires me to write. It’s music. When I set out to write In This Life the second time, my best friend told me to write it from the heart. And, for me, my heart responds most to music. See, I can listen to a song and immediately envision a scene in my head. Kind of like a movie. Music, and certain kinds of music, send me into a mood and I’ll see a character or hear a conversation or sense an emotion that triggers the scene. From there, the scene writes itself. It’s the only way I can seem to get words on the page passionately. Otherwise, writing suspense and romantic suspense feels and falls flat.

I’ve got a playlist on my iPhone that I use for writing my Past Life, reincarnation series. It’s an eclectic mix but it serves its purpose and I add to it only when a song is truly perfect for it. I listen to the playlist when I run or when I’m on the train to and from work, and when I write. Sometimes I’ll even pick a particular song — one that’s perfect for a certain scene — and play it in a loop until the scene is written. Then I move on.

And you know what? I can still remember, very clearly, which songs wrote which scenes for In This Life. Many are from an artist, Marcome. She’s a new age musician and singer whose work, in my opinion, is haunting and ethereal and inspirational. You should give her a try.

So, what inspires you to do what you love?

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