Still Writing! (blog)

Hi guys... Well, my post is up at Meredith Holmes' site.  This month I'm pleased to welcome Heather Ingemar to my blog, where I hope she'll feel ok:)

Jess 

Drollerie Press Authors’ Blog Tour Post: Music

September 2009

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As many of you probably know by virtue of having followed me to this blog tour location, I write gothic fiction. My trade is words, and I make my habits around the sounds of our language. Like most authors, you assume, I probably began writing early, always knew I was ‘meant to be’ a writer, have troves and troves of work just waiting to be published, etcetera, etcetera…

While words have always held a fascination for me, initially, my trade was music. I was a professional musician for over nine years, and at the time I went to college, words weren’t even an option I’d considered. I was a musician. Was always going to be a musician. I ran from class to class, studying theory and pedagogy, jazz and classical, taking private lessons and playing in ensembles of varying size.

Then, after a chance conference with an English comp professor – and later a Creative Writing professor… to make a long story short, I became an English major, and then later, an author.

When this month’s topic was announced, I got rather excited. You see, in my humble opinion, words and music are interchangeable. For example, read a section in your favorite book by your favorite author, and pay attention to the sounds he or she creates. My favorite is:

(“Beowulf,” the Seamus Heaney translation published 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; p. 49)

Good music is a balance of rhythm, synchronous sound, and atmosphere. Good prose is just the same. It takes skill to create good music, and the same for good prose. Writers, like musicians, are always trying to improve their craft, and though a piece/story may have been done before, we try to do it to the best of our abilities.

I am still a musician.

My instrument has simply changed.