F³A: Relationships

Those of you who have followed by blog for awhile know I've had my share of difficulties, mentally, physically, and emotionally (I'm not called the angsty writer for nothing).  Today marks a new chapter in my life for today my divorce will be final.

It's been a long strange trip for me.  We were married for seventeen years, had our ups and downs, but things happen along the way that you can't fix and you can't go back.  My husband and I have always marched to the beat of a different drummer.  We are a bit crazy, eccentric, weird, but fun.  Divorce is no different.  It was hard at first, but we realized we still loved each other (just not in the way we needed to, mostly on my end), and liked hanging out together.  It was very important to stay friends, for us, for our kids.  We bbq together, have gotten together for movie night, gone out to dinner.  We want each other to be happy.

We'll be divorcing together.  I'm picking him up, we're hitting Starbucks, the county/city building, then lunch (he said I have to buy).  And hopefully our friendship will remain intact.

Does it hurt?  Yeah.  Along the way I've had my doubts, but I know this is what I need right now.  My life has traveled down a different path the last few years making me a different person than I once was.  And I like that person.  Sometimes she's a bit mad, she may cry a little too much, and she gets lonely when her kids aren't around.  But she's more confident, stronger, braver, more adventurous.

So here's to closing this chapter in my life, and starting a new one.

Catch you on the flip side.

Megan

Oh yeah, Friday nibbles:

Random Pandora song (Thing Two has been pilfering my iPod as of late):  Different Names for the Same Thing by DCFC.  From my Death Cab For Cutie station

Movie of the Week:  I'm thinking Thor.  I really want to see it.

Book of the Week:  Popular by Alissa Grosso.  A take on popularity from five girls points of view.  Very interesting so far.

Quote of the week: "There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction." ~ Franz Kafka

Thought Provoking Thursday: Music

A drawing I made of my muse a while back.

As writer, our muses come in so many forms sometimes they're hard to keep up with (except for those times they take the extended smoke break and you have to go outside and around the corner of the house with arms crossed over your chest, glare at them, and kick their ass back in the house so you can get some writing done)

I draw inspiration from many placed, nature, my own life experienced, and many times, my muse comes to me in the form of music.  When I wrote Never Eighteen, I was listening to a lot of indie (not when I wrote, I have to have complete silence when I write as my multi-tasking abilities suck when it comes to writing).  Iin fact, originally I had song lyrics at the beginning of each section of my novel.  Death Cab, Badly Drawn Boy, Tiger Army, The Airborne Toxic Event started the four sections of my book.  I also had more Death Cab lyrics in the novel, as well as the song Weighty Ghost by Wintersleep.  Unfortunately, unless you're Stephenie Meyer or have music connections, it's near impossible to get permissions to use lyrics in your novel.  So they got cut.

I love evocative music for writing.  So much of what I listen to when I need inspiration is indie.  Or songs that make you want to pull a Plath.  This is  because I truly believe I write better when my emotions are raging to the point that I'm almost in tears.  I know this sounds completely and utterly insane, but it's true.  In fact, I actually write certain scenes with a soundtrack.  For instance, there was this scene in my Superhero novel, when the protagonist and the love interest kiss for the first time, and all I could think of was Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

I bring up this topic because yesterday I decided my protag in my WIP (work in progress for you lay people) was going to be a song writer and musician, and thus, I had to write a song for my novel.  This isn't new to  me.  I was telling my Facebook peeps yesterday that I used to write angsty rock songs in a spiral notebook back in my teens and early twenties.  I have a feeling that poetry and music are going to play parts in probably every novel I write, if not in the novel, than an inspiration to write.

I guess what I'm saying, is music is a big part of my life and always has been.  And it's a constant source of inspiration for me when I hit a brick wall while writing.

So what inspires you?  What gets you past those difficult moments, be it writing, or just in life?  In what form does your muse manifest itself to you?

Catch you on the flip side,

~Megan