Hitting the Write Note

Music is inspiring. It energizes us, moves us, and gets our creative juices flowing.




I recently had the pleasure of doing a guest post on The Writer Diaries blog about music as inspiration. If you don’t know The Writer Diaries you should check it out here.

One song recently tapped into my well of my creative juices (okay, that sounds gross but you know what I mean):



Title: Radioactive
By: Imagine Dragons

I was driving home from work and this song came on the radio. I got chills. The constant parade of shitty Day Job thoughts derailed. My mind jumped to my YA SciFi in which medical science has advanced enough to transplant human consciousness from one living body to another. There are *HUGE* transformations that take place in my characters’ world and, as you can imagine, some of them are down right dark.

The tone of Radioactive is similar. It’s dark and it’s angsty. The subject matter deals heavily with transformation.

Here are some of the lyrics:

I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Whoa

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm radioactive, radioactive




I envisioned my character sitting up, after having just had a procedure completed, and hearing this song as she walks to the mirror to inspect her newly modified body for the first time. I got shuddered. Chills. Big time.

I don’t even remember how I got home that day. I remember driving and I remember the song coming on while I was trapped in a traffic jam. And then I was home. Transported or distracted…either way, I was home and typing my newest scene all because of a song.



What songs have inspired your work?