Thursday, January 21, 2010

Warming Up

I can see now why authors like to choose music that puts them in the mood for a particular character or novel or series. If I had specific Aria music, I would be listening to it all the time, capitalizing on the pavlovian connection previously created. As it stands, I'm forced to read back through my notes (something I often find more tedious than useful since so much has changed—though I'm simultaneously not inspired to update the notes, which is entirely unhelpful).

However, thanks to my re-immersion in the notes, I can finally feel Aria moving sluggishly in my veins, getting warmed up. Or maybe it's all thanks to Amanda Downam. I'm reading her debut novel The Drowning City (yes, she's a future NON guest), and while I find the novel highly entertaining, it also prompts the Aria in me. More times than I can count I've caught myself staring off into space, pondering pieces of Aria, Downam's novel forgotten in my fingers. It's led to some great ideas. Strangely, it is not the content of Downum's novel, but perhaps more her style that prompts these daydreams.

I was exceptionally pleased today when, out of nowhere, in the midst of work and my mind concentrating on something else entirely, I got a brilliant idea for Aria.

I can feel the flavor of this novel once more. I can see the city, the courtyard, the temples again. It's becoming real again, like the hazy filter of a favorite city once traveled to has been brought back into focus, clarified by a return trip.

It's a glorious thing.

(And, yes, I'm trying out a new name for Aria. I thinking I'm liking it.)

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