Those who don’t hear the music

I’ve mentioned that ♥My New Book♥ is about a string quartet. I’ve been reading up on violins and listening to a course on chamber music so I can actually talk about things with some clarity. I’m plotting and researching and writing simultaneously, which would make some folks like the famed Snowflake Guy Randy Ingermanson fall over dead. (I think Amy Deardon would too, actually, so don’t tell her. Oh, wait, she’s a regular here. I hope someone’s standing by to revive her.)

On Sunday, I realized that Thing A which I wanted to happen during Scene B couldn’t actually happen to best effect right then. I wanted it to. I *really* wanted it to, but I knew it would be funnier later. And this is in theory a humorous novel. 

Realizing this left me with nothing big to happen during Scene B, which I had been building up tension toward. I couldn’t just have it go splat. Oh, dilemma.

Just before going to church, I had an idea, and it made me giggle, but there wasn’t enough to it to make a hair-raising crying-with-laughter scene out of it. I kept it baking.

Two hours later, I thought, “Oh!” and there was the rest of it. This is how God looks out for fools, drunks, the United States of America, and me. Because sometimes I need to be spoon-fed an idea.

This is more how it usually happens, though: on Monday I went out to the bus stop alone, wearing my iPod because I could. (I can’t do that when I’ve got the kids with me, for obvious reasons.) While waiting for the bus, no one else around, I was half-dancing on the sidewalk.

Yes, one of the other bus stop moms has teased me about this, but the fact is, they’re in their cars staying warm. If I feel like dancing at the bus stop, I’m going to dance. It’s not illegal and I’m not afraid of appearing quirky. As the Baal Shem Tov said, Those who dance are thought mad by those who don’t hear the music.

One of my favorite songs came on: “Head Over Heels” by Tears For Fears. As it started, I felt myself go “into character,” becoming the male love interest in the book, and as the song played, I constructed a scene. It had little to do with the song. It was just him, smiling at her, just happy to be with her, and I grabbed that nugget of feeling and this snapshot of him being secretly in love, and I built a scene around hit. Her, wearing his gloves because it was chilly and she’d forgotten hers. And him not noticing the cold on his own hands because hers were warm in his gloves, and then just the feel of his smile and hers in return.

Of course I was dancing when that happened. Wouldn’t you have been?