Guest Post: Megan Bostic

I'm really excited to share with you a guest post by debut author Megan Bostic. Her first novel, Never Eighteen, was just released today, which is very exciting. Here she explains where she finds inspiration:

My muse has a split personality, sometimes making her hard with which to keep up. (Except for those moments she takes an extended smoke break and I have to go outside and around the corner of the house with arms crossed over my chest, huffing and glaring at her to get back in the house so I can get some writing done.)

I draw inspiration from many places, nature, my own life experience, 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). In 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 a big famous author like Stephenie Meyer or have music connections, it's near impossible to get permissions to use lyrics in your novel. Unfortunately, I had to cut them.

I love evocative music for writing. So much of what I listen to when I need inspiration is indie. Songs that make you think, songs that make you cry, songs that break your heart. This is because I truly believe I’m a better writer 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 I decided my protagonist in my current work in progress needed to be a songwriter and musician, and thus, I had to write a song for my novel. This isn't new to me. Back in my teens and early twenties, I used to write angsty rock songs in a spiral notebook. I have a feeling that poetry and music are going to be an ongoing theme in 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. It's a constant source of inspiration for me when I hit a brick wall while writing.

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

Thanks for visiting, Megan. And I must say that I love Death Cab for Cutie and The Airborne Toxic Event as well!