I LOVE Rhapsody

I've been using Rhapsody for about a week now. I think it's great! I've been able to start some "soundtracks" for each of my WIPs.

Rhapsody also has a "Dynamic" Playlist feature that keeps track of what you've been listening and creates a playlist based on that. Some of the songs are songs you listened to, some of the songs are songs I guess they think you'd be interested based on your listening choices. How cool is that? So here is my playlist for this week...

1. Simpatico - William Ellwood
2. Charango - Oregon
3. Tom's Diner (A Capella) - Suzanne Vega
4. The First Cut is the Deepest - Sheryl Crow
5. Run To The Sun - N.E.R.D.
6. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Alana Davis
7. Nothing Seems To Matter - Bonnie Raitt
8. Raised On Robbery - Joni Mitchell
9. I Must Be High - Wilco
10. Boogie On Reggae Woman - Stevie Wonder
11. Be Still My Beating Heart - Sting
12. Just Like Anyone - Aimee Mann
13. Crazy (Radio 1 Live Lounge Session) - Nelly Furtado
14. I Am So Ordinary - Paula Cole
15. Pieces Of The Night - Gin Blossoms
16. Brick - Ben Folds
17. Hurt - Christina Aguilera
18. Chelsea Morning - Joni Mitchell
19. Are You Happy Now? - Michelle Branch
20. Little Sister - Jewel
21. Bombastic Love - Britney Spears
22. Flux - Penguin Cafe Orchestra
23. Redwood Nocturne - Spencer Brewer
24. Cold Tea Blues - Cowboy Junkies
25. Vogue - Madonna

Interesting! I've been listening to a lot of popular stuff and 80's stuff, looking for the right combination for one of my WIPs. I guess it shows. I've never even heard of some of this stuff. Well, I'd better get to listening. I may find something cool for one of my characters!

Keeping Character Journals

I first heard about character journals in Script Magic by Marisa D'Vari. In that book she sugggested writing a journal entry for each of your main characters daily. That seemed like a lot of work to me.

However, Lou Willett Stanek in So You Want to Write a Novel offered similiar advice. She suggests doing writing exercises from your character's POV. So that's two pings for the character journal/exercise route.

We all know three is the charm. PBW talked about character journals and posted a journaling excerpt. She also asked people how they get to know their characters and did her customary - comment on the post, enter a drawing thing. I was too late for the drawing, but I did look through the comments. Lots of good ideas.

I was probably hasty (read-LAZY) in my initial assessment. There's something to this Character Journal/Exercise thing, and I'm jumping into the deep end. I've started a list of websites that have writing exercises and/or journaling prompts that I can use...

• Writer's Digest has prompts for every day of the year.


• Bella-Online has a page of links to prompts.


• There's actually a website called Creative Writing Prompts.


• And there's a site called Journal Writing Prompts.

These are just a few of the hundreds of websites that have prompts. While I like the idea of prompts, I'm not going to overlook the obvious ideas

• asking what if?


• pulling one, two or three words at random out of a dictionary, thesaurus, textbook, etc.


• using a line from a poem or song


• using a first line, last line or random line of text from a book


• using a quote


• using a headline from a newspaper or magazine


• using a title


• using a question from The Book of Questions

These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many other sources that I'm not thinking of right now.

Will I post my character's journals? No. I tend to do a lot of free-writing in the early part of my story writing. I know that no one else is going to see it, so I'm free to go anywhere I want to go in the writing. I might start sensoring myself if I start posting character journals. I will DEFINITELY post the prompts I've used that day. Someone else might find them useful.