The Best of The Thinking Quill – XI

Dear Reader Who Writes,

One somehow cannot bring oneself to address you as ‘Dear RWW’. Mummy has always insisted that one should be punctiliously polite (a skill she herself was taught by the nuns at a frightfully expensive Swiss Finishing School). Thus such a contraction of the words feels too informal for a budding relationship, although please know that is how one thinks of you, one’s little chums, since we have become so much better acquainted. I shall, however, make free use of that reduction in the main body of my text. You will have heard I am known as ‘Ivy’ to those whom I allow close familiarity – but you may call me Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV.

As the author of science fiction and fantasy – “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth” – Amazon’s one millionth on the bestseller charts and a masterclass in ‘how to’ in its own right – I feel I have the perfect credentials to offer you the highest of heuristic insights to release your own inner writer.

For those of you who have been following one’s bon mots, one will continue to offer you the benefit of one’s deep and sympathetic wisdom. And to those who have only just had the inestimable good fortune to discover my erudition and brilliance, I bid you welcome.

How to Start Writing a Book – The Write Music

Tuneful tintinnabulation: Summoning the muse with music has its antecedents in acts of sympathetic magic from across our spinning globe. Like summons like. So with the aid of Eurtepe and Aoede we may bring forth Erato and Calliope. One’s musical accompaniment should be reproduced in the most audiologically pleasing manner that one’s pecuniary resources may obtain.

Oh how one longs for a full orchestra, seated in the shrubbery and serenading as one captures the essence of the Muse! But that is not to be, and, as Mummy genteelly opined when I requested this: ‘Don’t be such a twat, Moony, the bastards would only trample the euphorbia’.

Therefore one has had the inestimable good fortune to become acquainted with a young lady named Alexa, who responds to one’s every whim and command. Sympatico….

Before I even think of adding a single word to my new magnum opus ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth Go Forth’, I must first suffuse the atmosphere with my own especially blended symphony of scent (see the last lesson) and listen to the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth exactly eight times. I follow this with the closing sequence of the 1812 Overture – ensuring that it is a recording with real cannon – to awaken my inner author from his sophoric slumbers deep within. Then either ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ or Handel’s ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’, so as to appease the higher cognitive aspects of my psyche. I am then ready to soothe the sybaritic segregations of my soul with something profound and sensitive and will put on Pure Peruvian Flutes, Whale Songs or Perry Como.

Please, gentle RWW, do not be fooled into thinking I actually write to any of this. No – this is all about preparing the psyche from heights to depths in order that the eventual overlay of choice melodies, selected to match the mood and theme of one’s authorial flow, can wash deeper into the creative mind. It is indeed a ritual akin to religious profundity and it is worth the hour and a half which one gives over to it before one begins to write. Without it, one could not unlock the core of one’s essence and allow the riches within to leach from one’s tender soul onto the polished whiteness of the page.

You are welcome to adopt my musical rites of pre-writing within your own sanctuary to the muses, or develop your own as mine are intended only for a higher mind which is capable of scaling the peaks of literary prowess.

Until next. Adieu estudas. Bon Ecrit!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.