So, this post may only apply to those of you who have read and/or enjoyed my books … or to fellow fiction-writers who like to talk about the writing process. Others can bow out now, no hard feelings.

I’ve heard that some writers create a “mood board” or a collection of images or media that give a feel for how they want their book to be, when they are building their world. I don’t do that, because I kind of do worldbuilding and plot discovery more or less at the same time, as an iterative process. It’s usually not until I am deep into the draft (or at the end) that the theme of the book emerges.

Nevertheless, with all three of the books in my trilogy, as I neared the end of the drafting, a song or a poem floated up to the surface that seemed perfectly to capture the emotional tone of the book or the experience of a main character. Here they are:

For The Long Guest, it was this poem by Emily Dickinson:

My life closed twice before its close–

It yet remains to see

If immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

This poem, obviously, represents Zillah’s experience in a much more succinct way.

For The Strange Land, as I wrote about Ikash’s difficult child and teen years and eventual redemption, I was haunted by this hymn:

“She hath suffered many a day / Now her griefs have passed away.”

Ikash is not unique. His story in some sense happens to everyone.

As I wrote The Great Snake, I realized that the dilemma Klee finds herself in was perfectly captured by this Bryan Duncan song:

And … as for the book I am currently drafting … no data

Update: The official mind-worm for The Bright World is Why Not Me? by the Judds.

How about you, fellow writers? How does your mind work? Do you often have media serendipitously match your book as you are writing it?

Readers, do you get a relevant song or quote stuck in your head as you are reading?