An exercise

What is your earliest musical memory? Is there a song that stands out from when you were sixteen? Who were you with? What were you doing? What about when you were twenty-one? Thirty-three? Forty-six? What played at your wedding or when your child was born? For fifteen minutes, write down these musical memories.

Experiment. Play different types of music and write. Write to silence as well. How does what you listen to—or not listen to—affect what you write?

Put on music you like, set the timer for fifteen minutes and write whatever comes through. Don’t try to make it into something else. Not yet, anyway. Let the music take you and your writing with it, and see what happens.

Work with similes, too. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and start with what you hear right now. What does what you hear remind you of? What does the rain sound like to you? What do tires moving past your house sound like? the whistle of the teakettle? Pay attention to sounds as you sit and write, as you walk, as you do what you do, and bring those sounds into your writing.