Category Archives: Music

Music related Musings

Quick Update – Heavy Winds

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

So I took my first passenger a week ago, and took Nathan again, along with his mom, for my Cessna 172 checkout, to do circuit practice with the plane fully loaded on Friday. That went well, and the 172 is not too big an adjustment. Nathan handled it a lot better than the first time on Monday, and his mom loved it. The winds were fairly calm, and the 172 doesn’t get blown around quite so bad as the tiny 152, so the afternoon convection turbulence wasn’t too bad.

We were supposed to start my tail-dragger checkout on Monday, but that didn’t happen. I got in, and having forgot to check the weather, saw that there were only about four planes signed out, and it was ten am already. The sky was clear blue, but the wind was crazy strong and gusting. More than the Citabria can handle – they just don’t take that plane out in these kind of winds.

I am intending to go after my commercial license though, and I am going to have to learn to deal with this kind of wind. So we took a 172 out for more circuit practice. First couple of landings were laughable. Holy cow, that wind, and a crosswind at that too. I’ve never made a habit of keeping track of how many landings I do, but I think we did seven or eight. By the end, I was doing much better. And consistently better. It’s weird to remember, this is the same weather she took me up in a few months ago, just for the experience, and what was going through my mind that day was how are we ever going to get this thing on the ground again without being smashed into the runway? And now I’m handling it myself. It’s kind of cool, especially knowing this is one of the most challenging things I’ll have to learn.

But hopefully things will calm down for Wednesday evening when I take another passenger out for a ride.

P.S.: I’m pretty sure I’ve got comments fixed on the last two posts too, if anyone had meant to comment. I had figured my guest post would get lots of comments, and was all confused, wondering why no one was commenting. My fault, I ticked something trying to do something else, and that auto-ticked a box on another page that didn’t auto-untick when I unticked the first thing.

Music and Writing

Posted by Lindsay Kitson on

On one of my forums, the other day, someone posted an open question – if your novel were a particular genre by a particular musical artist, what one would it be?

My answer:

“The Eyelet Dove would be industrial/electronic, played by abney park.

But most of my characters have theme songs too:
Michel, the badass ace pilot – Indestructible by Disturbed
Roland, admiral of the air, and Michel’s father – Road to Freedom by Chris De Burgh
Maddie, the poor street orphan – Downtrodden by Abney park
Etienne, the leader of the people’s revolt – Letters Between a Little Boy And Himself As An Adult by Abney Park
Simone, the brothel madame and former prostitute – Natasha Dance by Chris De Burgh
Claire, a young woman fighting her way into a man’s role in the air corps- The Grudge by Tool

The song for the climax though, is Farewell, by Apocalyptica.

And yes, the playlists on my Ipod are organized and titled by titles of works in progress and character names….”

I, like many other writers, get pretty into the music I listen to. I can’t write with the wrong music in the background, but silence is ok, too. I know people who can’t listen to songs with lyrics while writing because they start to transcribe the lyrics without thinking.

When I was younger, I used to invent stories to go with whatever songs I was listening to, if they weren’t songs that already told a story (those have always been my favourite.) Even now, I can’t listen to music while I’m at my day job, because I get to into the music and distracted.

Everyone’s different, though.