Greetings Cocoa:
I'm not 100% certain this is what you are searching for and I wanted
to post my findings for you anyway. Should this be on target, please
let me know and I'll post my findings as an answer and do additional
searches in this direction.
From http://www.sarabandebooks.org/sarabande/Authors/Kristin%20Herbert/998340953337/readers_guide/creative_writing.html
In his essay "The Music of Prose," William Gass writes: "The producers
of prose do not play scales or improve their skills by repeating
passages of De Quincey or Sir Thomas Browne, although that might be a
good idea." Joan Didion typed out Hemingway's stories to see how they
worked; Somerset Maugham copied out a page of Jonathan Swift each day;
Eudora Welty transcribed pages from the King James Bible. Pull out a
book you admire and copy out a scene that strikes you as powerful. Try
writing a scene of description or your own in the same manner. Try
writing it in the styles of several different authors. Write it in the
style of a writer you despise.
"Listen to music. Find a piece of music that evokes the mood of a
scene you wish to write, or are trying to write. Is it rock? Folk?
Jazz? Rap? See what it inspires in you. If you tend to write short,
declarative sentences, see how Bach's Cello Suites affect your prose.
If you write long, discursive pieces, listen to punk rock for fifteen
minutes, then try to write.
"If you would like to learn about improvising, listen closely to the
jazz masters; decide how that music succeeds. If you want to
understand rhythm, tone, theme, circularity—or learn to play with
variations on a theme—listen to a work of complex classical music
(Beethoven's or Mozart's symphonies; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.
3)."
*************
From an interview with writer John Shirley from on September 1998
[Original interview and English translation by Jan Dominik
Kucharzewski ]
http://www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/jsinterscreem.html
SCREEM: Your prose is often compared to modern rock music. What do you
think of comparison? And how conscious is your use of a certain
musical language in your fiction?
SHIRLEY: I used to use it a little bit consciously but mostly it was
something that issued from me like sparks of electricity from a Van
der Graff generator: generated from within. I hear music in prose; I
hear prose in music. Storytelling was all originally chanted, millenia
ago, and that bardic presence is still there in it. It's possible --
for my taste at least - to go too far in infusing poetry and
musicality in storytelling, as then one loses lucidity. Lucidity
penetrates to the inner being of the reader, and that's where an
artist aims to go.
“The Music of Prose.” Antaeus 71/72 (Autumn 1993): 10-21
*************
Best regards,
journalist-ga
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