7 Days With Shirley Jump - Day 5, Rocking with Hootie

Professional writers don't wait for their "muse" to show up before they sit down at the keyboard everyday. Neither can we as busy parents who are trying to reach a writing goal!

So what do we do? In case you don't know, writers have an acronym: BIC. It stands for Butt In Chair. And it means we write when we don't feel like it.

But so much of fiction - especially romance - is about feeling. Shirley Jump tells us how she switches gears from harried mom to hopeless romantic:

5. Do you ever find yourself in the wrong mood for a scene? (For instance, you need to write funny when you’re steaming mad about something.) If so, how do you handle that?

Oh, all the time! I have kids, LOL. Two dogs, a cat, a husband. Inevitably, someone has frustrated or annoyed me, LOL. But I turn on my iTunes, get the song for that book (most of my books have a song associated with them, or a few songs that I associate with them) and get back in the mood. That really helps a lot.

5b. Would you be willing to share a few of the soundtracks for your books? (What was the soundtrack for Really Something?)

For "The Dating Game," it was Hootie and the Blowfish's Greatest Hits. For Miracle on Christmas Eve, it was Michael Bublé's "Let it Snow." For Really Something, it was Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway." I don't always remember the soundtrack to every book (writing 8 in a year will do that to you, LOL) but will often pull out my favorite artists, like Hootie, to get myself rocking :-)

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