Mozart Symphonies Help Me Kill
I’ve killed more people, in more creative ways, while listening to Mozart than any other music.
You might think that Heartless Bastards or Van Halen might produce a better body count.
But no.
There’s something about the mathematical precision of Mozart — especially the symphonies — that sync with my brain waves and inspire creativity of all sorts.
And that includes making sure that the high body count expected from a thriller is executed in the most creatively entertaining manner possible.
Somehow, Mozart allows me to “be” in a scene, to see, feel, smell, hear … experience what is happening. Not just for ending a character’s life, but for bringing them to life in electrons and on paper.
Mozart allows this weird recursive sense that I am personally present in a scene that exists only inside my head. And further, that I am inside the head of a character who exists only inside my head. I call this “the zone.”
Of course, I bring a lot to the zone: research and as much hands-on experience as possible including the act of using as many of the firearms and other ordnance I use in the book.
For both Perfect Killer and Die By Wire, I fired thousands of rounds of 30.06 ammunition with my Smith & Wesson model 1500 at a local range … up to 300 yards … to get a solid feel for the scope, the reticle, the “zero” of the rifle, the effects of the loads (from 140 to 220 grain). And for Die By Wire, I shot a Barrett Model 99 .50-caliber rifle because I needed to know how that felt. (More about all my books in all formats at http://lewisperdue.com/lewbooks.shtml.)
Know how it felt.I bring that into the zone. That, does have limits. I haven’t fired light anti-tank weapons, set and detonated C-4 charges or killed anyone. Still, I have interviewed people who have. But that research comes into the Mozart zone with me.
Once I get into that zone, everything else — including time — disappears. I can write for an hour and a half and come out of the zone wondering where the time went. Creating the environment for this means eliminating distractions. I write fiction in an 8×10-foot room with no windows, no internet connection and nothing around me but the book I am working on. It becomes the zone.
I work on a mid-1995 Dell Pentium I running Window’s 98. And I never, EVER do anything at all — NOTHING — in that space but write fiction. Anything else pollutes the zone.
Non-fiction is a completely different mind-set. I have a larger space filled with files, notes, high-speed broadband. I listen to Slacker radio alternative channel while writing. It’s a different zone: Heartless Bastards work here. So do Green Day, First Aid Kit, Mumford & Sons, MGMT, Train, Superchunk and many more.
I don’t understand why. But it works. So I do it. And, so far, I’ve never killer anyone to the songs of The Killers.
Irony works wonders.
