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by Staci Stallings

Okay, so you might not know this as a reader.  It’s one of those first obstacles most writers have. It goes something like this:

“There’s this song I want to use in my book.  It’s a really popular song, and it will fit really well with this story. So, what do I need to do to get permission to use it?”

The short answer is:  Good luck.

Because of copyright laws and the way things are now, it is very difficult to get permission to use songs (or practically speaking anything else) in a book.  What this effectively means is that when you write a novel that has songs in it, the easiest thing to do is write original songs yourself.

Now, I say “easiest” but I do not mean that is easy at all.  It is NOT.

Ask me how I know.

The current series I’m working on features a set of young people who have formed a band. One of them writes the songs they sing. (Do you see where this is going?) Because I literally can’t have them cover any songs and actually write out the lyrics… There is one song they “sing” that is a cover, but all I did was give the reader the song title. Then I had to hope that the reader both knows the song and can pick it out in their head as the characters are singing it because I can’t give you any lyrics.

Anyway… What all of this basically means is, I’ve gotten to write a LOT of music for this series.  Add to the challenge of writing the music trying to convey how it is sung to my readers. Add to THAT challenge that this talented group of musicians never does the same song the same way twice.  So one time one of them will do the melody and one the harmonies and echoes, and the next time that’s flipped completely.

AND… it’s important who sings which line and how!  UGH.

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So, here’s just a snippet of my current challenge (bit of backstory on this piece:  Paige went with Greg at one point, but now she’s going with Nelson).  See what you think…

Melting back and down into the guitar strings, Nelson let himself fall into just making the most of the intertwining of the melody he knew like his own heartbeat.

“Hopeless,” Greg sang, leaning to the microphone by the keyboard. “Hopelessly devoted… to you. This is my anthem. This is my song. This will be my melody my whole life long.”

“You’re my fascination,” Paige joined in.

“My every temptation,” Greg sang with a timid smile at her, which she returned.

“You’re my solid ground.”

“My bluest sky.”

“My peace of mind.”

“My wings to fly,” Greg sang, and it was as if the longer they went, the less awkward it became between them. “And I’m hopeless…”

Wes and Nelson added the harmonies. “Hopeless.”

“Hopelessly devoted,” Paige sang, and Nelson couldn’t help but feel how truly beautiful her voice was. It was softer than Taylor’s, breathier and far less confident. Of course, he had sung Only Together and even a couple of other songs with Paige, but honestly, he’d never really thought of her doing more than filling in a few parts here and there. Now, seeing her like this, stepping so far out of her comfort zone, singing with Greg, hearing how her voice blended in with his so nicely, Nelson wondered why he’d never made it a point to have her sing with them before.

“To you,” Greg sang.

“And I’m hopeless…” she sang back to him.

“Hopeless,” Nelson sang the harmony of the repeat with Wes as he smiled and nodded at the feeling that he could get used to this. His song, her voice melding with theirs in raw perfection in real life. It was a dream he’d never thought to dream before.

“Hopelessly devoted,” she sang before Greg joined her, “To you.”

What do you think? Did I pull it off so that you can “hear” the song, how it’s sung and who is singing it, and get the thoughts and feelings behind it?

Welcome to one small piece of my current greatest challenge ever!

About the Author:

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.

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by: Staci Stallings

I’m elbow-deep in The Imagination Series—writing Book 8 now.  Book 7 is on preorder.  Book 6 just released. So I’ve been thinking a lot about superpowers.

In the series, there are six main-ish characters. They are friends from high school. Each one has a superpower, and the idea of the series is how they each learn to use the gifts and talents that God gave them–their individual superpowers.

Now, by “superpower,” I don’t mean flying or running fast or being able to flip cars over for fun. What I mean is more mundane “powers” like writing songs and poetry, fixing up cars and doing spreadsheets. I think too many of us don’t give full credence to the things we can do that are truly special.

Sure, other people might be able to do them too. Some people might even be better at “our” thing than we are.  But I think it’s important to recognize and support each other’s best qualities. To champion them. To cheer them. To encourage them.

So it’s interesting to me that what I thought the main idea of The Imagination Series would be—that we should work to use our superpower has really taken a backseat to the theme of learning to support and encourage each other’s superpowers.

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Recently through a crazy turn of events, my niece came to live with us as she started to teach at my son’s school. She’s not teaching any of his classes, but she has some students who are in his class. When she comes home, we often talk about how things are going at the school, things we’ve noticed, or things that we see that need to be fixed. So every day we are discussing how to do the education system better. We also talk about how we can best encourage others and how too often students who have real superpowers are not encouraged in what makes them most special and so they lose that or never develop it.

Add to this that my middle daughter is now a senior in college. She is taking Sports and Exercise Science, which is heavily physical-oriented. She’s done Anatomy & Physiology I and II, Kinesiology and now Bio-Mechanics.  She will come to study a couple of times a week, and she will talk forever about getting adequate sleep or how to do an effective stretch or how to use nutrition to gain optimal health.

Then we have her boyfriend who is also in college learning music production. So he’ll be here playing beats on the midi-board and bending sound in crazy ways.

Of course, my son is the light show king, so he’s always doing some insane project like cutting 300 milk jugs and putting lights in them or reconfiguring Falcon boards to run sets of pixel lights that he’s designing.

You probably already have guessed that one of my superpowers is writing, and my husband does carpentry.

The other day my niece, who is also an artist, said, “I’ve decided I want to live in a house with geniuses. Not necessarily smart people like book smart, but people who are being creative and working together to help each other become even better at what they are good at.”

I was telling my daughter’s boyfriend about that one night, and he said, “That is so cool because that’s what your house is. Everybody comes and works on their stuff and we can go, ‘Hey, listen to this.’ Or ‘what do you think of this’ or ‘how would you say this,’ and we all are interested in what the other ones are doing.”  Then he said, “Hey, you should write a book about that, about how to do that. You could call it…. ‘Become Me.’”  HAHAHHAH!  That’s when I told him the first book in this series is literally called “Becoming Me”!

He was floored.  I thought it was funny.

Maybe life really does mirror art, or is it art mirroring life?

So I’m curious. What is your superpower?  What things do you do really well?  What do you love to do so much that you could just get lost in doing it for hours?

I’m making a list for my life class, and I’d love to include your superpower on it too! Please feel free to share and continue the conversation…

About the Author:

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.