Letters For Scarlet – The Mixtape
Julie C. Gardner and I bonded online over our shared love of dogs, music, and reading. We’re also both moms of college freshman and, though we’ve never met IRL, provided moral support to another in the weeks leading up to our eldest baby birds flying away last fall. I’m thrilled to bring you a playlist Julie put together while writing her debut novel, LETTERS FOR SCARLET: A NOVEL…and a giveaway of the book at the end of the post.
Letters for Scarlett – The Mixtape
by Julie C. Gardner
Once upon a time, I wrote this in my diary: I want to be a teacher like my dad and an author like Judy Blume.
(I’m certain there were exclamation points. I was ten. I felt things deeply.)
Being Judy Blume proved impractical, so I taught high school English. For 16 years I urged my students to soak up words. Find their own voices. Pursue their dreams.
Go. Get that thing tugging your heart. What are you waiting for?
It was a good question.
Eager for inspiration, thirsty to learn, I read and read (and read). Books. Interviews with authors. I will be you someday.
Then one of them said something like this:
“I want my characters to do one thing, but they keep misbehaving.”
What a load of horseshit, I thought. How pretentious. YOU’RE THE WRITER! IT’S NOT MAGIC! MAKE THEM BEHAVE!
(In my head I screamed this in all-caps. I was Owen Meany. I felt things deeply.)
Then came my leave of absence and the first draft of a novel.
Picture me living my dream! Picture me eating my words!
Letters for Scarlet grew from the seed of a story. Ex-best friends—now 28 years old—receive letters they wrote to themselves a decade earlier. In the interim tragedy would strike. Past conflicts haunt their present. This is all I knew when I started. Surely the rest would come.
My fingers tapped the keyboard and questions clogged my brain.
What tore Corie and Scarlet apart?
How did this alter their future?
Where would these (mystery) repercussions lead?
Picture me heading in one direction…Picture them veering off path…
These characters aren’t behaving. Now what?
Seriously.
NOW WHAT?
I turned to a specific playlist over and over (and over) of songs released during the years Corie, Scarlet, and Tucker would’ve been friends. Urgent rhythms. Angst-filled lyrics. I inhabited the heads of my former students. Then I imagined them ten years older.
How had they changed? What moved them now? Which conflicts caused the deepest wounds?
Each time I encountered a sticky plot problem, or a character’s progress ground to a halt,
I’d pop in my headphones and run. For miles and miles (and miles). The familiar tunes were hypnotic. Every tangled thread unraveled. Answers to questions. Pieces of puzzles.
Like magic, they came to me.
Of course this is what happened to Scarlet. That’s exactly what Corie would do.
The story was supposed to go this way. Always.
Why didn’t I see it before?
I know. This sounds like horseshit. And maybe I’m pretentious. Nevertheless. I had no idea where Corie and Scarlet would end up when I met them. Their journey evolved one step at a time. One page at a time. One note at a time.
So.
I owe that author an apology and probably a thank you. From her I learned something priceless: it’s never too late to believe in magic.
It’s also never too late to chase your dream. (I learned that on my own.)
Go. Get that thing tugging your heart. Make a playlist while you’re at it.
The End.
My Letters for Scarlet Playlist. (Original. Unedited. Potentially embarrassing. And yet.)
Dashboard Confessional – Hands Down – 2002
Blink 182 – Feeling This – 2003
Muse – Time is Running Out – 2003
Snow Patrol – Run – 2003
AFI – Silver and Cold – 2003
Papa Roach – Scars – 2004
Jimmy Eat World – Pain – 2004
The Killers – Somebody Told Me – 2005
Coldplay – Fix You – 2005
My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade – 2006
Brandi Carlisle – The Story – 2007
***
Want to read the book that inspired the playlist? Julie is giving away a copy of LETTERS FOR SCARLET to a lucky Midlife Mixtape reader! To enter for your chance to win, leave a comment below…we’ll use Random.org to select a winner on Friday, November 25 at 5 pm PST!
Julie C. Gardner is a former English teacher and current novelist. She lives in Southern California with one husband, two kids, and three dogs. At home she’s always outnumbered, so she makes up characters who will take her side. Her debut novel, Letters for Scarlet, was released by Velvet Morning Press in April, 2016. You can find out more about Julie by visiting her website, her Facebook Author Page, Twitter, and Instagram.
CommentsThanks for having me here at the Mixtape, Nancy. You are ... by Julie GardnerRelated StoriesUp and At ‘EmA Walk Through My BubbleTurn Down the Music and Read: Born To Run
