Do you listen to music while you write? When I want to
inspire myself to sit down and write, I mentally channel the soundtrack to “Rocky”
or the typewriter keys clacking of the “Murder She Wrote” theme song. But
unlike many writers, I cannot have any distraction while in the act of writing.
For me, it’s the sounds of silence in the library or at the dining room table.
I do understand how a good soundtrack can set the mood for a
story, how a piece of music can immediately strike emotional chords that can
jumpstart a scene. I just can’t have the music playing while I write.
It is fascinating to me that other writers do listen while
they write and I enjoy seeing what other writers use for playlists. When I did
a Google search on this topic, I discovered that many writers create specific
playlists for their books. The NaNoWriMo website even has a section where
writers help each other construct playlists. There are playlists for “a female
ex-assassin”; songs for “cutesy, happy” scenes; and “beautiful music for deeply
powerful, inspirational” scenes. This is where I discovered my new obsession, a
group called Two Steps From Hell. They do instrumental music for TV and movie
trailers. The word epic is not epic enough for what they do. Their music not
only inspires me to clean my kitchen floor, it makes me want to clean my
kitchen floor while battling were-snakes with the hammer of Thor. One commenter
described perfectly their song “El Dorado”: “This song shall be played when my
wife has our baby and he will be borneth a Dragon!”
Many writers claim that writing to a soundtrack increases
their creativity and output. In general, I use music in two ways: to ground
myself in a time period or in a character’s, er, character.
In one WIP, my MC is a former model, a woman of
larger-than-life personality, beauty, and charisma. Her life is over the top. Drama
follows her. Her soundtrack is Big '80s all the way. The power ballads of
Heart, Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, and Pat Benatar ground me in her
personality faster than pages of character development.
When I wrote my short story, “Disco Donna,” I listened to
the music of the seventies, the time period of Donna herself, especially the
soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever.
The lyrics helped me get into the mindset of a young woman of that time plus
gave me a handle on the way people of that era spoke and sang.
For my new work in progress, my MC Allegra Larkin is a dancer
in her twenties. She’s just starting out in life. Her world is one of artifice,
imagination, and beauty built on a foundation of hard, grinding physical
effort. So she’s tough, though you wouldn’t think it when you look at her. Listening
to classical ballet music like Swan Lake
or The Firebird gets me in touch with
her otherworldly occupation.
Do you listen to music while you write? Do you have a
playlist?
