
With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion!
Many writers listen to music while they write, or at least prime their creativity with a few choice albums. Sometimes these musical choices coincide with the soundtrack they imagine for the film adaptation of their novel.
What’s the soundtrack to your work in progress?
While I was writing my new middle grade novel, I listened a lot to V by Föllakzoid. What about you?
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Art: Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci by Adolph von Menzel
I love this kind of question. The thing I’m playing around with is a soup (stew, maybe?) of Robyn, Rhett Miller, Taylor Swift, and old Juliana Hatfield.
Lisa Gerrard. Snow Patrol. Disturbed. 5FDP.
The soundtrack of my WIP is quite different than the playlist I listen to while writing it. The soundtrack has lots of big band swing, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, and Etta James. But I can’t listen to music with vocals when I write. My writing playlist is heavy on Max Richter and Hans Zimmer.
NF
I agree Can’t listen to lyrics and create, especially dialogue, at the same time. But during breaks, ok.
Since I’m only writing memoir these days, most of it from the mid sixties to late seventies, that’s the era I listen to, which I feel is the greatest era for popular music ever. But of course I’m biased.
I have so many! Practically every story gets its own playlist. Some follow songs mentioned in the wip, others are vibes for me as I write :p
Ta da! https://www.youtube.com/c/DenizBevan
Like Cate and Neil, I can’t write and listen to music with lyrics. And like Nathan (mentioned in earlier post), much of the story has come to me while running on a treadmill at the gym. It’s amazing how much creativity flows when I’m simply trying not to pass out while working out. Ha! Scenes play out in my head and I’ll write them down later and flesh them out. The soundtrack to my WIP is Shadows of the Night (always on my workout playlist) by Pat Benatar, but I often imagine it in instrumental form, slowed down a bit as if it were a motion picture score.
I’m also one of those writers who can’t concentrate when there’s music playing, especially music I love. I get distracted and put off my story. However, I do use songs to give me inspiration for my novels. The one I’m writing now was inspired by two songs, “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen, and “Dancy’s Dream” by Restless Heart. I hear songs as stories… and thankfully, the songs tell the stories to me.
Score to Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves, The Hu Band, Heilung, and whatever else goes with whatever scenes we’re working on (co-writing this book) at any given time. There are good compilations for ‘writing sprints’ on YouTube and we listen to those as well.
A friend sent me your blog post because it made him think of my book-related songlist.
Ten years ago when I was writing A More Beautiful Question—or, more accurately, when I was procrastinating from writing the book, I began compiling a list of songs that have questions in the title AND that I like (for the most part). I noodled with this soundtrack for months, turned it into a Spotify playlist, then posted the annotated list on my blog. Four years later, I once again turned to this playlist while researching and writing a follow-up book, The Book of Beautiful Questions. That fun music list helped get my day going.
Making the playlist might have been the smartest dumb marketing thing I did for A More Beautiful Question, which never stopped selling and last month had its 10th-anniversary second edition published by Bloomsbury. I use the term “marketing” because, per my Google analytics, over the years about 1 million folks around the world searching for “songs with questions” have found my playlist—making it one of the top three visited pages on my website. https://amorebeautifulquestion.com/50-question-songs/ Through reader contributions, the original list has now doubled in size.
This question soundtrack does not include the many, many songs that may not have a question title but do feature questions prominently in the lyrics. Maybe that’ll be a diversionary side project for me while writing a future work in progress.
Funny enough, after I read your post, a beta reader sent me a song that she thought one of my characters would listen to. I added it to the playlist I created for my WIP, and I’m taking this as a sign that I should share the playlist here. Enjoy! https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/love-juke/pl.u-kv9lbZ5u7LLlgB
Oh man, I thought I was the only one with a film adaptation playlist for the memoir I haven’t finished yet. The shame! Leave it to the good ole-fashioned commentariat to drum up a community of folks who can relate. Anywho, here’s a slice of the soundtrack to my memoir about trying to a survive terminal lung cancer diagnosis at age 37–the result of witnessing 9/11 in New York. Fun topic!
Pressure, Billy Joel
Reaper, Sia
Heart-Shaped Box, Nirvana
We Trying To Stay Alive, Wyclef Jean
Goodbye Stranger, Supertramp
My Iron Lung, Radiohead