My friend Shelby told me about a song she thinks would be perfect for my WIP, Better Than This, because, you know, our WIPS have to have playlists, right? When we see it in our head, it’s like a movie and every movie (every good movie) comes with an amazing soundtrack. I think I’ve subconsciously had songs that I linked back to my works. In the old days *cough a couple years ago cough* I would make CDs with songs that inspired me to write the books. Actually, I’d have Batman do it because he could ‘work’ ITunes better than me (his words. I really I just think he enjoyed doing it.) But he’d make me the playlist and I’d listen to it on the way to work and home. Since Pandora is now a thing, I don’t have to make CDs anymore. I just plug in whatever one song is most inspiring and let the algorithms do the rest. And actually… it’s worked out pretty well.
Back when I started writing BTT in 2016, I knew there was a musician involved, but I had no idea it swayed more toward the SKA/Punk genre. I had all kind of rock musicians playing and somehow (probably by the Grace of God) Kodaline’s All I Want came on and I thought—this is it. This is *so* the number one song on my playlist. It actually made me realize something pretty significant about my WIP, which opened the door to how the rest of the story (and books) would unfold. Yeah. This one song. This one FREAKING AMAZING SONG basically wrote the series. Sure, I’m ‘technically’ writing it, but bravo to Kodaline for putting out something that set a series of events into place. Art influencing art influencing art. Blows my mind sometimes.
If you haven’t heard the song, I *highly* recommend doing so. It’s beautiful. And kind of makes me cry because it’s so sad and sweet. Not giving away anything about BTT here (unless you want to BETA read and then by all means, let me know!) but Kodaline’s song is seriously a driving force behind what happens to Autumn and Alex. Like, it’d be a totally different story if Pandora (AKA God) hadn’t played that one song to me. Geez… what a life huh? What a freaking miracle this life is.
What about you? Do you make playlists/listen to a certain channel to be inspired? Has any one song impacted a WIP? Tell me because I love hearing stuff like this 🙂
I don’t so playlists or listen to songs while I write — I get distracted easily. LOL
I love how we’re all so different in our process!
It is a nice song, and I can definitely see how it relates to your story. 🙂
I can’t listen to music while writing, but I do make playlist for my books. I’m particular about the singer’s voice, lyrics, and overall feel of the song. A lot of my playlists are all over the place, because different songs match different characters, but I order them based on how the book plays out. So there’s a spunky song, followed by an angry one, followed by a mellow one, and so on. Mostly I keep my playlists on my computer, but every once in a while I’ll go out to Spotify and update my lists there. Here is my current book playlist.
Okay, I just looked (and listened a bit) to your play list and we share a few of the same songs! HA! I love it!! Yeah, when I used to make CDs, there would be all kind of songs representing all the different emotions and characters. I guess I could use Spotify and create new playlists!
I don’t make playlists for books, but for every book I write, I have a specific CD that I listen to while writing it. Something about listening to the same thing every day while I write helps keep things… I don’t know, constant about the book. Also, the length of a CD makes for a good writing session length for me.
That is a good song! I used to do fancy playlists too, now I tend to just turn on slacker or youtube.