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 🙂