When I start a new project I rarely have all the details worked out. I know how it will end, and I know a few things that mus happen along the way, but I don’t know the details. What is very vivid to me as I set out, though, is the flavor of the project. Not anything near as substantial as a theme, but I know how the story feels. Sad, funny, quirky, dark… I can almost taste it, if that makes sense.
And then… I get lost. There are all these words tumbling about, all these random ideas pulling at me… It’s so easy to get entangled and lose what the story was originally supposed to be like – the initial vision, if I may be so presumptuous (and frankly, who’s going to stop me?).
One thing I do to keep this from happening is make playlists. Now, if you knew me well, you would not be surprised. Usually, it’s my reaction to a lot of things (fall in love? playlist. Major trauma? playlist. Wednesday morning 8 am? playlist – you get the picture), but it’s especially useful in my writing.
Now, I rarely listen to the lists when I write – I usually need silence for that. No, they’re for my plotting sessions. See, when I get stuck, I put on a pair of comfy shoes, put the playlist on repeat and take a really long walk. And that, my friends, is when the magic happens. The music helps me to just see things about the story and my characters that, somewhere, deep down, I already know only I can’t seem to get them to surface on my own. Those are the times when I fall in love with the story all over again.
So playlists are a very important part of my writing. Heck, I’ve had entire plots come to me through one single song. Not so this time, though. This story came to me first and then I tried to find songs that would fit the various parts of it. The playlist contains, among others, Paint It Black by the Stones, Fuck the People by the Kills and Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. It’s mostly pretty dark and destructive and decadent. But there is this one, very different, song I stumbled over by mistake that has sort of grown to become a very important part of the story. It was funny, because I just happened to put it by chance, and suddenly things I’d been pondering just shuffled into place. Just like magic.
And that is why I love my playlists.
While We Were Dreaming – the Pink Mountaintops
(I hope you like it as much as I do – this band doesn’t get nearly enough recognition)
OK, so I suppose While We Were Dreaming is also dark and all that. Oops. It’s that kind of story, see. But it *is* beautiful and strangely hopeful, albeit in a dark-ish way.
Cool song, Felicia. I’ve never heard the group before but now I’m going to have to check them out.
Your process sounds interesting and I’m glad it works for you. How many songs are usually in your playlists? How long does it take you to find them?
I thought everyone did this! I love when I come across writers who post the playlist for their finished book – for example Victoria Dahl does that http://victoria-dahl.livejournal.com/7697.html
I usually have about 15 songs on my lists, but I’ve had fewer (and more). They tend to be works in progress, so they keep shifting, but usually I fiddle with them to and fro for the first weeks of writing – when I do the plotting and come up with the characters. Sometimes I make lists for certain moods, like a ‘love song list’ or a ‘fight song list’, but mostly they all go in one and the same ‘project list’.
I’ve been making play lists for my books for years. When I wrote historical romance, I listened to a lot of classical music. Now that I write paranormal romance, the stuff on my play list is much dark. I also have seperate playlist for fight scenes and love scenes.
I knew I wasn’t the only one!
Do you use them for writing or more like I do, for inspiration?
I play a lot of classic music when I write. Oh, and I love Zoe Keating – she gets lots of air time (sort of timeless music, that). But my lists are like the soundtrack for Marie Antoinette; anything that *feels* right despite being anachronisms.
So here’s my question about playlists. Where do you get the music from and are there copyright issues? I love to be inspired by music but I’m not a tech geek so I have my kids put stuff on my ipod but I insist they buy it, which means you have to know the song before you shell out cash. I just don’t understand this. Let’s say I listen to the youtube video you’ve posted. Is the band okay with this? I also worry about picking up viruses from music. Yes, I am a worrier.
For me, personally, it works like this: I have a ridiculously large record collection that I have amassed over the years. Huge. Like a 100 gig in digital terms. And I never download… Yeah, that’s a small fortune that has kept label executives in suits and guitar heroes in tequila and cocaine for years. Whoo-hoo!
But right now I mostly use this brilliant streaming service (that means, you never get any files, you have to online to listen to it) that is completely legal but unfortunately not available in the US (yet) called Spotify – read about it here. It’s currently limited to the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Spain but they hope to expand. It’s perfectly legal and they have agreements with all major labels (all the music has been provided by the labels), plus they offer a sound quality way beyond an mp3-file. And it works on your iPhone (if you have a nice data plan). It makes discovering new music very, very easy (I still buy the music from bands I like to support, but I’m more picky now). The best part is that you can share your playlists simply by sending a link to someone. It’s revolutionized the mixtape making for me.
But if you don’t have access to that service or enough music to last you from here to Christmas? Well, once you know what you want on your playlist, it’s not a big hassle to buy the music from iTunes or Amazon (where you can buy single tracks) but the problem would be discovering the music. Bands and labels know this, so they do (to varying degrees) like to make it easier for you – just like posting excerpts from novels make people buy books, letting them hear the music helps to get them to buy music. There’s MySpace of course, and YouTube. Those are safe options – streaming and not downloading means little chance of viruses and you can find tons of stuff on YouTube that’s been uploaded legally. If it worries you, just check who the account that uploaded the song belongs to (like Interscope has their own channel, and Universal… Those are reliable). This seemed to be uploaded by the band’s record label. Also, there’s last.fm which keeps tracks of what you play on your computer and makes suggestions for you and allow you to listen to your friends’ music (also legal). Beyond that, it’s word of mouth (I know some music crazed people and musicians), music blogs (I used to religiously follow Pitchfork just so I could snark them and call them hipster idiots, but I outgrew that, lol), clicking on friends of bands I like on MySpace… And then if you like a song, you can buy it. For 99 cents or similar.
Oh, and just in case anyone missed the reference in the title – it alludes to the band Soundtrack of Our Lives (which can be found at http://www.myspace.com/officialtsool ). Because I’m a geek that way.