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)