By: Joelle

Joelle — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 18:17:35 +0000

I have always picked music to listen to before I start writing that matches my book, but then turned it off once I began to write. Recently I’ve started listening to music while I write. It came about kind of accidentally though. My character is a singer and guitar player and she plays traditional country music (think Johny Cash, Patsy Cline, etc.). I wanted to write about a specific song so I found Patsy singing it on youtube and had a listen. And before it was over, I went back to writing with it still playing. Youtube has that usually annoying feature of playing the next video it thinks you want to see automatically (unless you remember to turn off the switch) and what happened was after that Patsy video played, another one started, and then another, and after a while, it played a Loretta Lynn video, and after a few of those, Johnny Cash. So it was automatically working its way through the songs and performers of the era I was writing about and I just left it playing low in the background. I find it really does help set the mood as I write. And sometimes something in a song will work its way into my book.

Comments on: Mixing Music and Writing

By: Joelle