music – Aspiring

NaNoWriMo Playlist 2014

Continuing preparations for NaNoWriMo 2014 with the perennial playlist feature.

At least once a year I write a playlist to write to during NaNoWroMo, and there’s a whole logic around my choices which amounts to a few key rules:

Music that matches my story, (Starfuckers, Inc just doesn’t put you in the right place for a tender love scene)
Has reasonable pacing, (I will write in time to the music, that can have interesting effects on my writing),
Is not distracting, (if you have to stop and pay attention to the music in the background that’s bad, it’s a loss of momentum)

Now this year I had this whole plan around have three playlists, so I could better match the music that I’m listening to to the parts of the story I’m writing. One of the playlists would be entirely general music, the other softer more sad or romance inclined, and the last one would be frenetic and angry and gory to inspire a bit of carnage in my writing.

It’s a really good plan, however, I’ve also chosen to change my cloud music provider. Previously I’d been using Amazon music, (£22 a year), and have had no real regrets, especially since their desktop player really took off – but there’s no streaming to ChromeCast, and while the tracks themselves can be picked up by other apps, the playlists can’t.

So I’ve settled on Google Play Music, which confused the hell out of me because I thought it was £10 a month, (£120 a year!), but that’s just if you want a more Spotify like service. I don’t, I have lots of music, of which I add to occasionally, Google will let me upload up to 25,000 tracks gratis. And I can do all the fun stuff like stream through ChromeCast, and stuff.

I did consider going back to Spotify, but I prefer the limited ownership that mp3 has, compared with no ownership offered by streaming only services.

Unfortunately, as Amazon Music playlists aren’t sharable, I’ve had to spend time recreating my major playlists, and rather than spending ages recreating three more, I’ve just done one playlist for NaNoWriMo 2014. I’ll have to wait until my next project to play around with the multiple playlists idea, and single playlists have always worked well enough in the past.

Beneath the cut is this year’s playlist, it’s not in any particular order as I’ll keep skipping the music as I write.

NaNoWriMo 2014 Playlist Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Playlist 2014”

Writing Playlist Summer 2013

Well this is awkward, I wanted to post about my new writing playlist. In the past, I used Spotify and it wasn’t too bad export the list to make it postable, (words not the music itself – though sharing that on Spotify was easy too if someone had Spotify). Now I’ve switched to Amazon Cloud Player – all my tracks stored within easy reach of my phone and my laptop without the chaos of thousands of MP3’s loitering, in many cases with duplicates of duplicates.

However, Amazon don’t make it particularly easy to export the text of a playlist – so to show you mine it has to be a cut and paste job via Excel – took two copies and pastes to get the whole thing out. This is how dedicated I am to sharing.

This is actually my longest list thus far, and it’s just under half what it started off as. However I’m happy with it.

Music is, and always has been important to my writing process, for three reasons:

It gaves me pacing and rhythm
It focuses the mind, and it can distract the mind from over focusing
It’s inspirational

For me to add it to a writing playlist it usually has to conform to three out of these four criteria:

It requires no effort to ignore
It doesn’t jar with the worlds I’m trying to create
It fits with world’s I’m trying to create
It eggs me on, exercise music for the brain

Of course there are always exceptions, and it’s entirely subjective, which it’s my list, and probably in it’s entirety only works for me. However, I share to compare and discuss, so feel free to comment with any suggestions.

My playist for Writing, Summer 2013

Continue reading “Writing Playlist Summer 2013”

Writing Music Playlist Summer 2010

So, yes writing with music really does help me. Of course it has to be the right music, it can’t be too exciting, or too catchy, and anything below three and a half minutes should be considered carefully – if the songs are changing too much you’ll pay more attention to the change. Or I would anyway, but I am easily distrac…

Ooooh Diet Coke, thanks.

Where was I? Oh yes, I’m easily distracted.

I’m a big fan of writing while listening to music, with the right music it can keep me going, and focused on the job. It was so effective last night I didn’t stop writing until 4am, which was nice. Fortunately I’m on a week off, (yes, I know I had one of those this time last month as well, my colleague likes to tell me that I’ve got “More holidays than Judith Chalmers”), so I’m free to write at all the odd hours. Its quite liberating waking up at 2pm, and writing until 4am – or whatever other time feels right.

Ooooh Diet Coke, thanks.

Where was I? Oh yes, I’m easily distracted. Back last year, I had planned to do monthly ten song playlists – but I got distracted, I also got writers block, so it never really happened. What I’ve done this time, now I’m writing again, is to make a longer playlist, and call it a seasonal writing playlist.

I’ve got quite a mix of music in my summer version, it’s mostly easy listening, rock, and alternative, with a touch of pop – it works well as background music, while still giving pace to help put fire into the writing process.

If you other suggestions for a playlist for writing music, long or short, feel free to add them to the comments.

Since I got Spotify, it allows me to share my playlist with people – so if you want to have a listen to my summer playlist, just click here.

Click more to see the playlist without Spotify

Continue reading “Writing Music Playlist Summer 2010”

Music to Write To

I explore the impact of music on my writing, and talk about my iTunes playlist, and setting it up so can easily having writing music playlists.

I’m always on a quest for the perfect playlist to write to – but damn it the writing music keeps changing.

I love poetry and writing, and their sibling the song is no different (storytelling is the parent to me), they’re all capable of evoking something within us. Sometimes they evoke the writer within, helping to unlock my core creativity.

I find that what music I’m listening to affects what I’m writing, I noticed this during last year’s NaNoWriMo, I was in one of those places where I was banging out a few hundred words an hour, and actually progressing towards target. When I read back over my words, there was a pattern, I’d had Pachelbel’s Canon in D on repeat, (equally a crap and great piece of music in one – perfect writing music though), my writing had taken on that structure, from number of words per sentence, to roughly where the capitals were placed, and as I read it through, you could kind of feel Canon behind it. You have to be careful though, I would imagine if you’re half way through a 75,000 word novel, and feel of the writing suddenly changes, that’s going to make it seem disjointed.

Continue reading “Music to Write To”