I was intrigued a few weeks ago by a viral post on Mastodon where writers posted what they were listening to as they tackled their most recent work. As you might expect, the responses were as varied as the genres represented, but one thing was the same across all of them: soundtracks had been selected purposefully to help the writer set the proper atmosphere before they set proverbial pen to paper. Honestly, I’d never really given my own process that much thought — at least, not until I began paging through the responses I was seeing, for the further down I got the more I realized that subconsciously or not, I did have a method to musical writing madness.
Much like my main characters, I am a huge fan of Contemporary Jazz and a regular listener of Watercolors on SirusXM. That station — or a playlist of favorite tracks I’ve purchased from listening over the years when I’m forced to be offline — plays as a sort of underscore to my daily life, always there in the background, helping to keep the mood upbeat and positive. Oddly, it also helps me with the tempo of my dialogue, ensuring it’s snappy, witty and just long enough to make it feel like two (or three) people are having an actual conversation. I’m not entirely sure I can explain how I make it work; I guess it’s just a bit of my own personal writing magic.
Smooth Jazz isn’t the best genre when things get emotional, though. When the mood calls for serious angst, the highs and lows of love or even deep depression, I lean on some of my favorite artists that have been in my collection for years. One of my absolute favorites is the amazing Mary Chapin Carpenter; whatever feeling I’m looking for, I know that somewhere in her catalog is a perfect song that encapsulates it. For example, Something Tamed, Something Wild perfectly captured Sean’s frame of mind in the upcoming Bewitched, a story where he finds himself facing personal questions about love and life and the road not taken; when I was writing Vasily’s family in Requiem, strains of The Long Way Home were always playing in the background.
Vasily’s heartbreak over Sean had several tracks, including Trisha Yearwood’s Everybody Knows and There Goes My Baby, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Almost Home and The Age of Miracles and The Way I Feel. Rosanne Cash was in there too with Burn Down This Town, depending on where poor Vas was in his manic cycle. Willie Nelson gets an honorable mention here for Maria (Shut Up And Kiss Me), which was the perfect soundtrack of the reunion scene between Vasily and Alejandro in Anaheim. I’m not sure that was what Willie intended, of course, but the sentiment certainly was spot on for me. (Vas tells me he agrees, too.)
Tense scenes in all of my books are written to cinematic soundtracks, in keeping with their grand scope and the expansive sets they usually have; Genesis Countdown from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was the most recent entry, helping me focus on the Pyrrhic aspects of the finale for Sean and Vasily. Bird of Prey Decloaks from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock worked in a similar vein for the denouement in Bewitched, when a win for the good guys comes at with a heavy cost.
Oddly, when Sean drives around Windeport, I always have Off to Work from The Incredibles playing in the back of my head. I’m not sure why — Sean is not even closely modeled on Bob Par — but think it has more to do with the mid-century motifs in that piece as those do fit Sean to a T. Vas has driving music, too: Glider, Pt. 1 & Pt. 2 from The Thomas Crown Affair. This one is harder to explain other than it fits my image of him tooling around Southern California in that sports car of his — it’s also bright, airy and completely like his personality now that he has Alejandro in his life.
Reading back through this post, I’m starting to wonder if I should create a YouTube playlist and share it out — I imagine it might be rather eclectic. Do you have music that helps you guide your activities? Share below and I’ll highlight some of them in a future post.