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Writing Playlists #IWSG

Jennifer Lane

Writers need support, and we are here for it! Join the uplifting Insecure Writers Support Group, a monthly blog hop founded by author Alex Cavanaugh.

THANK YOU to this month’s co-hosts:  Melissa Maygrove, Cathrina Constantine, Kate Larkinsdale, and Rebecca Douglass!

April 1 question – If you have a playlist (or could put one together) that either gets you in the groove to write or fits with one of your books, what is it? What type of music or what songs?

I love this question. To me, music is emotional, and emotions are elemental to writing. Listening to music as I write boosts my focus and rhythm. My one requirement is music without lyrics to distract me. I like a mixture of jazz, classical, and movie soundtracks. Here are a few tracks from my writing playlist:

Music also inspires the stories I write. My recent release, Low Water, features a man devastated by the traumatic death of his sister. Though his life starts to fall apart, he feels determined not to give up. He and his family play this song to honor his fierce sister’s memory:

In one of my novels, Spiked, music takes a more prominent role. The college-aged hero, Mateo, writes and sings his own songs. Here’s one he wrote to his crush:

Hey, chica! Where did you go?

Don’t wanna fly this thing solo

But you’re running away like a track star

The distance between us, it’s too far

Hey, chica! Come conmigo

And baby, why don’t we go

Down under the bridge to the water

With you it can only get hotter

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Published by Jennifer Lane

I write sports romance and suspense with a psychological twist.

22 thoughts on “Writing Playlists #IWSG”

  1. Writing anything about major trauma’s hard, pretending nothing ever happened harder still.

    I’d love to be able to listen and write, but get distracted too easily. Will try some of your tracks.

    At last, no demand for the gmail address I don’t have. Couldn’t pick up their security texts. Thanks ! Even the latest mast hasn’t given us a signal, something about a decayed and dangerous telegraph pole, right by our house. So dangerous that in almost two years the telecom company hasn’t come to fix it !

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  2. I don’t listen to music or use playlists when I’m writing, but I can see how listening to instrumental music could be inspiring.

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  5. I love it — but I definitely can’t do Jazz. All the others, golden. Well, not so much the straight piano either. I’m a bit of an audiophobe. *shrugs* But some music really does help get a story on the page, and we should never be above breaking our norms for the sake of progress, eh?

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  7. Music can definitely help me get into the story’s mood, but lyrics distract me when I write. My brown noise YouTube ‘video’ has proved itself to be the best at keeping me on task.

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  9. Music is so good at setting the emotional tone and there are so many different types of music in the world that each have their own subtle emotional differences.

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