Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Music Magic: I See Fire

Last year in April (wow! it's been a year already), I wrote this post about listening to music while writing. Around that time I'd decided to stop doing both things at the same time because I felt the music was artificially influencing the stuff I was writing, and I wasn't comfortable with it.

But SO MUCH has changed since I wrote that post, including me as a person as well as my taste in music. And recently I've started listening to music again while writing. Without feeling that it's leading my story away from the path I'm hoping it will take.

In the past year, I discovered that my "writing music" needs to be the kind that makes me want to conjure worlds into being. That makes me dream relentlessly. And most importantly that suits the mood of the story I want to create.

And that is the kind of music I've been listening to lately. I hear that wordless writing music helps too (it actually does). I might be posting links to some of them from time to time.

Lately, the song I See Fire by Ed Sheeran won't leave me alone.


I've been humming it over and over (and currently have it on repeat). There's just something about it. It moves me, tugs at something inside of me. And indeed, I see fire.

It turns out that my alter ego* was right all along. She suggested that on the contrary the fact that music might influence my writing could be a good thing. And it is. I just had to start listening to the right kind of music.

* Last year, I met someone on the wilds of the Internet and tend to think of her as my alter ego because we sometimes get into each other's heads (that is not creepy at all). She's totally real and not a figment of my imagination. I just haven't met her in person, 'kay? 

P.S. Sara, if you're reading this, please don't shoot me.