no one in her right mind

[fahye]

8137 words, nine days until deadline, and I've had to reduce my writing playlist for this particular story to three songs -- though it could be worse, I've written some things to the backing of a SINGLE song.

In case you're curious, the current songs are:

* Vienna Teng - Eric's Song
* The Mountain Goats - Autoclave
* The Lion King (Broadway) - They Live In You

Do other people write like this? Do you have a general playlist that suits your writing style? (I do.) Do you build new playlists for particular fics? (I do.) Do you sometimes end up writing to just one song on constant repeat? (*looks balefully at Turn Your Sail and 'Up Is Down'*) Are there one or two songs that will always help you past a block?

Comments

[pathstotread.livejournal.com]

I have a writing playlist, a general shippy playlist, and a few playlists for specific ships (hellooo, pilots). But I've written plenty of fics with a single song on repeat for hours and hours. So...yes, to all of the above!

[fahye.livejournal.com]

OH PILOTS. I still remember my glee when Clairza sent me a CD full of pilotsongs to play in the car. My PILOTS playlist is now 37 songs long.

Which single songs have you written fics to, out of interest?

[pathstotread.livejournal.com]

My pilots playlist has 57 songs, and my general shippy one has 93. They've both been longer in the past, and could probably do with being a great deal shorter as it is. Must downsize.

I wrote A Joy You Can't Keep In (http://carrielh.livejournal.com/250892.html) while listening to "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" approximately ten million times. Then this one (http://carrielh.livejournal.com/283386.html) with Damien Rice's "9 Crimes". (Apparently this type of writing applies to me mostly when I'm writing RPF? WHO KNEW.)

Also "Nowhere Warm" by Kate Havnevik, "Home" by Vanessa Carlton, "Miss America" by Something Corporate, and "Breathe Me" by Sia, just off the top of my head.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

'Set The Fire To The Third Bar' is one of my two failsafe writing songs :D And 'Breathe Me' is pretty high on the list too. I haven't tried writing to SoCo songs before, but I might give it a shot!

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

How on earth do those three songs go together without enormous sonic confusion?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I don't even KNOW. I mean, they don't, really. But they're the only songs that keep the words coming out, so...I'll stick with them for now!

[private-meek.livejournal.com]

Ohoho. This is why no one can ever look at my iTunes, because the playcounts are so unutterably bizarre and inexplicable. I have to write to music, and it has to be music without English lyrics, and it has to be the same song on repeat-- though I can go through a couple of songs in the course of a story. So I end up playing the most random songs hundreds of times. Sometimes these are rather embarrassing choices such as parts of the Restoration or Battlestar Galactica soundtrack. Other times they're reasonably respectable, like a variety of early pilgrim songs.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I know I've written at least ONE thing to Restoration on repeat :)

I've just discovered that while I would normally have some free time on Monday or Tuesday afternoons, on March 3rd/4th I have a personal & professional development course 9-5 both days. Grr. So Sunday afternoon* is the only proper time we'll get together, though you are welcome to crash my college room in the evenings and listen to me whine about my day, and we can wander around Newtown and buy gelato and stuff like that.

*I get into Sydney at 10:30am, and will need maybe an hour to get back to uni and unpack/change/etc. so we should make plans to meet just before lunchtime, if you think you'll be able to make your own way to the USyd campus...?

[dopplegl.livejournal.com]

Because it's music that generally sparks a the urge to write, I will make a playlist suited to that particular story or just listen to a single song on repeat. It all just depends really. The playlist for my novel that I'll finish within the next 50 years is about 25 songs long. It's actually becoming more of my film soundtrack for it...

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Huh! It's never music that makes me want to write, it's usually...someone else's words :D Or a driving idea.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I don't, but I feel rather like the only person who doesn't - everyone else I know/talk to certainly has playlists or songs for this and that. Apart from Master Song, which is deliberately drawn from the song of the same name, I can't really write if I have much music on in the background. At least, not music with lyrics. Dance music of the thumpy dooshdooshdoosh variety is quite good. One types faster then.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interestingly I've only ever written one thing to a dance music backing -- my Lucy fic, because it was ALL about thumping rhythms. Anything else, I find that a strong beat will mess with my ability to hear word-rhythms and to work out if the pace is correct.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Oh, I find the lyrics get in and start replacing the words if I'm not careful, mostly because I don't actually listen to music very much - I generally just use it as a barrier to shut out ambient and inconsistent noise from elsewhere so I don't get distracted. Boring, I know, and not very artsy. Then again, you've read what I write. "Artsy" probably doesn't deign to go near it. ;)

[genarti]

You are not the only one! *points downwards*

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I more often than not write a fic to a single song on repeat. Sometimes if it's a long fic the song on repeat changes-- although I thought I was never going to get Wild out of my head this one time I listened to it for three days straight. Sometimes I do have a playlist, like my boyband!X playlist, but again, often I'll end up cropping it down to one or two particular songs.

(pssst-- look! I caved and got myself a paid account! which I prove by... using an old icon. uh. if only the objection icon was at all relevant.)

[genarti]

I can't write with music on. Pretty much ever. Fic, RP, papers -- none of it. The audio input gets in the way of the words in my head, and the lyrics are like big neon barriers between me and the words I want.

Sometimes I can with the right kind of wordless music, or music in a language I don't know at all. But even then, I have to be in the right kind of mood to be able to focus through the music.

This is why I always feel a little sheepish when people talk about their playlists for characters or plots or whatever, because I almost never have them. Making one is something I have to deliberately make time to do, usually for the purposes of sharing it with someone else; it's not what I listen to when I write that character, because that's silence.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

The audio input gets in the way of the words in my head, and the lyrics are like big neon barriers between me and the words I want.

I just want to voice my "yes" alongside you as we're such rare animals in this field. I find it really disrupts things!