My all time favourite activities – reading and writing.

They’re followed closely by listening to music and walking (two things I can actually do at the same time). And to a certain extent I can also listen to music, walk and write at the same time. No, I don’t walk down the street with my notebook in hand, but when I’m listening to my iPod often a song will play that will resonate with my current WIP whether that is the characters, setting or plot.

MUSIC AND LYRICS

Sometimes it’s the actual music arrangement, the feel or memories it creates.

Sometimes it’s the lyrics which can inspire my next scene or give me a ‘what if’ moment.

I’m always in awe of songwriters who can tell a story effectively within a space of three minutes. I sometimes think I could expand on that three-minute song into a 70,000 word novel (I really want to write ‘masterpiece’ here!).

CREATING PLAYLISTS

Music is important to my characters too. I create character playlists. In this post you can find Luke Conway’s, from Haven River, playlist and I’m currently compiling a playlist for my protagonist in my latest draft novel, Aqua Bay.

Even one of my journal entries a couple of years ago shows the importance of music and its connection to writing:

“Not sleeping well – waking up at 3.00 or 4.00 am. I’ve been listening to music for about an hour, which is where I’m starting to get phrases, scenes and direction forming in my head. Walking, with music, during the day is helping too.

“Today, after listening to music, I wrote my first poem in over 30 years at 5.00 am. Well, really it’s Luke’s poem, called Without You. It took me 10 minutes to write. Now I’m a poet. Yeah, right!”

Elizabeth Deverell has a great Creative Writer Worksheet, which you can download to get you in the mood to write. This is a more structured way of compiling playlists for particular writing moments eg sad, dramatic, work, action or love scenes.

Does music inspire you to write? Do you have a playlist for writing specific scenes?

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