Music and Writing Sunday, December 03, 2006

I was visiting one of my favorite blogs,
Paula Graves
and she was talking about using music as inspiration. When I wrote "Yule "Tied" (The Wild Rose Press) and "A Taste of Christmas" (Cobblestone), I played Christmas music to keep the mood for the stories. As I work on my romantic fantasy, I've been playing Evanescence's new CD to keep the mood dark and ethereal. I use music a lot to keep the creative juices flowing.
When writing love scenes, I will often put in something sexy to keep me in the right spirit to write.

I love that Loribelle Hunt
puts her "Current Playlist" on her blog, so we know what she's listening to as she writes her sexy paranormals. Of course, it helps that I'm a music junkie as well as a bibliophile. Even when I was young, I had music that I read to go with the book I was reading. The clearest example of this was when I read "Dune" by Frank Herbert. For some reason, Alan Parson's Project would be absolutely necessary to have playing in concert as I read all the Dune series. When I read Ngaio Marsh books, I'm usually in the mood for Diana Krall. When I read Jane Austen, I usually want to listen to Arvo Part or Mozart. Every story has a mood.

My stories usually require something hard and moody, like Crossfade, Seether or Linkin Park. But then the mood will change and I'm listening to Enya. So my question to you is does music inspire you? What do you use to set the mood? Does music give you ideas or do your ideas spark a need for "mood music". Which comes first? The music or the writing?