Friday, February 17, 2012

A Playlist Makes the Experience


I’m sitting here, four months post dual carpel tunnel surgery, and I think I bounced back nicely completing my nanowrimo.org goal of 50k in the month of November. Since then, I’ve kind of dropped off the face of the writing world.   Where am I, what have I been doing?  Well, um, not much. I’ve piddled around with some stories I have, thinking of new ideas for new books, though I quickly create a .doc file with the basic thoughts before saving it and moving back to my main story.  Yet, the word count is not growing. I think I came up with what my issue was. My playlist isn’t what it was. 

I’ve got a few playlists and the song counts are 83, 154, 200, 356, and 412.  The 412 is the newest playlist I’ve complied that I’ll listen to when my Netflix and Hulu are turned off. In the past, I would watch my TV shows online, and then force myself to hit the red X and listen to my playlist. It got me to writing 1000+ words a night, and the bonus of anytime I heard the song in the car or at my work desk, I would think about the book. But now, I’m still getting nothing done. A paragraph has been an accomplishment.

Last night I realized what I was doing. Previous book playlists consisted of 10-30 songs. It would be a mixture of some old favorites with new songs, all of which I knew the words to and could sing in my sleep. How can I, while listening to 412 songs and taking the time to skip songs that I’m not in the mood to hear, be able to write?
Tonight’s mission is to go home, and create a 20 or less playlist to get me in the story writing mood. I’ll still keep the 412 playlist for the car rides to work, but time to get back to writing and blogging. Anyone else use music as a gateway to writing?