What's Your Writing Muse?

Everyone has something that inspires them to write and allows them to focus better on what they're doing, to pull from that annoyingly difficult to reach muse-spot with all the really juicy metaphors and gritty scenes. Maybe it's having a movie playing in the background, or a pile of chocolate peanut butter cookies next to the keyboard (messy but I bet it's delicious). For me, undoubtedly the trick lies in music.

I've tried on occasion writing with my everyday 'listening' music: Coldplay, U2, Rush, BOC, Journey, and other classic rock giants. Now and again I stumble on something alright, but it isn't consistent. The lyrics often distract me and I lose focus of what it is I'm actually doing so that I can listen to the music. Sometimes there are exceptions if the lyrics are just subdued enough either in tone or in energy that they can slip by without fully registering in the brain and instead give a flavor just like any other musical instrument would.

This is the fine line-- to find music that stimulates your brain waves and gives the flavor needed to paint the picture you want without distracting you from what you want to be writing. The tune also has to stand out, so that if you're like me and you listen to a single song on repeat for as long as three hours to get a single chapter or scene right, you won't realize an hour and a half in that you haven't heard a single note of the song in fifteen minutes and have no idea where it went.

It's amazing the brain's power to tune things out in favor of listening to an inner dialogue. Shame it never seems to work on command...if everyone could do it, there would never be any need for 24-hour study rooms or quiet hours. Anyone could study or write in the middle of a mosh pit.

So what music is the best for writing? Of course, it's going to vary for everyone, but I find the music that suits me best lies in movie soundtracks. Much of the time movies are based on books or true events, and even if they aren't, they're the visual imaginings of another 'writer' just like you. The soundtrack is the audio representation of their dream world, and it can be just as inspiring to your inner landscape as it was to fleshing out their visual one.

 

Also, soundtracks very rarely have any lyrics that will distract you (or make you realize you just typed up the line to the song rather than the next sentence in the paragraph). Sure, there may be wordless singing, perhaps some choirs chanting in Latin-- I like these songs best. I can imagine the soundtrack belonging to my own book, moving along in the background as I spin out the characters' lives, perhaps even accompanying them when one day, *cough*, my books are published, best-sellers, and given a movie contract. With action figures and lunchboxes and tennis shoes.

What, it could happen.

Right now I'm listening to my 'song of the week' that will probably be my inspiration for anything I write in the next 10 days. I've been looking for the soundtrack to this movie, End of the Spear, for years and years. It's not available for purchase (or at least since I looked last it's not) and I've been missing this music since I saw it in the film at least eight or nine years ago...really? I'm getting old.

 

Then came the miracle of Youtube. I'm sure now if I looked I could also find it on such music platforms as Grooveshark or Pandora (very good for getting music vibes going if you can't stand listening to the same song again and again and don't have a playlist of your own). I have now discovered not one but two of my favorite songs off of the End of the Spear OST and can listen to them at my liesure while I write. And they're very effective. One helped me write an entire paper the other night. Yes, I find them so inspiring that even an academic paper came willingly as if it were creative writing.

So try out some soundtracks, see what you think. What do you use as your inspiration to write?