I love playing music while I’m intensively writing. Years ago when I wrote a Christmas movie, I blared Christmas carols for four months straight. To this day when I hear certain Christmas songs I start having the itch to grab a pen.

But when I was writing Into the Dark, I received a different kind of inspiration from one song on my playlist, Viva la Vida by Coldplay. The song is about someone who falls from power, and the mood of the song subconsciously became associated with one of the characters I was writing. Suddenly his personality was just like the song, bittersweet and self-reflective. I didn’t completely understand what I was doing until I was listening to the song in the car one day and imagining key scenes from the character’s life in association with different verses.

Realizing how affected I am by what I’m listening to, I make very specific, tailored playlists based on which scenes I’m writing. Sometimes I have to make purely instrumental playlists so the lyrics don’t distract me.

What’s your writing playlist?