A few days ago, as part of the Author Life Month challenge I'm participating in on Instagram, they had a day for posting a picture of your writing playlists. I did that, but it got me to thinking that I'd never shared them here.
I have an entire page dedicated to the playlists for my books. You can see songs that inspired scenes and character anthems. But I didn't share the ones I use for writing.
I write to music almost 100% of the time. I work from home, and silence is a little smothering to me. However, the type of music depends on how focused I'm feeling that day. Some days I'm totally in the zone and can write to upbeat music with lyrics. Other days, I need mellow coffeehouse style music that will fade into the background. And then there are the days that my focus is so bad that words in songs distract me, so I have to listen to instrumental.
So I thought I'd share some of my go-to lists on Spotify. Some of these are ones I created (which means expect an eclectic list of songs because my taste is all over the place) and others are ones I've found on Spotify. If you're on Spotify, you can follow them if you're interested in any of them.
Writing Caffeine
This is the list I created for the beginning of my day when I'm waiting for my coffee to kick in. It's upbeat songs that make me want to get to work. It also makes a good workout playlist.
Angst Fest
I got inspired by another playlist (Anthems of Angst) and realized a lot of the songs in my general playlist were pretty angsty, lol. I'm not sure what that says about me, but this is a a great list for when I'm writing scenes with a lot of emotion.
The Sexy Stuff
This is my go to for when I'm writing love scenes. And since I write some edgy love scenes not all of these are romantic. :)
Playlists by others that I use:
Cinematic Chill Out - Movie scores are great for background music because there's a lot of emotion to them but it's less distracting because there are no words.
Indie Chill Covers - Chilled out versions of popular songs performed by indie artists. These give that coffeehouse vibe but still have some comfortable familiarity.
Instrumental Covers - Familiar songs without the words. Good for when I have the focus of a toddler.
Music for Concentration - When I'm needing zen. This goes well with the Compose mode in Scrivener that I talked about a few weeks ago.
White Noise - Because sometimes I just can't handle any kind of distraction.
So those are my main ones. What kinds of playlists do you have? Do you make playlists for certain activities?