It’s been a long week, fellow readers. And for once, it’s not because I’ve been drowning myself in editing and writing.
Sunday through Wednesday I was in Lawton with Mara, three of my nieces, and my nephew. We had a good time going to the spray park and eating homemade pizza and going up to the Omniplex (I mean, Science Museum Oklahoma). Because of this slight vacation, I had three fewer days than everybody else at work to get all my editing done. This means that when I got back to work yesterday, I felt a slight panic. The second week of June and already I’m twenty percent behind! Oh no!
But don’t worry, I have a great method for focusing myself and really getting down to some hard-core editing. It also inspires me to write a lot of the time. This method is called: My GCBSC Playlist!
That’s right, friends, I have a very cryptically named playlist on my iTunes that never fails to help me in my literary endavours. GCBSC stands for Grover Cleveland Boarding School Chronicles.* It was the original title of the seriest hat I am writing. Fortunately, it has been renamed to The Uber Freaks (and as always, if you have a better suggestion, let me know). This playlist is comprised of songs that remind me of my characters and their stories from the Uber Freaks series. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s a soundtrack for my novels, but in a way it is. In case you care to gather the list and listen to it yourself, it is detailed below. In parentheses are the names of the characters that each song “belongs” to. I won’t go into greater detail until Into the Flames comes out and you have a better understand of who is who and what is what.
- Anything but Ordinary by Avril Lavigne (Rahab)
- Up Against the Wall by Boys Like Girls (Bracken)
- Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin (Hawkins)
- Clocks by Coldplay (Scout)
- Superman by Five for Fighting (Bracken)
- Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls (Hawkins and Scout)
- Fly by Jars of Clay (Scout)
- Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson (Scout)
- Breaking the Habit by Linkin Park (Bracken–also the inspiration for the title of his book in the series)
- Breathe by Michelle Branch (Rahab)
- Born to Fly by Sara Evans (Scout–the inspiration for the title of her book in the series)
- Eyes of the Devil by Seether (Rahab and Bracken)
- Ordinary by Train (Bracken)
- Going Down in Flames by 3 Doors Down (Rahab–the inspiration for the title of her book, Into the Flames)
(play time approx. 55 minutes.)
So what about you? Do you listen to specific music to help you write (or edit?) Does your book have a soundtrack? Or do you need absolute silence to feel the muse upon you?
*thus named because Born to Fly and Into the Flames take place at the fictional Grover Cleveland Boarding School in Boston, Massachusetts. Breaking the Habit, however, takes place at Cornwall Academy in San Francisco, therefore rendering GCBSC worthless.
“Breaking the Habit” is Bracken’s song, not Hawkins’.
Duly noted and fixed. I don’t know what my fingers were thinking.
OMG!!! We listen to the same music!! There’s not an artist on that list that I don’t have on my own ipod!! LOL. 🙂 Great taste.
That’s pretty cool, Krissi. THat means you’ll like my book, right? ;P