Playlists

When I sit down to write, the atmosphere around me and within me is essential.  I like to write in one of four places: my back deck at night or in the early morning with the twinkle lights glowing, Exchange Company, a fantastic coffeeshop that works with local charities and has a killer groove, the armchair in my home's library, backed up against the bookshelves, surrounded by books I love, or my completely cleaned off kitchen table (and I have two children, so this one is a rarity!).

But just as important as the place is the sound.  I'm extremely auditory.  My children and students are forever amazed that I actually heard what they just mumbled (and half of it I choose to ignore!).  When I hear a song on the radio, it doesn't just "take me back" in a nostalgic way; no, it transports me.  I can see, smell, and feel in my chest exactly what I felt in that moment.  One of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman, wrote, "I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings".  That's it exactly.

And so with every novel I write, there is a specific playlist that acts as companion.  The songs put me in the right mindset, but even more so, put me in the right place.  When I wrote Slings and Arrows, a modernization of Hamlet, I was an angsty teenager again, back in the halls of high school.  When I wrote Sweet Divinity, I was transported back to the country, to the farm where I was raised.  When I wrote Miranda, I needed to feel the emotions of my narrator, a combination of desperate need and painful longing.

Music takes me there.

And so below I share my playlists.  Perhaps they'll transport you as well.

Slings and Arrows
"Hero/Heroine", Boys Like Girls
"Glycerine", Bush
"Sweetness", Jimmy Eat World
"Thirty-Three", Smashing Pumpkins
"Galapagos", Smashing Pumpkins
Hot Fuss, The Killers

Sweet Divinity
"Good Directions", Billy Currington
"Let Me Down Easy", Billy Currington
"What Was I Thinkin'", Dierks Bentley
"Barefoot Blue Jean Night", Jake Owen
"Do You Believe Me Now", Jimmy Wayne
"Drunk on You", Luke Bryan
"Mountain Music", Alabama
"Mama's Broken Heart", Miranda Lambert

Miranda
"Lust for Life", Lana Del Rey
"Love", Lana Del Rey
"Video Games, Lana Del Rey (Pretty sure this is the anthem of the novel)
"Ultraviolence", Lana Del Rey
"Born to Die", Lana Del Rey
"Young and Beautiful", Lana Del Rey
"Old Money", Lana Del Rey (yes, I listened to only Lana Del Rey on repeat during the entire editing process...she's magical)
"Intro", XX
"Moonlight Sonata", Beethoven
"Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92, Beethoven
"Adagio for Strings", Samuel Barber
twenty one pilots (everything)
"Madness", Muse
"Believe", Mumford and Sons
"Inside Out", Britney Spears
"Elastic Heart", Sia

Reliance (still building this one)
"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow", Roscoe Holcomb
"Little Birdy", Roscoe Holcomb
"Graveyard Blues", Roscoe Holcomb
"Little Sadie", Clarence Ashley
"Dark Holler", Clarence Ashley
"Sweet William and Lady Margaret", Jean Ritchie
Crockett Family Mountaineers
Basically anything that falls under "Appalachian Folk Music"