Setting your mood with music!

Ambiance is a very important part of writing, because your mood is the writing's mood. Now, every writer has their preference or environment. Some prefer silence, other prefer a bustling crowd, while my personal preference is to crank up my iPod to block everything out.

And music is what we will be concentrating on today, because music can be a very useful tool for a writer.

Let's start with an explanation. I'll explain again that your mood is the mood your writing is going to be. Get angry when you write a fight scene, get upset when you write a death or breakup scene, get happy when you write a reunion scene. Remember, you are writing the words, it comes from your brain and your emotions live up there too.

What I would like you all to do is one of two things. Either first think of a scene you would like to write, or begin creating your playlist. Both work, and both depend on preference.

To create your playlist, search through your library and select songs that reflect the proper tempo, lyrics, and instruments. If your library consists of only pop songs with the same sound for every song, I suggest trying musicovery.com, which provides a great service to listeners. Of course, this does not work on portable mp3 players without the internet, but a computer with headphones attached or just listening through speakers works as well.

With your playlist created, get out your paper and pencil/pen or open up your word document in another window.

Scene thought of first:
Click play and let your thoughts flow! Allow the music to affect you.

Music set up first:
click play and brainstorm on the spot, diving into the story.

For some, this method is great for their writing. For others, it doesn't work. Either way, it's a lot of fun, and another chance to practice practice practice!

I wrote above that scenes/stories are what I want you to create, but perhaps the best use is for poem writing because of the emotional creation. I sometimes forget poetry because I am not a poet, but I want to make poets feel welcome to use these lessons as well. Sorry!

Let me know how it works for you! It could be some great fun. Remeber, if you send me what you've created because of this, I'll either post it or link to it (depending on size of course).

Until the next time I blog, keep writing!

(Just a note real quick, I want to thank everyone who has been nice enough to leave a comment with some kind words for me. They are what keeps me blogging because few like speaking into a deaf audience. Your comments keep me going strong!)