Hey, squiders. Sorry for the radio silence. This week has been…well.
I realized I never said anything about MileHiCon. It went really well! I got things done, my panels went well, I had more people than ever come talk to me after panels, book sales were good (and I had decent online follow-through sales), I got to catch up with friends, and all-in-all fun was had.
(I am definitely out of Hallowed Hill now though.)
Next year they’re moving to a hotel much farther away, however (and it looks like some other cons are as well, which makes me wonder if the hotel did something or is going to do renovations or something) which will be problematic. I drive back and forth from home right now, which takes me about 20 minutes each direction and allows me to be flexible if I need to head to the con or leave early for other engagements.
Something to worry about more in the future, though.
Anyway, I realized I missed October’s WriYe prompt, which is: Your favorite writing playlist. Who’s on it?
I do listen to music when I write/revise, but it’s extremely variable. I used to (and still do sometimes–I’m in the very beginning stages of making a Book 2 playlist, which has about 3 songs on it at the moment, but it’s pretty low priority because I don’t foresee myself actually working on Book 2 until something happens with Book 1–so of course my mind is super focused on it) make story specific playlists, which can be hit or miss, because sometimes it takes a while to find enough songs to fill it up, and it can very much be a procrastination activity. And often a song goes with a specific scene or character, which makes it not necessarily useful for the book at large.
Often I just listen to a particular type of music. Sometimes I go off of tone (so, for example, listening to atmospheric instrumental music if I’m writing horror, or epic metal if I’m writing fantasy). Sometimes I just listen to music that helps me focus, especially if I’m revising.
I use Pandora primarily when listening to music, because I can just pick a tone or genre that feels like it will work for whatever I’m doing, and it will go on by itself without me needing to do a lot. I use the free version, so I do get some commercials, but it’s not as bad as YouTube has gotten.
And I do use YouTube as well occasionally, mostly for things like “3 hours of summer coffee shop sounds” that are just making noise in the background, which tends to be helpful if I’m revising and need to focus a lot on actual wording in the story. There’s a Skyrim one (pomodoros in the College of Winterhold) that I’m digging lately.
As for who is on my playlist(s), the songs tend to be whoever I’m listening to anyway. I’ll hear a song on my normal stations and make a note of it for when I put together playlists together. Right now I’ve been listening to a lot of dance music, so that tends to be what’s getting put on this particular playlist.
(This does tend to date some playlists over time, since my music tastes do shift over time and I’ll go through different phases.)
If you make playlists, how do you do it?
