NaNoWriMo Music

One thing I like to do while I write is listen to good mood-setting music. This means something different depending on what I'm writing, but it helps me get into the feel of what I'm writing, and if others are home at the time, it helps block out whatever noise they're making.

My first year of NaNoWriMo, I listened almost exclusively to a Japanese band called Plastic Tree. Listening to English lyrics, I'd found, really distracted me (if I knew the song, I wanted to sing along, and if I didn't, I wanted to find out what the song was about, and either way lyrics always ended up in my writing), and since I was really into Japanese modern culture at the time, I found the Plastic Tree songs very helpful.

My novel in '08 was a period piece called Princess Kate about a king's daughter who was slowly discovering that she had a multiple personality disorder (the actual name for the condition is Dissociative Identity Disorder - DID - and that's where I got the URL for my blogs). Plastic Tree's music matched the tone of my novel because most of their recent stuff was softer, with a melancholic sound with some occasional heavier rock influences.

I'm not a huge music buff - I believe I've mentioned that in previous blogs. I don't usual devote time to doing nothing but listening to music; if I'm listening to music, then I have to also be occupying myself in some other non-auditory fashion. Finding Plastic Tree was a huge help for my first NaNo novel, and may have contributed to my ability to meet the word count goal by the end of the month.

Unfortunately, my story the following year was quite a bit different. Instead of being a period piece, my '09 NaNo novel was a modern courtroom drama titled The Burden of Proof, about a young man on a jury trying to decide if the murder suspect on trial was guilty or not, despite the fact that all the members of the jury were being blackmailed by someone with unknown intentions. I based it on a Japanese miniseries called Majo Saiban (The Witch Trial) which I had seen earlier that year.

This is the paragraph where I tell you that, despite the difficulty it may be to find them, foreign stories can be amazing. I would not have tried to adapt this Japanese miniseries into an American novel if it hadn't been one of the best thrillers I've ever seen. The plot was grabbing, the characters were real, the mystery and action was intense, and the plot twists were completely surprising - and this is coming from someone who guesses the endings to most movies halfway through.

Because Plastic Tree's music wouldn't help as much that year, I was a bit at a loss as to what to do.

That year, I just so happened to have met and befriended a kid at my school who was close friends with some other kids in my 'group'. I noticed that he listened to music on his MP3 player almost constantly, and remembering that he was a movie buff, I knew that a lot of the music he listened to was soundtracks and film scores - perfect for getting in the writing mood without distracting me with lyrics.

We still didn't know each other very well, but I asked this friend if he could give me a list of songs or scores that would match the mood of my courtroom drama. He provided me the next day with a list of names, titles, and specific albums to listen to while I write. Along with the OST for the original miniseries, that list became my playlist for that year's novel.

We became really close friends by the end of the year, and though I left high school because my classes were boring and tested into the community college, we've stayed close. Last year, I went to him with a request for music to listen to while I wrote my futuristic sci-fi thriller Tidal Light, and he returned four CDs worth of music for me to listen to at the school library (I also spent some time that year listening to the OST to the 2000 video game Perfect Dark, an action/sci-fi)

Tidal Light being my Sci-fi term for the Aurora.

This year my novel is titled In Memory, and it's a period fantasy about a girl whose memory is erased, who tries to discover who she is and why someone would want her to forget it. It's a fantasy, but a light one, meaning that there are no dragons or major fantastical elements, only minor and occasional uses of magic. I asked friends on Facebook as well as members of the NaNoWriMo forums what music they might have that would help me set the mood.

I got back some pretty good responses. On the NaNo forums, someone suggested I listen to the music Jesper Kyd wrote for the popular video game series Assassin's Creed; I've never had the chance to play this game, but I've heard it's pretty good and that the story is excellent, and now I can agree that Jesper Kyd's compositions are pretty wonderful, mixing the sounds from the time period of my story with a bit of modern instruments (perfect for my story, which has a subtle sci-fi element as well).

Someone else suggested Inon Zur, who composed the music for the video game Dragon Age, and Jeremy Soule, who is amazing. I already knew that Jeremy Soule was amazing, because he produced all the orchestral sounds for the later Elder Scrolls series, and ES: Oblivion has some of my favorite music in the world (right now, my favorite track is 'Sunrise of Flutes', though 'Glory of Cyrodiil' is pretty amazing as well).

Jeremy Soule's artsy artist photograph - notice the laptop and the keyboard?

A friend of mine on Facebook then introduced me to Two Steps From Hell. TSFH is a production music company in Los Angeles that produces epic stock music for use in movie trailers, and they do such a good job that many people will buy their demonstration albums just to listen to on their own. For a good example of what I mean, you can listen to their song 'Tristan' or 'My Freedom', two of my favorites.

Yesterday, however, I went out to get the mail in the evening and found a small package, addressed to my pen name (which in itself was exciting). This was something I'd been expecting - this year's CDs from my good friend from high school, hand picked from his extensive library of practically all the music in the world to fit with my light fantasy novel.

I've only listened to the first CD as of yet, but so far I think it's wonderful. The first CD is specifically low key, atmospheric scores and sounds. Most of TSFH's tracks are grand and epic, and there are only a few atmospheric tracks from my other composers, so having some lighter mood-setting pieces to listen to during the 80-90% of my novel that isn't fast paced is perfect.

I've been keeping up with my word count this month, more or less, though it means cutting back on my blog posts. For anybody disappointed, I apologize! As soon as December rolls around, my excuse will change from 'I'm writing a future best-selling novel' to 'I'm playing an amazing video game' and you'll be able to complain about how disappointed you are with my life.

Is anyone else working on NaNoWriMo this year? If so, or even if not, what do you listen to while you write?