Playlist for THE LOST

I love listening to music when I write.  It focuses me.  I know that makes zero sense to people who need silence to focus, but for me, music distracts that part of my brain that gets caught up in the minutiae of life.

You know the part of the brain I mean.  The part that likes to babble.  The little voice that prattles on and on: "I should do the laundry.  I wonder if it's bad that I don't separate the light colors from the dark.  I wash it on cold.  It hasn't caused a problem.  Except that time I turned all those socks blue.  Oh, and the pink underwear incident.  But not lately.  Need to remember to check all pockets for tissues.  Really hate when I forget.  Impossible to get that stuff off.  It's like cat hair.  Cat hair clings to everything.  You could weaponize it.  Coat the enemy in fuzz.  And dryer lint.  Isn't there an artist who creates pictures out of dryer lint?  I don't remember her name.  I'm sure Google knows..."  And from there, you're off to Google and somehow you end up on a website about an Icelandic elf school and you're just about to send off your application because it's totally a real thing and you really, really want to go... before you remember you're supposed to be writing.

So to avoid all of that -- and also to avoid doing the laundry -- I listen to music when I write.

For my new book THE LOST, which comes out on May 27th (!!!!!), I created a playlist to keep me in the right frame of mind while I wrote.  THE LOST is about a woman trapped in a town full of only lost things and lost people.  It's a very atmospheric novel, so these are all very atmospheric songs:

"Hotel California" by the Eagles

"Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega

"Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles

"The Dreaming" by Kate Bush

"Henry Darger" by Natalie Merchant

"Dust in the Wind" by Kansas

"Are You Out There" by Dar Williams

"Building a Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan

"There Is No Arizona" by Jamie O'Neal

"Mad World" by Adam Lambert

"Rolling in the Deep" by Adele

"Fireflies" by Owl City

"Top of the World" by Dixie Chicks

"Prayer for an Innocent Man" by Vertical Horizon

"A Mistake" by Fiona Apple

"Galileo" by Indigo Girls

"What I Am" by Edie Brickell

"Blackbird" by Sarah Mclachlan

"The Beauty of the Rain" by Dar Williams

"Suddenly I See" by KT Tunstall

Happy listening, and happy reading!

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Published on May 18, 2014 18:48
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