A Goodreads user asked Juho Pohjalainen:

Do you listen to music for inspiration? If so, what gets the creativity flowing?

Juho Pohjalainen I listen to music virtually all the time, across a number of genres and styles that I can't really even name - my interest in music itself isn't really very deep, apart from just listening to whatever sounds good. I don't like silence.

Whenever possible, I try to listen to similar stuff as the story I'm writing at the time, to get the right kind of inspiration and to keep me in the correct sort of mood. The Straggler's Mask, for instance, has a lot of Blind Guardian running behind the scenes. Return To The Tribe, by Edguy, would be about as close to a theme song as possible for Peal if only he weren't so meek.

Other times it doesn't work out that well. Lately I've had my mind for a lot of synthwave (and a bunch of related things that I can't name), and this brings very little of value or mood in relation to a steampunk pirate story I've been writing. At best, it just keeps me in a good creative mood in general, rather than giving me any particular ideas.

On the other hand, I've got some Bal-Sagoth ready for something a little darker for NaNoWriMo. We'll see if that works out better.

flag