The next item essential to my tool box? Spotify. While I thought about just putting “music”, I knew that wasn’t specific enough, mainly because it’s the Spotify playlists that are my biggest help. With Spotify, you have unlimited access to any artist that streams their music, which means you have a lot more options, and great opportunities to discover new music.

The playlists are huge for me. I know many people create novel soudtracks, which is an awesome resource (and I’ll talk about mine for the Book Book later on), but when I’m writing, I find that there are two specific playlists I gravitate towards:

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/2ujjMpFriZ2nayLmrD1Jgl

The first is the Spotify Deep Focus playlist is amazingly helpful when I need to “get in the zone” the music is relaxing, like white noise, and I find it’s almost always suitable for what I’m writing. It eliminates distractions and allows me to really get pulled into my story.

The second is my personal High Tenacity playlist, which is a collection of songs I am continually compiling for high tension situations, whether it be action sequences, arguments, etc. When I know I need to get amped up, or get my heart racing, this playlist is perfect to put on in the background. It is mostly instrumental music, so that I don’t get distracted.

My novel Soundtrack playlists generally tend to be inspirational only. I don’t listen to them quite as much when I am writing, but when I’m plotting, planning, or doing some kind of discovery writing and I want to maintain the overall tone. These songs speak to the emotion, tone, plot, and characters within my story. I usually don’t get overly specific, but there are songs that stand out more than others as being specifically ‘this story’. The top 10 songs for my Book Book playlist (listed above) are:

• Waves by The Dear Hunter
• My Secrets Know What You Did In The Dark by Fallout Boy
• Powerless by Linkin Park
• What I’ve Done (Acoustic Cover) by Marie Digby
• Until We Go Down by Ruelle
• Flares by The Script
• No One’s Here To Sleep by Naughty Boy
• So Strong by Naughty Boy
• The Ender’s Game Score by Steve Jablonsky
• Wanderlust by Kim Edwards

NaNoWriMo Update!  Current word count: 19,688 and The Book Book stands at 51,827 words.