|| INTERACTIVE: 30 DAYS OF FAN FIC || DAY TWENTY-FIVE ||

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

DAY ONE - How did you get into fan fic?
DAY TWO - What fandoms have you written in?
DAY THREE - Favorite characters?
DAY FOUR - "Muse" character?
DAY FIVE - Pushy characters?
DAY SIX - Male or female characters?
DAY SEVEN - Fic affecting your view of a character?
DAY EIGHT - OCs
DAY NINE - Favorite Pairings
DAY TEN - Pairings and your comfort zone
DAY ELEVEN - Favorite Genres
DAY TWELVE - Adaptations
DAY THIRTEEN - Canon or Fanon
DAY FOURTEEN - Ratings
DAY FIFTEEN - Warnings
DAY SIXTEEN - Summaries
DAY SEVENTEEN - Titles
DAY EIGHTEEN - Bunnies
DAY NINETEEN - Herding Bunnies
DAY TWENTY - Baby Bunnies
DAY TWENTY-ONE - Sequels
DAY TWENTY-TWO - Fests
DAY TWENTY-THREE - Where do you archive?
DAY TWENTY-FOUR - Beta Readers

25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

We welcome your participation! There is no minimum or maximum requirements for your answers -- they can be as long or as short as you'd like. I will include my answer as a comment.

Comments

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

More often than not, I'll have a fic be inspired by, or I'll relate it to, one specific song, and when that happens, there are times during the writing process that I play the song over and over and over and over ad nauseuum. When this happens, there's something motivating about that particular song that keeps me writing. Some songs that have provided the backbone for my writing are:

Muggle Studies: Flowers Become Screens by Delerium; Center of the Sun by Conjure One
Blankets of Pansies: Young Lust by Pink Floyd
A Thousand Little Deaths: Come Undone by Duran Duran
Adjudication: Mardy Bum by the Arctic Monkeys; Pictures of You by The Cure; Is There Anybody Out There by Pink Floyd; Secretly by Skunk Anansie
Ourselves Like We Were Yesterday: Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order
Strange Darkness Comes Creeping: Miss You by Blink 182
hd_canon_fest fic: Love by Delerium
Epitaphs: Illusion by Ashbury Heights; Pale Shelter by Tears for Fears; Epitaph by Front Line Assembly

[lordhellebore]

OH GOD NO!!! I can't even put enough exclamation marks behind that. Not ever. I need QUIET to write. And the best thing is when I'm alone at home and it's night, so I can be dead sure nothing and nobody will disturb me.

I am inspired to write by music very often, and I often use specific pieces of music to get me into the right mood for a story, and of course it's different music for different stories, but during the actual writing, it has to be turned off.

An example would be my hd_career_fair story All That Remains - I listened to Vanish and Melt Into Your Eyes by Faderhead for hours before I started writing, and during the 2 days in which it was written, I'd repeatedly put these two songs back on, but I always turned the music off again when I wanted to go on writing.

[lordhellebore]

Seriously, Ashbury Heights? They're amazing, aren't they? :D

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

Dude. Ashbury Heights owns my soul <3

And Illusion? Naughty, naughty dirty song, FTW!

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten how haunting the Flowers in the Attic soundtrack is. I thought the movie was so subpar to the book, that I never collected the soundtrack, but I just might do that now. That piece is very emotional.

Some soundtracks I will listen to while writing are Atonement and Pan's Labyrinth.

Now I wish I could find my "Malfoys in the Attic" icon...

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

It's so interesting how different writers require different scenarios. When it's 100% quiet, it's distracting to me. I sometimes will have music AND a movie going while I write, and I write best during the morning/day. Funny that!

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

If you're inclined to share the soundtrack, let me know .

The problem with bringing the book to the screen is much like that with Harry Potter -- there's so much detail in the book it was hard to know what to include and what to cut.

[meglw0228.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah I sorta have to! My mom and I dispatch for a cab company from home so if I don't have music it gets too distracting to even write. It also helps me concentrate better on what I'm writing by having the music playing in the background. I have several playlists that help me write. I have one general favourites playlist that I listen to almost all the time when writing and I also have an Adam Lambert themed playlist that I listen to when writing any scene over PG-13 rating. I have two different playlists for two of my current big bangs that help me get in the mood to write that story line. And I also have a moody/teenage angst playlist that helps when I'm writing evil/disturbing characters. Noise in general(not music) and even quiet distract me too much to actually write; any other noise other than music will grab my attention every time and quiet puts me on edge and I can't write.

[meglw0228.livejournal.com]

Same here! I'm a night owl myself, and I love being able to write at night, knowing everyone else is asleep and I won't be disturbed! It's the best time and I seem to get the most done then!

[hpfangirl71.livejournal.com]

I HAVE to have music or it drives me bonkers... I even play the music on my phone when I take the kids to the park and sit to write. I listen to tons of different kinds of music, different genres and types... it all depends on my mood but I do have faves such as Poison, Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, Muse, Glee, and Bloc Party but like I said all depends on my mood and sometimes the fic!!

[curiouslyfic.livejournal.com]

There is almost always music when I write and more often that not, that music influences what I am writing. My sole exception is the occasional POTC fic, because those character voices take more of my attention to manage.

I have mood playlists but they don't usually work; the smut one never does and rare is the fic that gets an actual soundtrack with multiple songs, but the Adda (STXI kidfic) one still consistently gets me in a sweeter/softer frame of mind. Most fics get a song (in STXI I tend to cheat on titles and just use lyrics from that fic's song) that I listen to constantly until it's done. Which is one of the big reasons I don't write longfic, probably.

That said, I can't start writing a fic until I have the song that goes with it. One of the big blocks on my hds_beltane fic this year was not having the song. Eventually, iTunes or youtube or the terrible pop radio stations are kind to me and I get it and then I'm off but until that happens, I'm just spinning my wheels and I know it.

Otherwise, though, I need quiet. Noise from other people distracts me until I'm in the zone, or whatever you want to call that total loss of time/space/reality.

[amt149.livejournal.com]

If I'm writing a video!fic, I'll listen to the song used while I type to get me into the mood. Otherwise, I actually try to refrain myself from listening to certain types of music before I write.

[rebecca_selene]

Usually I need it quiet, at least at first. I do have a playlist of all instrumental music though for when I get into the zone; lyrics distract me when I'm writing.

Although, oddly, sometimes having a movie on that I've seen a hundred times really inspires me. Disney's Dinosaur and the 2009 Star Trek movie are on the top of that list.