I made us a fiction-writing playlist :)

World-build with me 🤓

Greetings from the Munich airport en route to Bologna, Italy! I will be in Europe for the next six weeks celebrating the Italian publication of The Age of Magical Overthinking, hosting my write-and-travel retreat, eating/recuperating from the last year lol, and concentrating on my new novel. 

At the urging of my buddy, author and Normal Gossip podcast host Kelsey McKinney, I decided to create a playlist for my fiction-writing process. I asked Kelsey what music she listens to to get herself into the novel-drafting mood, and she responded with enthusiasm TRENT REZNOR MOVIE SCORES. Cinematic instrumental music—of course. Lyrics are far too distracting anyway, but beyond that, film music was made for storytelling. My partner Casey is a composer, so movie scores are already an important subject of discussion in our home. I have my favorites, and by no coincidence, they happen to align quite perfectly with the SciFi-coded, dark academia-meets-whimsical vibe of my novel’s protagonist and the plot in general.

I’ve spent the past couple weeks curating a playlist of music to listen to as I bring these characters and their story to life. It’ll be a working list for the duration of this writing process, I have no doubt, but I wanted to share with you what I have so far. To get a sense of this novel’s tone, please enjoy the following progression of tunes by artists both contemporary and classics—from Maurice Ravel to Jóhann Jóhannsson (my favorite film composer, may he rest in peace). These tracks are from films including Arrival, The Theory of Everything, The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sing Sing, Call Me By Your Name, and others. 

Most of these pieces are personally very dear to me, so if you listen, you might even get to know me a little better.