Not My Grandmother’s Playlist

It’s National Novel Writing Month! A few years ago, I wrote the first draft of my first completed novel during NaNoWriMo, and I noticed on the webpage that there’s a place to put my book’s playlist. I noticed in a book I read recently that the author included a playlist. This is very much a thing of our streaming-music era, much like mixtapes were a thing of the 1980s and 1990s.

But that doesn’t mean that the idea is all that new.

One of the things you discover, when you’re working on an intergenerational project like our Flyover Country series of memoirs and family writings, is that many concepts are present in every generation, even if they work themselves out in different ways. This past year, my dad edited my grandfather’s World War II memoir. When they fell in love and married in 1940s America, my grandfather never made a mixtape and my grandmother probably thought of a playlist as something they had down at the radio station—but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have a personal list of favorite music.

In fact, thanks to my Uncle John, I actually have my grandparents’ “1940s playlist.” He burned a CD for their 60^th wedding anniversary, and not only do I still have mine, I still listen to it sometimes.

My grandparents’ playlist includes:

It Had to Be You • Swinging on a Star • Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree • If I Knew You Were Coming • Twelfth Street Rag • Mairzy Doats • You’ll Never Know • Three Little Fishies • A Feudin’ and a Fussin • Buttons and Bows • Abba Dabba Honeymoon • Beer Barrel Polka • I’m a Lonely Little Petunia • I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

Take a trip back in time, and give their 1940s playlist a listen.

When I’m writing, I can’t listen to music with lyrics. I need the only words to be the words inside my head. I prefer movie scores—and I have a strong preference for scores from movies that I don’t really know well, so that the imagery from the scene I’m writing is brighter and clearer than any other image the music might evoke. Better yet is music that could be a TV or movie score, that does not in fact have any associated visuals. My current faves are anything from Two Steps from Hell, and Jennifer Thomas.

What do you listen to for inspiration when you’re creating?