I’ve been using Pandora a lot over the last few days, and it got me thinking about music that I can listen to while writing without changing the station every 5 seconds or skipping through songs until  I find something I can listen the whole way through.

What I listen to largely depends on my mood, and what I’m writing, but I do have a (fairly short) list of artists I can listen to all day.  Here’s the people I can listen to and never get tired of: 

• The Gin Blossoms
• Black Stone Cherry
• One Less Reason
• Rascal Flatts
• Taylor Swift
• Starkid Potter
• Draco and the Malfoys
• Harry and the Potters

  As far as Pandora goes, I’ve been listening to the showtunes and swing stations a lot.  Swing seems to be mostly instrumental, so I’m not distracted by singing along.  As for the showtunes, they’re fun enough that I’m not too distracted.  I’ve been adding a ton of new stations, so I’ll have plenty of new music to listen to. 

I get a lot of inspiration from music- one of my novels from 2008 was inspired by a song.  Other times, I’ll be writing, and a song will come on that’ll go perfectly with what I’m writing.  Music is a really nice distraction, and sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps me writing. 

And this year, I found that if I included each characters favorite music and artists, then it would be slightly easier to get into their head.  Like if I listened to what Kiora likes or what Chloe likes, it would be easier to write them.  Not that I ended up doing that, because I didn’t, but that was the reasoning behind it.  And it’s always interesting to know what kind of music they like.  Of course, it ended being stuff that I like, so I didn’t do it for everyone, but maybe next year.