Bell Bridge Books

Music to Write By

by Eve Gaddy

For many writers music is an integral part of their process. Just as everyone has their own method of writing, everyone has their own way of incorporating music into their process. Some writers listen to music while they write, either a playlist they’ve made for the book, classical music, or as Roz Denny Fox once told me, “I have to listen to kickin’ country music. My husband made a classical playlist for me one time and I fell asleep.” On the other hand, my editor, Pat Van Wie, is another who listens to music while she writes. She listens to only classical piano music, with no words, preferably Chopin. Our musical tastes are as unique as our writing.

Each writer’s process is different, so it’s no surprise each writer has a different way of using music to aid in his or her writing. I can’t listen to music while I write. It’s far too distracting. I can’t even listen to instrumental because I’ll hum the tune. But I listen to music, and my playlists, at all other times. In the car, when I clean (Stop laughing. I wash out my coffeepot. That counts, doesn’t it?), when I shower, before I sit down to write. And listening while driving seems to help when I’m stuck.

I make a playlist for every book. When I first started writing I would only have one or two songs I played for the book, but then I discovered playlists! Much better. You can get awfully sick of a song you play 10,000 times. For me the playlist has to develop. I may start out with one song that’s key, and as I write, others are added and become more important.

Cry Love, is a book unlike anything I’ve ever written. While it is a romance, it’s also a love story. There are subtle differences. Love stories don’t always end happily. Just read the first scene of Cry Love and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So, yes, there’s tragedy in Cry Love but there is also triumph. And a love that won’t die.

When I first heard the song Cry Love by John Hiatt, I knew it would be important in writing this book. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it would be. For one thing, it’s a beautiful song. Then it dawned on me that Cry Love was the perfect title for this book. Haunting, beautiful, evocative, different.

My playlist for Cry Love includes songs about forbidden love, hopeless love, songs about mad, passionate, and dangerous love. One song, Andy Brown’s Ashes, I’ve yet to fully understand but it’s so beautiful I added it to the list. The Vivaldi Guitar Concerto by Los Romeros, was added just because I love it. Another song that really spoke to me was Jessica Andrews’ Helplessly, Hopelessly, Recklessly. Musical genres include Rock and Roll, Pop, Country, and Classical songs. Not every musical genre is represented in the Cry Love playlist. However, I cover a lot of genres in my playlists for upcoming books. I like variety. What can I say, I have eclectic tastes.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be tweeting, posting on Facebook and my website the songs from my playlist for Cry Love. Enjoy!

Here is my playlist for Cry Love, with links:

Cry Love John Hiatt http://bit.ly/1m0enN1

Ashes  Andy Brown http://bit.ly/1oVXJof

Helplessly, Hopelessly, Recklessly Jessica Andrews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVJPnEbOkA

Wrong to Love You  Chris Isaak http://bit.ly/1ohIhfL

Forbidden Love Jim Verraros http://bit.ly/1pzJORx

Lips of An Angel Hinder http://bit.ly/1djs3T7

The Right Kind of Wrong LeAnn Rimes http://bit.ly/UGkHCx

Standing on the Edge of Goodbye John Berry http://bit.ly/1j4fbBF

We Can Be Together Jefferson Airplane  http://bit.ly/1ncB28A

Dangerously In Love Beyoncé http://bit.ly/1qy5ehK

Wicked Game Chris Isaak http://bit.ly/1qX4EMY

Midnight Confessions The Grass Roots http://bit.ly/1ldq4Ug

Endless Love Lionel Richie & Diana Ross http://bit.ly/1pAhQ9t

Concerto in B Minor for 4 Guitars & Cello RV 580 (L’estro armonico No. 10): I. Allegro Los Romeros Vivaldi: Guitar Concertos http://bit.ly/VvOX3F

Click the cover above to buy CRY LOVE – out now!!

“I don’t listen to music when I write. I like silence. My mind fills with whispered words from other writers. Sometimes the words are from books, sometimes music, sometimes poetry. I remembered my favorite poems as I wrote ALL BEAUTIFUL THINGS. This is my poetry soundtrack.”

–Nicki Salcedo

1. “We wear the mask that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poem: “We Wear the Mask”
2. “And then last night I tiptoed up to my daughter’s room and heard her talking to someone, and when I opened the door, there was no one there…Only she on her knees, peeking into her own clasped hands” Amiri Baraka, Poem: “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note”
3. “We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, and bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, and we gave her all our money but our subway fares.” Edna St. Vincent Millay, Poem: “Recuerdo”
4. “How you must have wondered to see me taking chances, dancing on the edge of words, pointing out the bad guys, dreaming your x-ray vision could see the beauty in me.” Lucille Clifton, Poem: “note passed to superman”
5. “Her terrified hands will lie still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.” Adrienne Rich, Poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”
6. “And now the moon, earth’s friend, that cared so much for us, and cared so little, comes again—always a stranger!” Robert Lowell, Poem: “Public Garden”
7. “In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me. Not of woods only and the shade of trees.” Robert Frost, Poem: “Mending Wall”
8. “Don’t look now. I’m fading away into the gray of my mornings or the blues of every night.” Nikki Giovanni, Poem: “Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day”
9. “I lay waiting on the gravel bottom, my brain darkening, a jar of spawn fermenting underground dreams of Baltic amber.” Seamus Heaney, Poem: “Bog Queen”
10.  “In the mirror, the angles of the room are calm, it is the hour when you can see that the angle itself is blessed, and the dark globes of the chandelier, suspended in the mirror, are motionless” Sharon Olds, Poem: “After Making Love in the Winter”
11. “I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us.” Pablo Neruda, Poem: “Night on the Island”
12. “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.” Sylvia Plath, Poem: “Lady Lazarus”
13. “They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs.” James Wright, Poem: “A Blessing” 

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