Music that Inspired RoboNomics Chapter 4

Hey, all! Welcome to another installment of soundtrack preview for RoboNomics. Chapter 4 is coming out on Wattpad Monday, January 27th at midnight EST! Excited? I know I'm excited for you to read it!

In Chapter 4, we find Andrea coping with the day of day of her post-teaching existence. She's come back to the United Workers Protest Group headquarters and she's working at her robot technician job part-time at her old school. However, things are not straightforward in the new job. She makes a discover about the teaching android, the I.I.U., that is frightening...but also opens up a possibility for the Protest Group to really make some waves. The question is, will Andrea let them?

While I was working on the chapter this week, here's some of the tracks that inspired me:

Fantastical Music

Today I thought I'd take you through some of my classics of inspiration when it comes to writing fantasy plots.


It's quite a mix, isn't it? And yet it is so easy for to curate all the songs that have, throughout the years, inspired me to write fantasy. It is my first genre. Some of the tracks are not surprising: In the Hall of the Mountain King and the Lord of the Rings-inspired Ramble On.

However it also struck me, while I was putting together this playlist, that many of my "fantastical" songs are very young and hopeful in nature. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I think fantasy, I think young adult novels. Just the nature of my project, I suppose.

I've tried to front-load some of the more peppy, youthful songs and have the list of the list contain more of the predictable or strange, dark songs. Songs about traveling, songs about far-off places. This is my personal list of songs that inspire fables, fairy tales, fantastical adventures. I hope you enjoy!

Music that Inspired RoboNomics Chapter 3

Hey everyone! I'm working on some stuff for my other blog, as well as working hard on RoboNomics Chapter 3! While you wait for all that to be complete, enjoy the soundtrack to Chapter 3:



Hey at least I managed to get a Chapter 3 preview pic out! Lots of work this week!

Music for Revision

I'm working on some editing and revision bits today and so I thought I'd post up a playlist of the songs I prefer to listen to while undertaking such tasks.

For me, I need to do my revisions and editing with as little distraction as possible. Since the tasks involve heavy amounts of reading one's own work, what I need most is focus. And being a wordy sort, I just can't focus when someone is singing words that I understand or want to understand.

Drafting is a different story. When I am writing a first draft or when I am brainstorming I can let my mind wander as much as I want. I can sit at a desk with music playing of any sort and just let the ideas come. But for revision, I turn to one of three main types of music for concentration: symphonies/classical music, trippy or sparse ambient soundscapes, or movie scores.



You'll notice a lot of those tracks are looooong. That's good for me. The longer, the better. Even a jarring transition from one short song to the next can be distraction enough. But the funniest thing about editing and revision, for me, is that I pretty much always need to have music playing. If I don't, the silence is almost as distracting as having lyric-heavy ditties playing in the background.

What about you? Can you concentrate on editing if you're listening to singing?

Just for Fun Friday

This might become a series. A song on a nice Friday to kick off your weekend. A song that inspires me, gets me revved up, motivates me to write, or feels atmospheric. For this week, It's "Needle" by Born Ruffians.

I don't know what it is about this song. It starts off feeling depressing. But there's something about the chorus that really gets me pumped. And then there's something about the lyrics that makes me feel as if I could write the character who would sing along with all earnestness.

What are you listening to on this fine Friday morning? Soundtracks for writing Action scenes? Love Scenes? or perhaps some wordless soundscapes for revision?

Music that Inspired RoboNomics Chapter 2

See? I told you! RoboNomics is taking over this blog! But I promise this will be the last week that I will have two posts concerning the serial novel since I intend these playlists in particular to be little tantalizing previews of Next Monday's Chapter. That first chapter playlist was just a catch-up since this is the first week back from holidays.

So the format of this blog will go from a once a week entry to a twice a week entry: one concerning RoboNomics inspiration, and the other concerning music that inspires other aspects of the writing process in general. Cool. All right. Now onto the list!


There's no way you can figure out what will happen in the chapter by listening to the music. That's not really the point of the list. Think of it more as a soundtrack to the chapter or the soundtrack to my frame of mind when I wrote the first draft.

Music that Inspired RoboNomics - Chapter 1

Hey everyone! Back from holidays. And I'm afraid that my big 2014 project -- RoboNomics in serial form -- is going to occupy quite a lot of this blog.

And so, in celebration of my having guts enough to release my work into the world, I give you a very special playlist: the songs that inspired RoboNomics Chapter 1: