Spent this morning writing my OU assignment, a draft of the first 4,000 words of a novel, listening to the playlist I had created for this project mentioned in my recent post on character themes.
So many gems in this list from the likes of Fleet Foxes, J. Tillman, Anthony & The Johnsons, The Shins, Spiritualized, Sam Amidon, and Marvin Gaye.
One song brought me up quick though, hitting just as I started writing the key part of the chapter. This song never fails to have me in tears. Easily some of the best words to ever be put to music.
I defy you to press play and not fall in love this song:
Dan Powell 
2 Responses to Iron and Wine are far better than we deserve.
Iron and Wine have Flightless Bird, American Mouth, on the original Twilight soundtrack which I played on speed rotation while writing Fourth Fiction last year.
Having now heard this song I might need to go for a visit to the CD store (yep – I am a Phillistine who still buys her music from a store!)
Thanks to you post on creating playlists and listening to all kinds of out of the ordinary music for myself while doing Gnarly Planning a few weeks ago – I realised one of my characters is a huge Janis Joplin fan. And that will do a lot to inform me on how to draw her in the narrative.
And a Dire Straits song “Hand in Hand” from the Making Movies album (showing all my daggy musical tastes now) gave me the hook into the start of that story with the lyrics:
And its another dirty river
And another dirty scar
And I don’t know whose kisisng you
And I don’t know where you are
So far from home
Don’t you think of me, sometime
This is just what this guy in my story is all about.
I know I couldn’t write if I didn’t have music. After writing prompts, music is the most influential force on my first draft.
If you’re buying Iron and Wine stuff, best place to start is probably the album with this track on – Our Endless Numbered Days.
Music is definitely a writers friend.
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