The Sound and the Thunder

by Allison Pang

I have over 16,000 songs on my iPod. I am a hoarder of music, constantly adding, constantly shuffling - everything from Celtic to country to Rob Zombie to Romany to classical to techno to whatever. I am the crazy cat-lady of the music,  living in my piles of half-forgotten notes and sweeping scales.

I don't build specific playlists for writing or editing. I simply put it on random and let it go. Not that each piece of writing doesn't have its own soundtrack per se, but it's not one I consciously build up. (And not that I don't write music *into* the stories - in the case of the Abby books, I refer to various songs quite a bit - often the songs that I'm listening to at the moment. The fact that Abby owns an enchanted iPod? Yeah. that's all me.)

But in either case, music is my one true solace throughout the day. A standard rush hour can take me well over an hour to go 12 miles. I work in a cube made of glass that is maybe chest high. I literally start to twitch if I don't have my headphones on for most of the day since it's my only way to escape the fact that I live in a fishbowl. (I take the music seriously. I just bought a new car and hated the stereo so much I replaced all the speakers, installed an amp and a subwoofer for way more money than I should have. But...it makes me happy. I brainstorm in the car a lot - might as well have some thumping bass to go with it, eh?)

When it comes to writing, I'm much the same way. I require the music to shut out the rest of the world. (There are limits, of course - if I'm home alone with the kids, I don't use headphones for obvious reasons, though I tend to write better with them than without. Something about drowning out the rest of the distractions leads to a more productive session more often than not.

On current heavy rotation is Orchard of Mines by Globus (they rework trailer music by Immediate Music). The video below is actually one I found that tells a bit of the story from the Dragon Age/Dragon Age 2 games - so if you're interested in playing them you might not want to watch - lots of spoilers)