Attention, Dj’s! It’s The Summer 2017 EPA SCBWI Playlist! by Lindsay Bandy

Music and inspiration are inseparable for me. Words, sounds, emotion, movement, color, memory, image, rhyme, phrasing, voice, mood….ah yes, my love for music is second only to my love of writing. For every project I’m working on, I have a *secrety* Spotify playlist that relates in one way or another to my theme, mood, characters, or conflict. I highly recommend this, because it’s fun! Imagine your book as a movie and you’re creating the soundtrack. Or imagine your main character or antagonist coming onto the stage to their very own theme song.

When I do Cafe Chats here on the blog, I like to ask my interviewees “What’s YOUR writing/illustrating theme song?” Not your book’s, or your character’s, or your villain’s, but YOURS, because the truth is, struggling through the crazy world of writing, illustrating, getting an agent, getting a contract, marketing, sales, competition, writer’s block, and rejection is one big glob of emotion. We go up, we go down, through major keys and minor keys and key changes. Sometimes we’re upbeat, other times achey-brakey, and maybe once in a while we go a little goth. We fall in love, we get dumped, we fall in love again. We hope, we lose, we persevere, we keep hoping. We fight, most often with ourselves. And then, there are those shiny moments when it all comes together. And for all of this, we need….a theme song. Wait, no…. how about a whole playlist?!?

So let’s do this! Put the songs that inspire you, uplift you, or even accompany your descent into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the comments. I’ll comb through the Cafe Chats and your comments to compile them all into a playlist we can share!

Here are a few of mine (hey, don’t judge…)

-Carry On by F.U.N.

-Shake it Out by Florence and the Machine

-The Climb by Miley Cyrus

-Roar by Katy Perry

Share yours in the comments and let’s create a killer playlist to get us through the ups and downs of the summer together!