You know how sometimes your character just won't come alive? When they're hiding cheekily behind gauze-coloured mist, throwin' shapes that somehow look indistinct? You can't make those two central protagonists fall in love like you need them to; you can't convincingly render up the heartbreak, the regret, the emotional reaction to major life events like having a baby, moving house, or getting married? WORRY NO LONGER, for I have created not one, but THREE, inspirational writers playlists on Spotify! (Oh, I am so good to you. I gave up about 4 hours of my writing time in cause of this pursuit).
Just click the links and before you know it you'll be churning out a veritable Mills n' Boon flavoured love-fest / heartbreak odyssey / historic epic. You will need Spotify to run these playlists, which is easily and freely downloaded here
Writer's inspiration: Love
Writer's inspiration: Regret
Writer's inspiration: Life
Interestingly (or not, depending on your perspective), the "love" and "regret" playlists took a lot of evening up. The whole time I was making these, the Regret playlist was almost twice as long as the Love one.... make of that what you will.
Enjoy, there's plenty more where they came from!
Short story writer & novelist. K Blundell Trust award-winning Author, Saboteur Award winning editor (Remembering Oluwale), fiction editor at Strix Magazine. Director of the Northern Short Story Festival.
Showing posts with label spotify. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spotify. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Friday, 8 January 2010
Interesting article in The Guardian about how e-publishing could overtake the traditional ink and paper publishing format, given the right software.
Its an interesting idea, in which the reader can create 'playlists' of novels they like, in software akin to Spotify (the music streaming software). You know why this wouldn't work, though? Because books aren't the same as a three-minute pop song. You can't listen to a book in under three minutes. You can't divide your attention between reading a book, say, and crossing a road. What's the point of creating a 'playlist' of novels? It's not like you can flick between one novel and the next. You'd only get confused about the plot.
You know what would be a really great piece of software for voracious readers? A piece of software more like last.fm radio. Using Lost.FM radio, music fans can 'scrobble' (brackets: 'find') bands similar to their existing favourites. How could would that be if it existed for books?!! I would love to use a piece of software that recommended authors to me that wrote in similar styles to the ones I already enjoy. Existing recommendation systems are clunky at best, or embarrassingly wide of the mark at worst. I'm talking to YOU, Amazon Recommends. A Quiver Full Of Arrows, for me? Really?!
I can't be the only keen reader who'd love to be able to get personalised recommendations for new authors, recommendations of authors she's actually likely to enjoy. I would buy this software, for sure.
Its an interesting idea, in which the reader can create 'playlists' of novels they like, in software akin to Spotify (the music streaming software). You know why this wouldn't work, though? Because books aren't the same as a three-minute pop song. You can't listen to a book in under three minutes. You can't divide your attention between reading a book, say, and crossing a road. What's the point of creating a 'playlist' of novels? It's not like you can flick between one novel and the next. You'd only get confused about the plot.
You know what would be a really great piece of software for voracious readers? A piece of software more like last.fm radio. Using Lost.FM radio, music fans can 'scrobble' (brackets: 'find') bands similar to their existing favourites. How could would that be if it existed for books?!! I would love to use a piece of software that recommended authors to me that wrote in similar styles to the ones I already enjoy. Existing recommendation systems are clunky at best, or embarrassingly wide of the mark at worst. I'm talking to YOU, Amazon Recommends. A Quiver Full Of Arrows, for me? Really?!
I can't be the only keen reader who'd love to be able to get personalised recommendations for new authors, recommendations of authors she's actually likely to enjoy. I would buy this software, for sure.
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