I decided a few days ago (or a week ago, honestly I can’t remember because time moves differently during Nanowrimo season) that I would write a post about the 10 songs that have kept me the most HYPE for Nanowrimo.
I should specify, mostly these are songs that just give me a burst of energy or a boost of confidence. They don’t necessarily relate to the content that I’ve been writing for my novel or how I’ve been feeling in my personal life. These are just them good, high energy jams that give me something more to keep going.
The general format I want to stick to for this is SONG TITLE – ARTIST followed by a SONG LYRICS/COUPLET that I really admire from the song with a small blurb about what the lyrics mean to me and why the song keeps me going.
And on that note – here – we – go…
Friendly reminder that none of these songs come in any particular order.
1. WHERE THE LINES OVERLAP – PARAMORE
“There’s nothing to it, I’ve never been happier, Never been happier”
~So this song lyric just embodies my love for writing. Every decision I make is based on three things: how does it affect my family, how does it affect my mental health, and can I keep writing if I do this? Writing is such a fundamental part of my identity that I know I’m my happiest when I’m writing. The longer I go without it, the more unstable I feel as a person.
As for the hype aspect of this song, it’s just such a positive and energetic composition. This is a song about doing the thing that you love, and no matter the cost, it makes you happy. If you have never heard this song, seriously, give it a listen now. It has been a favorite of mine since it’s release on brand new eyes in 2009.
2. LOOKING UP – PARAMORE (seriously a trend already??)
“We always pull through when we try”
~There are so many good lyrics in this song, but during Nanowrimo, this line comes in the first verse and gives me a kick. It is just a reminder that I can do this, and I will do it because I’m always going to try to see my projects through.
That alone is enough to keep my hype, but this falls into the same vein as “Where the Lines Overlap,” because it is a song about seeing the good that is coming. A long battle upward has given the band their dream, and I’m on that same path. I love creating the parallel between that adventure and my own. Especially with the bridge.
“God knows the world doesn’t need another band book, Whoa-oa, Whoa-oa, But what a waste it would’ve been, Whoa-oa, Who-ah.”
3. GIVE ME HOPE – NEW POLITICS
“But maybe if you just let me try, I can make you a believer, make you a believer”
~Even though this song is about love, and the singer is trying to convince this other person to give them a chance, I like it for a very different reason. To me, when I’m writing, this is a song about giving myself as a reader the content that I would enjoy. When I am creating something, I am creating it for myself, but before I was a writer, I was a reader. All writers start as readers because they have to know the words before they can use them for everything they can do. So, I make sure I would want to read what I’m writing while I am piecing it all together.
The vibe of this song is very exciting and fast paced. It does create this feeling of hope and I find myself skipping around to find it when I’m feeling like garbage about where my story is going. Then I feel fresh and ready for whatever comes next after I’ve given it a listen.
4. NOVACAINE – FALL OUT BOY
“If you knew, knew, what the bluebirds sang at you, You would never sing along”
~I love this line for such a morbid reason, so please try to hold your judgment. For me, this line signifies those dark foreshadowing moments that are designed to make you FEEL or make you HURT. There are subtle things (I hope they’re subtle at least) that I write into my stories that give hints about characters and plot ideas. So I think of this line as me telling my readers, like, listen, if you only knew what messed up shit is coming your way, oh boy, you’d punch me. I don’t know yet if I’m actually that talented as a writer, but I feel that talented – hence my process of thinking with this line.
And this song is super heavy, more in the style of rock that most of Fall Out Boy’s work, which makes it so hard to skip over. It demands your attention, and that’s super motivating. I want my book to demand the reader’s attention in the same way.
5. The [Shipped] Gold Standard – FALL OUT BOY (yes again)
“Sometimes I wanna quit this all and become an accountant now”
~I cannot tell you how many times I’ve told myself that I’m never going to make it, that I’m never going to be published, that everyone hates my work. In the summer of 2017, I got a review on a piece of fanfiction telling me to kill myself and that I was a shit writer with no talent. I was preparing to participate in Nanowrimo after quitting a fanfiction writing competition, and that was a major hit to my confidence. But I decided that I couldn’t let it stop me. So I tweeted the review because I wanted to hold myself accountable for my actions after receiving it. That wasn’t the first negative review I had gotten, as it had been several months in the making, some anonymous dickweed sending negativity to me and trying to get me to stop what I was doing.
It’s hard to not quit when you see people younger than you doing the thing that you want to do with the rest of your life, hard when you see people who don’t actually care about the craft of writing a good story being published, hard when nobody you love reads the stuff you’re writing. It flat out sucks. Many days that suicidal part of my defective brain tries to make me quit.
But I’ve been at this for too long to quit now.
6. WHERE DID THE PART GO – FALL OUT BOY (I may have a problem, but this is the last one I swear)
“I know I expect too much, and not enough, all at once”
~If there is a writer in the world that does not feel this way about their writing, find me, teach me, guide me, because I need that sort of power in my brain. The thing is, I know I’m a hell of a writer. I can tell a good story and I can draw emotions, even with all this room for improvement that I have right now. That sounds like confidence, right? That must feel like confidence.
Not really. All it means is that I’m at war with myself all the time. As soon as this song comes on, though, I just keep going. This song is about pursuing something, someone, and it’s all about being a mess and still wanting this thing anyway. I can relate to that so much that it’s kind of painful. I know that my writing needs some sort, but it’s good, and so I keep doing it anyway. I keep chasing this dream, this great party of life where I get to do this as a job – every – single – day. Plus, it is a bouncy song that makes you want to dance. Dancing and writing go surprisingly well together.
7. OH GLORY (a demo song) – PANIC! AT THE DISCO
“If I wake in the morning, I only need two more miracles to be a saint,
Everything I promised everyone I’d be, Well I just ain’t.”
~This is a long chunk of the song, but it is the one that speaks to me the most as because I financially screwed myself when I switched jobs. I was very suicidal at my stable job that came with a reliable, salaried income. I loved my work but it didn’t let me write anymore, as my responsibilities seemed to increase every few months. The whole experience was suffocating, even if I came out stronger for it. But I had just bought a house while my husband had taken a pay cut to get into a better paying job. It ended up being the longest 4-year adjustment of my life. We are only just now kind-of getting out of the massive financial hole, and it hasn’t been without help and support from a lot of really amazing people.
We’re happier now, of course, and I get to write more than I ever have before in my life. It’s satisfying, and it makes every struggle so much less daunting. My son is seeing me pursue my dream of being a writer and it gives him the passion and work ethic to pursue soccer as a career. We both want for big, big things, but we’re both capable. It makes me cry thinking about the fact that he gets to see me at my happiest because I almost wasn’t happy. Even though I have so little to my name, and some of it was ghostwriting work too, I try not to let it get to me that I’m not at that finish line yet.
The last comment on this song, though, is that despite how depressing the lyrics are, it is a fast-moving composition that talks about being a failure and what a pain in the ass that feels like at the moment. Being able to hear the ache alleviates some of the pain, and it gives me a boost to keep writing.
8. BONFIRE – THE HUNNA
“If you hate me then why do you care”
~Listen, when you put your self and your work out for people to enjoy, you’re putting it out there for people to hate. Just a couple of days ago I was talking about skin colors for the characters in my story. My friend was telling me that I should be prepared for backlash about one of my antagonists being a person of color. It could rattle some cages and make people angry, right? I didn’t make this character a person of color because I’m racist, or because I want to make a statement about an entire race of people. I just wanted to make it accurate to the location where the character is living, which is on an island. I know there’s work to be done with it, my portrayals aren’t perfect – and honestly super white because I’m white. I’ll be fixing it up in post, but we had that conversation.
And really, if someone doesn’t like my work, that’s fine, but if you hate it enough to criticize every tiny detail to the point of obliteration, why the hell are you even reading it? We all deserve critical feedback, and I will always take the critical-but-kind feedback seriously, but if you’re here to TROLOLOLOL your way through my psyche, you can find yourself a lovely hole and stay there, please and thanks.
9. FEEL IT STILL – PORTUGAL. THE MAN (yes, there really is a period in the name)
“I’m a rebel just for kicks, now”
~I don’t like to be predictable and I don’t like to write what sells. I talk about it all the time with comments to my fellow writers like: “But that will sell,” “That is so marketable,” and “People will buy that.” I can’t kick the business school habit, I guess. I can see the money value in everyone else’s work, and I can definitely see it in mine as well. But I go for shock-and-awe value. I want people to read my stuff, not because it’s predictable, not because it follows the traditional form, but because I challenge the ideas of literature and storytelling. I go for raw, I go for representative, I go for broken. I write real people with real struggles. That doesn’t always sell, although – the tides, they are a’changin’, aren’t they?
Besides the obvious bopping vibe of the song, it is chock full of lines that make you sort of drop your jaw. This song is a challenge to the traditional lyricism of popular music, but here this song is, on the radio, enjoyed by the masses. It represents what I want to represent, and that gives me so much life when I’m trying to power through another day of word sprints.
10. PARADISE – GEORGE EZRA
“If it feels like paradise running through your bloody veins,
You know it’s love heading your way.”
~This is definitely a love song, and I am stupid in love with George Ezra’s music and voice. As for these lyrics, I can liken the vibe of the song to the way writing just feels in my soul. I love writing and so when I’m doing it, it’s wild. It’s a wild and great thing that I get to do and this is how it feels – like love bursts from my veins with every word that I type.
The added bonus of listening to this, of course, is that it feels good and sounds good and makes you sway with happiness. George Ezra brings so much brightness to the world with his music and I am so crazy thankful for it.
If you haven’t already, give each of these songs a listen. I’ve linked each song on the link individually, so there’s no excuse. It was hard narrowing down the many songs that motivate me to keep working. I have a list on YouTube with 235 songs that I listened to from both last year and this year’s Nanowrimo season. A good chunk of these songs are not on that list, of course, because I bounce back and forth between YouTube (where I listen to the newer music I enjoy) and iTunes (where all of my old jams can be revisited).
Honestly, I would love to hear what songs you really enjoy listening to, and which ones motivate you to keep writing. If you are feeling froggy, why don’t you comment with your Top 5 or Top 10 motivational songs that have been getting you through the Nanowrimo season? I’d love to give them a listen.
Until my update in a couple days about the fourth week of Nanowrimo writing, you are loved.
—ab
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