Music plays a huge role in my stories. It acts as inspiration, keeping the mood as I write, and there are often songs I make up that the characters sing.
In The Faithful Ones, the characters sing as they travel and do things, and one of my favourite songs was the basic outline of part two (Fighting With The Leopardess). In Brightheart, she sings various songs from her childhood and learns new ones throughout the story.
I listen to medieval folk, fantasy, game/movie soundtracks, Celtic, and sometimes Nordic/Viking. These either keep me focused, or make the atmosphere. If there are lyrics, it helps if they aren’t in English so I don’t get distracted — better yet is no lyrics, because I might learn them and get distracted anyway. I also listen to white noises such as rain or forest sounds in the background — RainyMood is good for this. Some of my most favourite artists are (in no order) Adrien Von Ziegler, Celtic Woman, Karliene, Ronan Hardiman (Lord of the Dance soundtrack), Harry Gregson-Williams (Narnia soundtrack), and Erutan. There’s some playlists on Spotify that I listen to a fair bit, called ‘Writing: Campfire’, ‘Writing: Adventure’, and ‘Writing: Peaceful’.
Side note: here’s a very very belated merry Christmas and happy new year! I hope you had fun doing whatever you did to celebrate, and best wishes for 2019.