Music is a HUGE creative influence for me. Being raised in a family of musicians, and having spent most of my life working in theatre, curating the soundtrack of my life is something I’m constantly thinking about.

My fellow writers all know the rush of making a writing playlist for a new project. Digging deep into lyrics and sound that encapsulates your story. For my non-writers, trust, it’s a very important part of the process.

As a vinyl collector my natural instinct is to listen to music album by album, start to finish, just as the artist intended. My best friend on the other hand? She loves to pick and choose which songs she’s in the mood for.

I’ve spent hours obsessing over my own work wanting to make sure my stories are perceived the exact way I envision them in my head. Hell, that’s human nature. We all curate the way we look, speak, and present ourselves to control our narratives, only for someone to take your song out of context and drop it into a playlist to further their own creative purposes.

But that’s good! Good art inspires more art, no matter how it’s consumed. Wether it’s the album as a whole, or a single song, the entire book, or a particularly poignant paragraph, people resonate with truth.

You can’t control how people perceive you, or your work. So you might as well make what you want, right? There’s something to be said about separating yourself from the audience. You’ll never be able to put your whole truth into your work if you’re bogged down, catering to the playlist-ers, the purists, and everyone else in-between.

Don’t be afraid to create from that squishy place beneath the sternum. That place that aches to let whatever it is that you make out. Don’t waste time or energy worrying so much about what people will think. Just let it out. Let the people make their playlists.