Oof. So the bad stuff is that I've been feeling really depressive lately, just because the sickness continues and continues and continues and... (I felt just awful last night, literally not even being able to turn around for a few hours because turning made my head go so whooshy and horrible...and being that sick just feels scary and hopeless, even when I tell myself it's only temporary and will get better.) Plus, of course, I've barely been out of the house for the past 5 weeks, and that's depressing enough in itself. Ergo the grumpy blog entry yesterday...Justina has been a wonderfully comforting friend, feeding me tea and Buffy episodes, and Patrick has of course been amazing above and beyond the call of husband-hood, but in the end, of course, it's down to me to feel better.

We're leaving tomorrow for a week down south in Patrick's mum's house, hoping that fresh country air and a change of scene will do some good, at least in terms of mood. (I can stare at different walls, while I lie on a different couch, which has to be a good thing...) I hate how depressed I've been feeling, but it seems to be typical of the illness. Feeling this weak and woozy just makes me feel really awful psychologically as well as physically. Can't wait to start feeling better, sometime soon...

So. That's the bad stuff.

In a more cheer-me-up arena, I just read Mike Jasper's post about finding his perfect novel soundtrack, which made me think about my own novels' soundtracks.

Being an opera geek, I wrote Masks & Shadows thinking about Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro all the way through (although the actual plot/thematic overlap is only tangential), but I listened to Haydn operas and songs non-stop, since Haydn is a character in the novel, and two of the POV characters are singers in his opera troupe, performing his newest opera. So, when I started Congress of Shadows, of course I had another opera in mind, even though none of my characters are musicians this time: Beethoven's Fidelio, which premiered in Vienna the same year as my novel, was performed during the Congress of Vienna, and has a bit of lovely thematic overlap (at least if you squint, close one eye, and peer really hard). And I had a vague idea that I should probably listen to lots of Schubert string quartets, song cycles, etc., while I wrote.

Uh-uh. Instead, the single best CD I've found to listen to while writing CoS is Evanescence's Fallen. It's Goth-slash-metal, it's angsty, it is--needless to say--totally the wrong period...and the lead woman singer has such a pure voice as she sings songs that are SO totally perfect for my heroine, her damaged history and her current state of mind (and even her romance). Sooooo not what I expected...but the moment I put that music on, I go straight into Caroline's mindset.

The other two CDs that are turning out to be perfect writing music this time around aren't in any possible way related to the novel, but they really work: Pink Martini's Hang On Little Tomato, because it makes me lighten up when I'm getting panicky and blocked and taking myself way too seriously; and David Byrne's Grown Backwards, partly because it used to play in Starbucks all the time during my writing sessions there (so I've developed a Pavlovian response), and partly because the lyrics are just so quirky that they somehow make me relax and enjoy the writing process instead of freezing up on it.

How about everyone else? What do you guys listen to while you write?