“Wonderment Within Weirdness”: How Music Helped Me Write My Debut Novel

 Writing a novel is a long process. It takes time, patience, focus, and a lot of persistence. Anyone who has tried to write something long-form—especially something like a novel—knows that motivation can come and go. Some days the words flow easily and the ideas seem endless. Other days, writing even a single paragraph can feel like trying to push a massive boulder uphill. When I was writing my debut novel, Wonderment Within Weirdness, one of the most important things that helped me stay motivated throughout the process was music.

Music played a huge role in helping me stay focused, energized, and emotionally connected to the story while I was writing it. It became a kind of creative fuel. Whenever I sat down to write, music helped create the mental atmosphere that allowed me to immerse myself in the world of the story. Writing a novel often requires spending long stretches of time alone with your thoughts, imagining scenes, conversations, environments, and emotional moments. Having music playing while doing that helped keep my mind engaged and helped me maintain the energy necessary to keep pushing forward.

One of the biggest challenges when writing a novel is simply staying motivated over the long term. A book is not written in a single sitting. It is written across many writing sessions, sometimes across months or even years. During that time, there are inevitably moments where the excitement fades a little, or where the process begins to feel repetitive or exhausting. Music helped counter that. When I would start writing and turn on music, it often helped shift my mindset into a creative mode. It signaled to my brain that it was time to enter the imaginative space where the story lived.

Music also helped create emotional momentum while writing certain scenes. Different types of music evoke different moods. Some songs feel energetic and intense, while others feel reflective, mysterious, or emotional. When writing a story that contains action, tension, humor, strange moments, and philosophical ideas, having music playing in the background helped me tap into those different emotional tones more easily. The music didn’t dictate the story, but it helped amplify the emotional atmosphere I was trying to create.

Another important aspect of music during the writing process was rhythm. Writing, in many ways, has its own rhythm. Sentences flow together, dialogue moves back and forth, and scenes build momentum before eventually transitioning into the next moment of the story. Music naturally has rhythm as well, and listening to it while writing sometimes helped me fall into a kind of creative flow. When that happened, writing began to feel less like a task and more like a continuous stream of ideas moving from imagination onto the page.

There were also moments where music helped me push through writer’s block. Writer’s block is something that most writers encounter at some point. Sometimes you know roughly what you want to happen next in the story, but the exact wording or structure just doesn’t come easily. In those moments, stepping away for a moment and listening to music—or simply letting a song play while continuing to type—sometimes helped break that mental barrier. Music can shift your emotional state in subtle ways, and that shift can open the door to new ideas.

Another way music helped was by keeping me company during long writing sessions. Writing can be a solitary activity. You’re spending long periods of time sitting in front of a screen or notebook, building a fictional world piece by piece. Music helped fill that quiet space with energy. It made the writing sessions feel less isolated and more immersive. Instead of sitting in silence, I felt surrounded by sound and creativity, which helped keep my mind active and engaged.

The connection between music and storytelling is not surprising when you think about it. Music itself tells emotional stories through sound, rhythm, and tone. Even without lyrics, music can evoke powerful feelings and images in a listener’s mind. Those emotional cues can spark imagination, which is exactly what a writer needs when constructing a fictional narrative. In that sense, music and writing complement each other very naturally.

When I think back to the time I spent writing Wonderment Within Weirdness, many of those writing sessions are connected in my memory with the music I was listening to at the time. Certain songs or types of music remind me of specific parts of the creative process. They remind me of late-night writing sessions, bursts of inspiration, and the gradual development of a story that started as an idea and slowly grew into a completed novel.

Music also helped maintain motivation during moments when the project felt overwhelming. Writing a book—especially a first novel—can feel intimidating. There are moments where you look at the entire project and think about how much work still lies ahead. During those moments, music helped me focus on the present moment rather than the entire mountain I still had to climb. Instead of thinking about finishing the entire novel, I could simply focus on writing the next scene while the music played in the background.

That mindset shift is important for any long creative project. Breaking the work into smaller moments—one paragraph, one page, one scene at a time—makes the process much more manageable. Music helped reinforce that sense of steady progress. Each writing session became its own creative moment, supported by whatever music happened to be playing while I worked.

Another interesting aspect of listening to music while writing is that it can subtly influence the energy of the prose itself. Fast-paced music can encourage quicker, more energetic writing, while slower or more atmospheric music can encourage more reflective or descriptive passages. I didn’t consciously try to match music to specific scenes all the time, but the background atmosphere definitely contributed to the tone of certain writing sessions.

Looking back, I can honestly say that music was one of the most consistent companions during the creation of Wonderment Within Weirdness. It helped me stay motivated, helped me focus, and helped me maintain the creative energy needed to bring the story to life. Writing a novel requires persistence, and music helped reinforce that persistence when motivation fluctuated.

In a way, the process of writing the book and the experience of listening to music became intertwined. The songs I listened to during that time became part of the creative journey. They were present during moments of inspiration, during moments of struggle, and during the long stretch of time it took to transform an idea into a finished story.

For readers, the final book may simply appear as a complete narrative waiting to be explored. But behind the scenes, the process of writing it involved countless small creative moments. Music was present in many of those moments, quietly supporting the process and helping me stay connected to the world of the story.

So while Wonderment Within Weirdness ultimately exists as a novel, its creation was influenced by many forms of creativity, including music. The rhythm, emotion, and energy of music helped fuel the writing process and kept me moving forward when the journey felt long.

In that sense, music didn’t just accompany the writing of the book—it helped make the writing possible.