Getting in the mood for writing
Some simple tricks
Goooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you might happen to be!
It’s still Easter Vacation here in Swissland, but I am, of course, working nonetheless. And I’m writing in a few verrrrrrry different modes at the moment.
There’s my academic writing, which right now mostly consists of the 600-year history of Chaucerian obscenity I’m trying to revise before the summer.
There’s my proposal/application writing, most of which is finished but some of which will trickle forward into the coming months.
There’s my comedy writing, which has taken a back seat to most things since the start of 2025, and which I’m trying to resuscitate with the help of a few comedy-writing comrades.
And then there’s the just-for-fun project I work on late at night or when nobody’s looking, a silly medievalist fantasy novel based on an idea I’ve had for a long time.
Getting in the mood for writing can be a challenge no matter what you’re working on, but it can be extra difficult when you’re frequently shifting between genres or forms. So I thought I’d share a few of the simple (and sometimes silly) tricks I use to do this!
Mood music
When I was first writing cover letters and grant proposals as an ECR years ago, I was finding it difficult to write about myself and my work with confidence. Then I got to read a successful friend’s cover letter (which I immediately dubbed ‘the Jason Bourne of cover letters’) and realised that I really needed to up my game.
So I put together a playlist of grandiose or ‘strutting’ music that I started to listen to on a loop whenever I was writing cover letters. Most of it consisted of classical music—Carl Orff’s ‘O Fortuna’, Wagner’s ‘Die Valküre’, the first and third movements of Grieg’s piano concerto in A. (Just in case this seems a little high-brow, please know that I checked the playlist a moment ago and it also includes LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I Know It’.) The music helped me get in a more confident frame of mind. Sometimes I even played around with making ridiculously self-aggrandizing claims about my work or my future research plans, which I then toned down to something much more sane.
This is a trick I’ve turned to more recently for my fantasy project. I was inspired by the husband of a friend of mine, who apparently puts on headphones and blasts ‘fantasy’ music whenever he’s reading Lord of the Rings, which makes me love him even more than I already did. When I was having a hard time cracking a few plot points, I listened to the Dungeons and Dragons film soundtrack, and the original music for the Mythic Quest series. Straightaway, I felt like I was in the fantasy zone—I could practically picture my characters and the setting of my story.
I haven’t tried using music when I’m writing comedy, but if I do I might start with something like the soundtrack to Avenue Q….
Read the greats
Sometimes the input I need to get in the mood for a particular piece of writing is other people’s writing. More specifically, I need to read what great writers have written, and what they’ve written about their own writing practices. Sometimes this sparks an idea for a new format for a piece of short humour, or a plot twist for a story. If I’m lucky enough to get to read another person’s successful grant application, it might help to clarify what the weak or strong points of my own application are.
At the moment, to get back in the comedy-writing zone I’m reading
’s Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers, which feels like a sneak peek behind the scenes of every one of my favourite funny movies and sitcoms. I’m also keeping up a steady stream of Terry Pratchett Discworld reading, which helps me to see just how much room for humour there is in fantasy writing. Some of the ‘greats’ I’m reading are ‘successful’ rather than extremely well written. For instance, I’m reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series for my 10-year-old son (though some of the writing makes me grimace, it’s also proof of how effective action scenes are when it comes to pulling young readers in).Binge-watch the greats
Hear me out!! If you’re interested in a certain kind of writing, you have to immerse yourself in it. And one of the kinds of writing you can immerse yourself in is the kind that’s written for the big (or small) screen!
I’m not alone in championing binge-watching as part of the writing process. The brilliant
has repeatedly argued that this is something comedy writers should be doing on a regular basis if they want to improve their craft (she even provides her students with lists of key sitcoms and dramedies they should watch). Even the Second City courses that focus on writing satire for the internet assign sketches for students to watch as part of their coursework.So why not make a little ‘mandatory viewing list’ for yourself? If you’re writing comedy, this could include all the most famous funny films of all time (including some you don’t particularly enjoy yourself, or don’t think you’d enjoy). Ditto for fantasy: it’s time to binge-watch LOTR (GoT might be a little intense for some). And as for nonfiction or grant proposals, why not try watching a few TED talks or documentaries to see how people package their expertise for different audiences?
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VB,
M