Shauna's Playlist

Hey, look: it's W6 chum Shauna Seliy, posting over on Largehearted Boy. We posted about Shauna last month when her terrific book When We Get There came out, and now she's offering up a short essay about the music she listened to while writing the book, complete with playlist. A sample:

In movies, there’s often a single defining moment when a character seems to be asked, “Are you going to give up?” Maybe in a hard driving rain on an obstacle course, late at night, and the character lets loose a kind of primal shout at the dark sky. No! we understand, no he won’t give up! If the thing you are trying to do is write a book, and if you’re accompanied by the kind of bloodthirsty self-doubt that beset me throughout that process, the question presents itself more on the order of every few minutes. And you are more likely sitting in a crowded coffee shop wondering if your computer will get stolen while you’re in the bathroom. Or thinking, taking a look at a nearby homeless man writing messages on napkins, that the only thing that separates you from him is your laptop. Or maybe the question will present itself to you in the form of roiling night sweats caused by the deep tissue knowledge of your credit card balance that your body seems to have acquired. Or it’s possible that you read a little Alice Munro the night before, maybe a few lines of Chekhov. In the clear light of day, you know you’re screwed. They’ve done it all, and done it better than you ever could even if you were to stay at the coffee shop 24 hours a day for the rest of your life.

Read the post, listen to the music, buy the novel.