The Music In Our Heads

It's generally understood writers take in stimulus from every direction in order to build our own worlds. One of the primary stimuli is music, or the lack thereof. It informs our process. I personally end up with specific portions of a work or even certain characters finding their theme song on my IPod or the radio. (If it's the radio, I am compelled to own the song fairly soon in order to recapture the moment of bliss that comes from knowing this song evokes something specific.)

In my writing group, it has become generally understood, to a degree, we are all music junkies. Whether it is with words or without words, we have to have some kind of musical accompaniment to make the magic happen. Honestly, whether it is with or without words becomes a matter of debate because one section of the book may be written to one song while another is written to something else entirely.

Right now, I'm under the spell of the original soundtrack for "Pacific Rim". It's big, very big, considering it's the soundtrack to a movie about SAVING THE WORLD, which is what my main character is currently having to deal with (along with a few side quests), it really needed to be. That and the movie needed to fit with the giant robots and epic monster battles.

What do you listen to when you're writing? Do your characters fall in love with a certain song playing in the background?