Ashley Honeysett’s novella Fictions is an inventively told and surprising account of the writing life.
Hugh Sheehy wrote of the book:
“Simultaneously novella-in-stories, plague journal, memoir, and meditation on writing, Ashley Honeysett’s Fictions illuminates and explores the mind of a storyteller wrestling with the essential strangeness of writing fiction at a time when a common story has eluded us all. A box of finely made enchantments.”
In her own words, here is Ashley Honeysett’s Book Notes music playlist for her novella Fictions:
This is a list of music to write by. I have trouble paying attention to anything else when a song with lyrics is playing, so these are mostly instrumental. Words, in the songs that have them, are spare, or hard to understand, or incantatory, or they blend in with the other sounds. Mood music can fill you with yearning, which is a great state of mind to write from. I like to listen to whole albums, so this mix is mostly the first song from each album that I love to play while I work, mostly in alphabetical order by artist. You should listen to the whole albums too, and sit near a window.
“Lonely Woman” by Ornette Coleman
This one can be a little hard to ignore because it starts to feel like the saxophone is talking, but sometimes it’s good to be taken out of your reverie.
“Soul Vibrations” by Dorothy Ashby
This jazz harp album from 1968 will make you feel like you’re sitting around the coolest split-level living room.
“Tokyo Witch” by Beach House
I can’t imagine what beach house they were talking about. Something derelict and haunted.
“John McLaughlin” by Miles Davis
Miles Davis has a couple of albums that evoke imaginary places for me (Sketches of Spain is the other), and that’s what fiction writing is all about.
“September Fields” by Frazey Ford
One of the most lyrics-forward of all the songs on this list, but not enough that I’ve learned them, so it can’t be that distracting.
“Ready, Able” by Grizzly Bear
These songs increase in urgency just like music at a nightclub, but instead of making me dance they just make me real angsty.
“Boogie Stop Shuffle” by Charles Mingus
All music by Charles Mingus tells me it’s time to sit still and have a large inner life.
“On the Table” by Oddissee
I’d been listening to this album for years before I learned that Oddissee is not primarily an instrumental artist. He’s on the cover drinking a cup of coffee, and he seems like the café owner with the most exquisite taste in records.
“I Decline” by Perfume Genius
If you’re going to make risky work, you need a soul full of steel.
“Gnossienne No. 1 – Lent” by Erik Satie
Everyone goes oh yes, I’ve heard this somewhere.
“Easy” by Son Lux
Another album where the songs build in intensity in a way that really manipulates my moods.
“Plutonian Nights” by Sun Ra
This song gives me a vague mental picture of a big jazz band performing on another planet. If you’re making ambitious work, you should have ambitious role models.
“Tiwàyyen” by Tinariwen
Throughout this album, the mixture of vocal texture and electric guitar just sound really good, but I can’t get distracted by the lyrics because I don’t speak the language.
Ashley Honeysett has lived throughout the United States as well as in Ireland and Japan and is now raising a child with her husband outside of Chicago, where she works as a fundraiser for environmental nonprofits. She studied creative writing at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and published poetry and prose in journals there and at Michigan State University. Fictions is her first book.