The act of letter writing has inspired countless songs.

For your letter writing inspiration, we’ve created a special Spotify mix with an hour of inspiring music–plenty of time to write some letters this weekend. Follow this link to listen to the whole Spotify playlist.

Writers around the world are taking the Month of Letters Challenge this month. To keep the letter-writers in the audience motivated in February, we are posting letter writing resources, tools and inspiration.

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In John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s new essay collection, Pulphead, the journalist gives readers a deep introduction into the esoteric world of blues musicians and blues music collectors.

While reading “Unknown Bards” in the book, this GalleyCat editor built a Spotify playlist with eight hours of blues music by forgotten musicians that Sullivan celebrated in his book. If you want to read the original essay, you can find it at Harper’s Magazine.

Follow this link to listen to the list on Spotify. Once you have an account, check out our Haruki Murakami Spotify playlist, our Patti Smith Spotify playlist, our Geoff Dyer Spotify playlist and our new James Ellroy Spotify playlist.

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What’s your favorite writing music from 2011?

Share the songs or albums that inspired you in the comments section and we will add it to our growing Spotify playlist (also posted below)–it currently contains six hours of instrumental, Amazon’s best classical music of 2011, rock, folk, electronica and more for your listening pleasure.

If you want more inspiration, check out Largehearted Boy’s annual list of Year-End Music Lists. Every year this GalleyCat editor makes an annual collection of his favorite writing music from the year. We’ve posted the list below along with music from GalleyCat readers around the country. Follow this link to listen to the playlist.

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Over at Largehearted Boy, novelist Ben Ehrenreich created a free playlist for his novel, Ether. The list of artists that kept him inspired ranged from Gang of Four to Lucinda Williams to John Cale.

Follow this link to join the free service. We also recommend you check our “How to Control Your Facebook Apps” post to make sure you are happy with your privacy settings on Spotify. We’ve already built “12 Spotify Playlists for Writers.”

Here’s an excerpt from the essay (about “Sinnerman” by the great Nina Simone): “More running, more wandering. Everyone’s running in this book, even when they’re sitting still. Not just in this book perhaps. Running to or running from? No rock to hide you and when the river’s not bleeding it’s boiling. Same goes for the sea. Keep running, sinnerman. I’ll meet you there.”

Many National Novel Writing Month writers depend on music to keep working during the literary marathon.

To help keep you motivated, we’ve rounded up five great NaNoWriMo playlists we discovered on Spotify. Just follow the links below to access hours and hours of free writing music.

1. Kimberly Golden Malmgren’s List
2. Kaella’s List
3. Kendall Laszakovits’ List
4. Amanda E Ringqvist’s List
5. Andréa Solin’s List

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Both Knopf and Doubleday and have joined Spotify, building hand-picked music lists for their authors. The site includes a number of playlists, including mixes from Colson Whitehead, Erin Morgenstern, and Jennifer Egan.

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. We also recommend you check our “How to Control Your Facebook Apps” post to make sure you are happy with your privacy settings. We’ve already built “12 Spotify Playlists for Writers.”

Here’s more about Whitehead’s playlist for Zone One: “The undead take Manhattan in this literary and literal feast from award-winning author Colson Whitehead. The author selected these 10 songs to set the scene for his postmodern meditation on exterminating zombies in Manhattan.” (Via K.B. Abele)

Last week Facebook unveiled partnerships with different apps like Netflix, Spotify and other services. Along with these changes, Spotify suddenly started revealing your musical tastes in automated Facebook updates.

We love sharing writing music playlists on this blog, but it is very annoying to bombard your friends with live access to your listening habits. If you want to stop showing your friends what music you you listen to or movies you have rented, you need to disable a number of automatic features your privacy and app settings.

Instead of shutting down your Facebook page, just follow our steps below for cleaning up your Facebook settings and bring your apps back under control.

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The streaming music service Spotify allows readers to create and share playlists drawn from millions of songs online. Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service.

Once you have an account, we’ve rounded up twelve Spotify playlists for writers–hours and hours of writing music for you to enjoy. We love making music mixes, so we will create more playlists for writers.

If you have playlist suggestions, add them in the comments section for future posts.

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Eleanor Henderson had punk rock legends like Misfits and Minor Threat wailing throughout her debut novel, Ten Thousand Saints. GalleyCat reader Tim Frederick built a punk rock soundtrack for the book on Spotify.

Here’s an excerpt from the novel: “Jude was the one in Converse high-tops, the stars Magic Markered into pentagrams, and he wore his red hair in a devil lock–short in the back and long in the front, in a fin that sliced between his eyes to his chin. Unless you’d heard of the Misfits, not the Marilyn Monroe movie but the horror-rock/glam-punk band, and if you were living in Lintonburg, Vermont, in 1987, you probably hadn’t, you’d never seen anything like it.”

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. Once you have an account, check out our Patti Smith Spotify playlist, our Geoff Dyer Spotify playlist, James Ellroy Spotify playlist and the new Eleanor Henderson Spotify playlist.

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James Ellroy has a portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven mounted above his bed. Inspired by the crime novelist’s love of the great composer, we’ve created a three-hour Spotify playlist collecting James Ellroy’s favorite Beethoven music.

Read more about Ellroy’s favorite classical music here. In an interview, Ellroy once explained: “Classical music brings back the awe of life to me and the essence of drama, and I grew up digging big, thunderous, important (music). And wanting to create it in my own way. Which could only be the word.”

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. Once you have an account, check out our Haruki Murakami Spotify playlist, our Patti Smith Spotify playlist, our Geoff Dyer Spotify playlist and our new James Ellroy Spotify playlist.

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