Using music to write...

People listen to music to feel emotions outside of the context of their own lives. Same with fiction. People read fiction to feel the emotions of characters who exist only in the minds' of readers. Can the same emotional goal be said for other art media? I'd say yes, with the caveat that experiencing photographs, sculptures, paintings, non-musical performance art, etc is more about the admiration of the craft, and experiencing music and stories are more about a direct tap into another world of emotion.

I don't write while listening to music, but of course, many writers do. I glanced over the playlist of some of my favorite songs and realized that the emotions the songs elicit in me are the same emotions I want my readers to feel when reading my books. (Of course, any emotion my readers feel from my books is great, but it's nice to imagine a shared [yet anonymous] emotional connections with people who've read the same book as you.)

A note further:

Fiction writers, what (if any) music do your characters have on their playlists?

What (if any) fiction do they read?

What emotions do they want to feel outside of the contexts of their own lives?

And another note further... What are the emotions sought by your non-human animal characters, or other sentient characters? Are these characters simply reflections of your human / transhuman / posthuman / humanoid characters, or do they have their own emotional lives?