Music When You Write

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For years, especially on Short Mystery, I've found myself drawn into the whole Music While Writing vs. Complete Silence debate. I haven't for a while, but my latest take is interesting. I've gotten really good at ignoring the television if I work evenings in the living room. However, as I type this now, I'm playing ocean sounds on my streaming app. 

Years ago, the then-spousal unit and I had a roommate who demanded a lot of attention. I, of course, wanted ours to be a couple's home, maybe eventually with a kid. (Spoiler alert: I later became a serial stepdad, but that's a different story.) So I would blast Metallica and Led Zeppelin through headphones to shut her (and the nearby TV) out. The roomie wanted to know how I got anything done playing loud music through the headphones. "I can't hear the rest of the world."

And really, if you have ADHD, diagnosed or not, music gives your wandering brain a place to go to and come back from. As the years went on, however, I liked that wall of sound as I wrote. It was particularly fun when a friend from Ireland started sending me blues CDs and certain members of the crime community latched onto Tom Waits. More recently, I rediscovered Yes (I'd kind of soured on any prog rock not played by Pink Floyd for a few years) and King Crimson. Plus my jazz phase.

When this debate comes up, people tend to center on what their brain wants. Coffee, followed closely by tea, is a given. Some people need calm, but not necessarily quiet. The most common response has been classical or ambient music at low volume. Although one scifi writer I know live-streamed as he wrote the last chapter of a book and played jazz in the background. Not sure I could do the live-streaming part. I've had people who wanted to peer over my shoulder as I write or wanted to read everything before it's finished. That results in a firm "No," followed by something more assertive when they don't take the hint. (Similarly, I hate reading unfinished manuscripts and refuse to do it as an editor.)

Some people want silence. Complete silence. The door is shut, and unless you're the cat (or a well-behaved dog), keep out. I get it. Absolutely no distractions. Also, there's a need to keep anything outside that might influence a story from getting in. Hence writers from Tolstoy to Chuck Wendig have write shacks. (John Scalzi bought a church, but I suspect he still writes at home, based on his blog.)

I'm of the low-volume music school of thought these days. Mind you, I don't listen to loud music as much as I used to. I was once the proud owner of the entire Led Zeppelin catalog on cassette, a Camaro, and an impressive mullet. (1987 or 88. No photographic evidence exists of either the hair or the car. I'm kind of bummed about the car.) Jazz can be played at lower volume, and I got into the jazz habit driving Uber. I could tell whether I'd like a passenger or not based on how they reacted to jazz. (Nearly threw one guy out of the car when he wanted "good music," but couldn't specify what that meant.)

Silence sounds very appealing. No noise other than the ambient noise of a house or the outdoors, maybe, as right this moment for me, the furnace kicking in. Sounds almost like meditation.

I think most of us need a little noise to write. Creatives' minds wander as it is, and music or ambient noise is a benign way to fill up space where the mind might go, "But how will The Bachelor end tonight?"