Do you listen to music when you write?

[ShelbyDawn57]

There's a thread that pops up every now and then asking what your listening to right now. I haven't responded because I don't listen to music when I write and I'm usually on here while I'm writing. You can make you own judgments on the productivity level drop from that.

Anyway, I came across this article just a few minutes ago and thought it would/could be an interesting discussion.

As I mentioned, I don't listen to music when I write because I tend to get lost in the music and not focus on my writing, so. What's your milage?

 

[NuclearFairy]

I usually listen to music, it helps me get into the proper mind frame for whatever I'm writing. However, I should add the caveat that I can't actually understand the lyrics so I'm unlikely to get lost in the music.

 

[WittyUserName]

There's a thread that pops up every now and then asking what your listening to right now. I haven't responded because I don't listen to music when I write and I'm usually on here while I'm writing. You can make you own judgments on the productivity level drop from that.

Anyway, I came across this article just a few minutes ago and thought it would/could be an interesting discussion.

As I mentioned, I don't listen to music when I write because I tend to get lost in the music and not focus on my writing, so. What's your milage?

Sometimes, yes. I'll listen to music or even have a TV show on in the background. Although, both tend to distract me from actually writing!

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yes, yes, I do. I listen to horror soundtracks, epic music stuff on YouTube, and stuff on SiriusXM (all depending on the story and my mood).

About to go back to writing and just put on the Horror Theme Ensemble Station at SXM.

 

[Davidbeer1]

I listen to classical music; at the moment it's Glazunov's 1st piano concerto, although I vary it a lot. I don't think we should worry about productivity. We aren't paid by the thousand words, or at all!

There's a thread that pops up every now and then asking what your listening to right now. I haven't responded because I don't listen to music when I write and I'm usually on here while I'm writing. You can make you own judgments on the productivity level drop from that.

Anyway, I came across this article just a few minutes ago and thought it would/could be an interesting discussion.

As I mentioned, I don't listen to music when I write because I tend to get lost in the music and not focus on my writing, so. What's your milage

 

[Erozetta]

I listen to music while I write because it helps me focus.

Specifically, while writing I'll put an earbud in my right ear. If I'm listening to music just to listen to music, I put it in my left ear. I never wear both at the same time. I don't know why those ears specifically for those tasks, it just works better for me.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Only if it doesn't have lyrics. I cannot do lyrics to a song and language to write at the same time.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

The last series I wrote has its own soundtrack. A song for each chapter.

https://www.literotica.com/series/se/beyond-the-palace

Read it quick if you're interested. I've got a request for delete in, because it's going to be republished as an ebook.

 

[iwatchus]

For me, intensive bursts of writing are much like intensive bursts of coding.

I used to need to either have music on or the TV on while I did anything I wanted to focus on. Part of my brain always wanted to bounce around to something else, so I tell that part, go listen to this music or watch that dumb TV and let me get work done. It notably increased my productivity to do it and improved the length of time I was able to maintain that level of productivity. Then I hit my head and I could no longer truly multi-task. Music still helps at times, but mostly to keep the level ox ansiety down. Especially important now that I cannot pace (for another two months at least), which is my major anxiety release when I am working.

 

[THBGato]

Very much so. Many of my stories take their name from a song and I've created playlists for lots of them.

 

[dirk2024]

I sometimes listen to themed erotic music on YouTube. I found one, then since listening to it, the algorithm pops up quite the variety. It's a little jazzy, downtempo and relaxed.

 

[hugh_jarce69]

I always prefer to listen to music if I can. I have a couple of playlists. One is mainly instrumentals and the other is purely piano music.
Poppy Ackroyd, Jon Hopkins, Erland Cooper are good for this. Paul Hardcastle has some great instrumental tracks too.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I find silence more distracting than music. However, if I don't have something going for over 40 minutes, then keeping the stream of music is even more distracting. I could always turn on the radio, but people talking distract me even more than people singing.

There's a Venn diagram in there somewhere that shows the solution to that issue.

 

[Bloodandglitter]

I have a Spotify Playlist that I listen to.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I listen to music while I write because it helps me focus.

I'm the opposite. I hate distractions when I write and music is probably the biggest possible distraction for me.

Shh, quiet, leave me alone, I'm writing, grrrr!!

 

[NaughteeDragon]

I craft playlists for some stories if the are novel length. I build it for certain scenes, certain relationships, and certain characters.

One of my characters is a Swifty, I don’t much care for her other than a couple of songs, but that playlist has half a dozen TS songs just for her. One of the relationships is this high energy super dramatic relationship that uses songs like Never Let You Go by Steelheart and Faithfully by Journey. One couple’s song is More Than Words by Extreme. One scene takes place in Mexico and use Mi Persona Favorita. I love that playlist. Drives my wife crazy

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Shh, quiet, leave me alone, I'm writing, grrrr!!

KoS when she's handwriting somewhere else, and people can't stop talking to her.

I literally have a weapon in my hands that I can stab you with.

I craft playlists for some stories if the are novel length. I build it for certain scenes, certain relationships, and certain characters.

Sometimes, creativity strikes similar to me when I'm on a roll of watching music videos, and I stumble upon frames that I think would make for interesting scenes or stories.

This one from my teenage years pretty much inspired an entire chapter I'm about to write somewhere in my NaNo of this year.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I find silence more distracting than music.

I have certain issues, including Tinnitus and others that require NO silence.

I have several playlists that I run in rotation. The current one is roughly 3,100 tracks and runs almost 10 days, non-stop, 24 hours a day. Two others are similar and two more are less than half of that, but still run a few days. Generally a song that plays today, might not play again for a month or more. I started this particular set of lists the first of the year and each song now has a play count of either 8, 9 or 10.


I cannot be without something. And since I despise commercials, news spots, DJs and pretty much everything else, I cannot use any streaming service.

I decide what is on my lists. No one else has any input at all.

 

[AllenWoody]

I prefer silence though if my partner wants some noise i can queue it up and mostly tune it out.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I usually listen to music, and it frequently finds its way into the story. In my WIP the main characters have a conversation about the band I happened to be listening to when I got to that point.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I have certain issues, including Tinnitus and others that require NO silence.

I have chronic tinnitis. Left ear worse than the right. Left ear hasn't stopped ringing in probably ten years. I have no problem with silence.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

KoS when she's handwriting somewhere else, and people can't stop talking to her.

I literally have a weapon in my hands that I can stab you with.

GRRRRR!!! >:/ This is war!

 

[NuclearFairy]

I have chronic tinnitis. Left ear worse than the right. Left ear hasn't stopped ringing in probably ten years. I have no problem with silence.

I once read an article written by a guy whose tinnitus took the form of children whispering unintelligibly. If I had his version of it, I think I'd have an even worse problem with silence than I currently do.

 

[NotWise]

I don't normally listen when I write. I did while I was writing parts of Mom, Sex, Guns, and Rock-n-Roll because Zelda often had heavy metal from the early 2000s in her head or in her buds. I listened to heavy metal to put myself in Zelda's head, which was a hard place to be.

My wife was happy when I finished that story and stopped running System of a Down et al. for half the day.

 

[Actingup]

I usually listen to music, and then tune out of it when I'm in the groove. For that reason, I tend to listen to things that I already know so that my brain isn't too challenged trying to assimilate new things while I write. As my poor-beta readers know, there tends to be a bit of 'classic' 70s, 80s, and 90s, that then might find its way into the stories. Pink Floyd's a favourite because of the slowly evolving chord sequences that they tended to employ - lots of depth and lyricism in the music, but not too challenging structurally and you can stay in the zone for a long time. The 'Best of American Tour 1977' bootleg, for example, is two and a half hours long, and then you can start it again

Stories about music or featuring music are quite different of course - I tend to have that piece on high rotation until the relevant bit of the story is done. I used 'Let The Sunshine In' from Hair as the anchor piece for my Nude Day story, and did up a playlist of abotu twenty versions of the song to play while was I was writing.

Pink Floyd 1977 bootleg in case anybody would like to inhale: