I’m not religious, but given that Rosh Hashanah is this week it seems appropriate to repent, at least as far as writing is concerned. It has been a little more than a month since I made some lofty promises on which I have yet to deliver. In fact, I haven’t written creatively or even read any creative writing over the last 4 weeks. That is abysmal performance. After all, most of the top line advice from famous writers on following in their footsteps is to write and read on a regular basis. So negative points there.
To be clear, I still intend to follow-up with the “Highwayman” piece, but this is a gentle, toe-dipping post to get back in the habit after such a long bout of not writing for “me.” The main reason for that has been a very taxing project at my day job. For the past month, our team was facilitating a state task force, creating a report of their meetings and decisions and transcribing the audio from all of the presentations they heard. An interesting project in its own way, but offering very little in the way of creativity. And after coming home from hours of transcription and fact-checking and follow-up, my writing muscles were shaky and weak and my body was exhausted. Should I have still sat down and written something, anything, for myself during those weeks? Absolutely. That’s a level of discipline I’m just not quite to yet. Not to say that the month was a wash for other forms of writing, however.
We were operating on very tight deadlines for a lot of our reporting out of the proceedings, with a plethora of different things needing to be pulled together at once. Under that sort of pressure, I initially did what I always do when I want to unplug from the world and focus in on my writing: I listened to music. Specifically chiptune playlists and video game remixes on youtube and Spotify, things that are up-tempo and without lyrics. It’s a common thing among writers to listen to some form of music while creating. It makes sense on the face of it. With headphones in your ears and your own personal soundtrack, you can’t be distracted by the person chatting away in the cubicle next to you or your neighbor mowing her lawn.
Plugging in headphones, then, was part of my daily routine right after scanning my inbox for anything time sensitive and taking a quick glance at the morning headlines. That was, until one morning right before the final version of the report was due out and we had fairly substantial additions to make to one section. They needed to happen immediately, do not pass go do not collect $200. So when I sat down to work that morning I immediately opened up the document and got to work with no time to open Spotify or untangle my headphones.
Given how I perceive writing to music to help my output and productivity, it was a little surprising how quickly I was able to get the additions made and send out a relatively clean draft for edits. Now, it could have just been a good writing day for me or the pressure of the deadline or having been living in the report for a week or two, but the words came tumbling out more quickly and precise than usual. Enough so that I wanted to see if I could replicate the experience in a more structured way for my personal projects.
After looking around online for something to back up my experience and build from, I found this article about a study on how music affects studying and writing in an academic setting. It not only confirms that I’m far from the only one that feels more productive listening to music while writing, but it also suggests that despite how I feel, listening to music splits my focus between getting the words out of my head and listening to the tune, no matter how wordless it may be. Not to leave you on a down note, however, the article suggests a blended approach to try and get the best of both worlds. Listen to music that gets you into the mood for what you are writing for a while before you set into writing. Then you can ride that mood into your creative space while devoting your entire attention to your work.
This is the first piece I’ve tried the method on and I have to say that writing this has been easier than usual. I think that the period of listening to music, beyond getting my mood up, put a barrier between my day-to-day and the task of writing. I didn’t have to stop doing something else to sit down and write, I stopped it to take a nice music break. Then, after that musical interlude, I started writing with a clean slate.
Everybody’s process is different and there’s not always time in the day to set aside periods for both music and writing, but if you normally write to music I suggest you give this method a try. At worst you’ll have a chance to enjoy some of your favorite music unencumbered by other tasks, but at best you might find a new way to boost your output. It could be just the thing to help you meet that next deadline or power through NaNoWriMo this year. It’s certainly the process I’ll be using for the foreseeable future.
The Barberry Writers 