Silence is Golden

I've been talking to several other writers about music recently. Specifically, what type of music, if any, do they listen to while writing.

Me, I love to listen to music. It's one of the great joys of my life. Just about any music will do from Mozart to Motörhead, Frank Sinatra to the Frank Chickens (look them up if you need to), I've never understood genres; it's all music. And most of it is interesting.

And therein lies the problem. Not only do I love music but I adore words, the combination of words, the subtle interplay of them that, when mixed by a good wordsmith, makes the whole immensely greater than the sum of its parts. And I can't hear a song without listening to the words being sung and the poetry that binds them together as lyrics. And if I'm listening to lyrics, to other people's words, then I can't really concentrate on placing my own specially chosen combination of words on paper or screen.

Some writers choose to play different styles music to put them in the mood for writing different kinds of scenes. Hard rock for an action sequence or a light piano piece for a gentle love scene. Whatever does it for them, I guess. For me, I'm OK as long as it's an instrumental tune with no discernible lyrics. Or if I'm struggling with something, if I'm stuck with how to express the emotion in a piece I'm writing or how to get my characters out of (or into) a particularly thorny plot hole then I'll turn the speakers off and work in absolute silence. That is, if you discount the dog down the street that barks incessantly morning until bedtime.

So, fellow witers, what's the soundtrack to your working day?

Maybe it's Elvis Costello's "Every Day I Write the Book"?
Or "It's Only Words" by the Bee Gees"?
Or, if you're recording the audio book of "The Hobbit", maybe you listen to OMD's "Tolkien Loud and Clear"?

Sorry.

© Shaun Finnie 2013