How I Write: Background noise, or the lack thereof.

Awhile back, the boyfriend bought a pair of noise cancelling over the ear headphones from Sony. He loves them. I tried them, and fell in love with them, too, and he bought me a set. I’ve used them with no sound and they are truly noise cancelling, especially when our crazy neighbor, who thinks he’s a TikTok genius, gets to playing his electric guitar so loudly that I can hear it inside my house. Don’t even get me started on that one.

I should say that I’m easily pulled out of a moment. Grace the Cat scratching on her board. The boyfriend filling his plastic cup with ice from the fridge (which is 10 feet from my writing desk). The doorbell. If I forget to put my phone on silent, the ding of a text message will pull me right out of my thoughts and back into the real world. This is not just when I’m writing. It happens when I am trying to go to sleep, too. Seriously. I travel with earplugs. If I didn’t, I’d never get and stay asleep.

I used to go back and forth a bit between writing with music, and writing with utter silence. I recently started using a white noise podcast on Spotify, and that seems to work really well for me.

But I can’t have lyrics. That’s a big no-no for my writing. Lyrics distract me. They worm their way into my thoughts and before you know it, a word from the lyrics slips into my writing - into a place where that word has never belonged.

There are many playlists on Spotify that use gaming soundtracks, and those are handy for writing historical fantasy. I listened to both the soundtrack from The Tudors and the Witcher 3 soundtrack while writing The Avalon Project and it was very helpful for keeping me in the time and place I needed to be.

But The Irish Project is different. It’s written in current times. I did try a few Irish Folk playlists, but most of the music has lyrics, which again, I can’t do while writing. The muse doesn’t like it. And I don’t like it when the muse is unhappy.

But white noise… white noise works. It keeps me in my head, in my imagination, where the sleeping dogs lie and the creative process has a chance to breathe.

I think it’s my new favorite thing.

In the interest of fairness, I also tried a few of the longer background noise videos from YouTube as well, and I found that the ones of storms are good if I am writing dialogue but not so much if I’m doing anything else. I might have to experiment with those a bit more, to see if I can find a way to make them work, too. Variety is good.

I’ve seen a lot of authors who write to a playlist they make specifically for their book. I started one, for the Avalon Project, because there are a few songs that I relate with a few of my characters or scenes. If I’m trying to get in the mood to write a character, and he or she has a song, it will help. But once my fingers hit the keys, the music has to go.

As always, I am learning as I go. Someday, perhaps I’ll learn to drown out the distractions. But until that day comes, that one set of sweet headphones has changed my process for the better.