Because I tend to write Science Fiction, this is one of my favorite songs to listen to as I am writing. It is very atmospheric and certainly helps me get into the proper mood.
I love You're Nothing Without Me from City of Angels its about a writer talking to his characters. I have the added fun dimension that a different John Barrowman music video inspired one of my characters (Socrates) and there is a version with him singing the part of writer. I find musical based songs song by the likes of Michael Ball, John Barrowman, Daniel Boys, Lee Mead, Josh Groban etc help they have a huge depth of feeling that gives me ideas about how to take my story. Tone Damli Butterflies helps with romantic scenes etc
Both but most often music. I usually pick out some chilled classic rock (cuz I'm old like that...) like Steely Dan, Boz Skaggs or Fleetwood Mac. Something that floats quietly in the background. If it rocks too much, I become Neil Peart (Rush)....Funny, I'm a guitar player....
I love listening to music when I write, except that I don't do well with lyrics. I have thus developed an instrumental repertoire. Music in other languages (that I don't understand) work just as well for this purpose.
I prefer silence. I am very attuned to the rhythms of my prose, and music playing around me totally screws that up. I like to read my work aloud while I'm editing, trying different words and different sentence structures to hear how they sound, and if there's music in the background I can't do that. Sometimes, when I'm doing a first draft and it doesn't really matter, I can stand relatively ambient instrumental music. Other than that, I want silence. There are some writers who have developed the ability to write wonderful prose in the middle of twelve radios each playing a different station, and I really envy them. I'd love to be able to write well when crowded by too much sound. But I'm not there yet.
Has to be silent. Noise causes mundane thoughts, which keep the really deep stuff from bubbling up. I have a pair of earplugs for when the wife is watching television or attempting to communicate with me or whatever.
I have a four year old brother who demands my every attention after I've been at school all day, so silence for me is a precious commodity when I find it. I actually like some noise in the foreground, but not necessarily music. I prefer being in my library on campus where I find the right amount of noise from both people and music. It really gets my brain spinning ideas around and puts me in a great writing mood.
I need silence or white noise. A coffee shop tends to be a good place to write, often times more than a library. I find that libraries have people who like to make other people listen to them.
I like writing in complete silence. Otherwise I just get really distracted, like if there's a movie playing or someone listening to music. Also, I like to write solitary - or at least somewhere where I won't disturb people - because I have this habit of talking to myself when I write. Ehe. (^v^) Kinda embarrassing, but sometimes I just exclaim, 'No way! She totally did not!' or 'Oh, come ooooon!' or something along those lines. You get the picture.
I write alone in a quiet room with a cup of water/coffee/tea. I sit on my couch right next to my book shelf. Whenever I look to my left and see all the books organized in rows, it comforts me. I use Microsoft Word, Cambria Font. I agree that Times New Roman is too boring and I also have written too many academic essays with it so it drains my creativity when I see it. I don't prepare outlines either. Normally, I just sit down with an idea, a seed, and then I build up from there. Although I do have a general idea of how the story will end. I suppose the outline is in my head.
I started using pages on my ipad, and i love it. Yes, word is way more versatile, but the ipad rocks, and I've found that for revision work, using the touch keyboard isn't that painful. The 10 hour battery life of the ipad is great, because you dont have to worry about needing to plug in somewhere.
I need music or white noise. If I'm sitting in my room and it's totally silent I get a bit unnerved. Almost every minute I'm awake in there music is playing... If I ever lived in a big house I'd need strategically placed CD players up and down it. I write a lot in public such as on trains/in libraries/on park benches/under trees/in class P)/the car/the office of the Students' Union where I work... Aside from the last one no one encourages the playing of music... The SU is the biggest challenge since it's full of people talking and playing other music I don't like. I don't listen to a lot of stuff with the same rhythm/beat to the stuff they listen to, and I find that more than silence or talking, that throws me off, because I get very used to typing in time to whatever I'm listening to. But I'm pretty awesome at blanking out anything into background noise - if I'm inspired and writing fast I can look up to get a drink and realise I'm 3/4 of the way through my favourite song and I never realised that it was playing...
I have found this and it's really strange. I read it was an easy font to read because of the serifs, but I think I read enough of this forum font these days that I should be able to read this (Verdana, I think?) just as fast. But when I'm writing, if I get bored and experiment with different fonts, it really just throws me off.. When I was younger and you think you're too cool for black times new roman I tried a load of different fonts and they all ended up making me feel headachey and distracted. Hmm. It's almost like I don't *see* TNR, it just goes straight back into my head without the reading process. But yeah. Open Office, the above-mentioned font, and 1.5 spacing for the sake of my brain - I also justify the text though I know you shouldn't, just for the sake of neatness. I'll unformat it later - it's no biggie - but while I'm writing I need it to see precisely where my paragraphs end. Very very rare that you finish a line RIGHT up against the margin, but all too common when it's just left-justified that you use a long word and it gets knocked onto the next line and seems to create a line-break when you're scrolling up quickly or not really looking at the screen, but thinking. Just an OCD thing I have - I do also use indents, but honestly, who reads English left to right any more these days?
I know, it's so weird. Sometimes I experiment with fonts too because I like typography so it's interesting going through the fonts and selecting one to match a story I'm writing. But that always makes it harder to write, so I change it back to Times New Roman and bam, I can write. I don't get it at all.
It's not like I'm even programmed to like it because it wasn't my first font: I grew up writing on Word Perfect on my old MS DOS computer, which was a font similar to this one in large creamy letters on a dark blue screen. Sometimes I want to format Open Office to look like that, but I've never figured out how. In any case, I might have used that all through my childhood, but the moment I had my own laptop and Windows XP and Word, I seemed to become incapable of writing in anything but TNR... :/
for me its either complete silence or music i choose, i cant have people running around talking to me or each other or watching tv while i work. and it cannot be all music, it has to be the right kind, and that varies from story to story, but usually i have a pretty good idea about what music to listen to. I could never write in a public place like the library or cafè, because i hate it when people pass by all the time and feel like i want to cover the notebook/computer screen to not make them read over my shoulder, hihi.
I would prefer to write in silence, but if my husband is home, I normally just have to try to mentally "switch off" and ignore him practising his instruments! He's quite considerate but sometimes, if he is practising his guitar, I have to disappear into another room...
I absolutely need silence! I take advantage of the hours I know I'm going to be alone or I write at night while people are sleeping. It works for me because sometimes I think I write best at night. But if there are any distractions... forget it!
i write best at night too, between 00-02.30, but i start way earlier. I usually sit by the computer all nioght and alternate writing with internet and it works for me, i still manage to write quite a lot in one evening. but- these last 3 days that i dont have either internet or computer i found that i get a totally different flow by writing by hand, in 3 days í have written something like 75 pages (half a A4 format) just like that, i always used to write by hand when i started writing many many years ago and it seem to bring back nice memories. and no internet works wonders for the result too.
Silence is ideal for me, but given the surroundings of my life as of late, its like a gallon of water in a desert. My Fortress of Solitude has become one of the private rooms at the library, but you can't have food or drink and if it's busy, are only allowed an hour. I can write under noisy conditions and in some ways it makes you focus. I guess you can count that aspect as a good thing.
