Thursday, April 15, 2010

What's the soundtrack of your life?

Ahh, springtime. Days beautiful enough to fling open the windows and let the fresh(ish) air blow in. Watching the buds bloom on the ginkgo tree outside my window. Hearing the sounds of birds chirping (well, cooing), children playing, and JACKHAMMERS DRILLING INTO MY BRAIN!

Oh, that's right. I forgot. Now that the weather is nice, time for all the street fixing/structure demolishing/building maintenance(ing?) to commence! How wonderful, now that I'm rushing to get a new manuscript off to my agent.

Close the window, you say? I've been doing that, and it helps with the noise, but an open window is the closest thing I have to actual outside time at the moment. Sadly, I'm beginning to resemble a naked mole rat wearing yoga pants and an old Ramones t-shirt.

How about drowning out the noise with music? Maybe so! I haven't found just the right style conducive to writing. Let's see: I run in the park blasting Lady Gaga (don't judge), I make dinner to The Rolling Stones, and take a shower to, well, NPR. Writing, however, has been silent so far.

What might you suggest?

13 comments:

Robin said...

Honestly, I can't write with music playing. It is way too distracting. If I had to pick something, I would probably go with classical music, which I don't listen to as a general rule. That probably wasn't a whole lot of help... sorry:-(

Sage Ravenwood said...

Plain old earplugs. When it comes to writing I don't want anything to disturb the characters taking up space in my head. Then again I'm deaf and noise isn't a problem. (Hugs)Indigo

Melanie Hooyenga said...

For my first novel I rotated between three albums and for the second I made a mix just for two of my characters. I'm not sure yet what I'll do for #3.

I don't always listen to music while I write though--it all depends on my mood.

Good luck with the MS!

WendyCinNYC said...

Robin--Classical might be a good choice. Something soothing, though, to offset the jackhammers. No Flight of the Valkyries.

Indigo--I might have to go buy some good earplugs.

Melanie--You made a mix for writing? Like a party mix? Awesome.

Janna Leadbetter said...

I'm all about the earplugs! I can't do music while writing, either. But do you do Pandora? I created a Phil Collins station, and there are so many smooth and soothing guy/group songs from the eighties. It relaxes me very easily.

Good luck with your ms!

JLC said...

I can't listen to lyrics while I write, so I play soundtracks on Pandora. I am working on a Science Fiction piece so I have a 'Star Wars' station on Pandora, but it also plays the soundtracks to Gladiator, Batman, Star Trek, and Sherlock Holmes. Its like a soundtrack for my book. :)

ChristaCarol Jones said...

I love Pandora. I can plug a song in that works for the WIP I'm writing and it plays similar songs. Or even a band, like The Fray or Snow Patrol. Works great for me :)

Anonymous said...

Another plug for Pandora. I found my Moby station invaluable while writing my YA dystopian fantasy. The station includes Apocalyptica, Evanescence, Within Temptation, and other mood evoking groups. Love it. Jesse Cook is a wonderful flamenco guitarist with an upbeat sound. I like my Jesse Cook station, too. It helped me get through the story I wrote with a Hispanic mc.

Give it a try!

(I live in the middle of nowhere, AL. I wouldn't know what to think if I had to deal with city noises.)

WandaV

WendyCinNYC said...

I'm so out of it--Pandora? Apparently all the cool kids know about this. I'll have to investigate...

Purple Cow said...

Strange that you should ask this question...have you heard of the Tomatis Method of listening? There's this device called the electronic ear — a black box that plays cassettes, rather like an amplifier and linked to headphones — devised by Dr Tomatis, and it relays music in such a way that it exercises the muscles in the ears. It retrains the ear by playing filtered music through the headphones, gradually reintroducing sound through its natural journey of development. Mozart's music is used because it falls mostly in the high-frequency sound range and has a greater number of vibrations than other types of music. It also uses both medium- and low-range pitches at random, to give the ear a solid workout. Apparently this work-out helps in all sorts of things to jogging the memory, communication, Alzheimers and all sorts of medical and psychiatric uses. Look it up on google. It's really interesting.

Allie said...

I make playlists for my characters - not always music I would listen too - but what they would. And I do find that helpful. But I do have a hard time with outside noise too. I don't know what the answer is!

Unknown said...

I have mixes for writing too, depending on what I'm writing.
Deep and meaningful = The Fray

Dark = Metric/Faith No More

And always for upbeat writing WHAM! I didn't judge Lady GaGa so leave it alone!

* said...

The Stones are great. I'm not too into lady Gaga...how about some Muse or Royksopp?