Music or Silence: Which to Write By?

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Straight to the point: I prefer to write with jazz playing on iTunes — a very select group of songs that I’ve heard so often, it’s almost like not hearing anything at all. But do I believe it’s best practice? Dunno. Because the music is so familiar, it’s like white noise, melodic white noise. And it gives me energy, especially After the Rain by Boney James. I fairly bounce to that one. It can also make me type faster. My thoughts flow and my fingers stumble over the keyboard, trying to keep up.

So I find speed and inspiration in listening to music while I write, but I suppose I can also find distraction, too. I mean, I am Ms. Procrastinator Extraordinaire, you know.

And there are those moments when the music just carries me away — from the story at hand, I mean. When I land, breathless, in faraway places, in the arms of a man I have yet to meet.

I’m writing without music, at the moment. That doesn’t mean in silence, however. There’s a lot of noisy life going on outside my window. There’s always the faint but faintly constant whoosh of cars and buses on the ground and the consistent rumble of planes overhead. There’s the chatter of folks arguing, laughing, chattering in Spanish, the patter of feet as someone runs across the street. It’s actually amazingly quiet for a bright Saturday afternoon in September. Or maybe I’m so used to the sounds I don’t hear them anymore.

I guess it’s really impossible to write in silence, isn’t it? There’s always sound of some sort. If it pleases you, it’s music; if not, it’s just noise. But it’s always there. If there are no sounds coming from the outside (something hard to imagine when living in the city), then there are the sounds inside your head. And I daresay, they’re even louder, more distracting sometimes than anything you’ll hear otherwise.