Do You Listen to Music While You Write?

Do you listen to music while you write? When I want to inspire myself to sit down and write, I mentally channel the soundtrack to “Rocky” or the typewriter keys clacking of the “Murder She Wrote” theme song. But unlike many writers, I cannot have any distraction while in the act of writing. For me, it’s the sounds of silence in the library or at the dining room table.

I do understand how a good soundtrack can set the mood for a story, how a piece of music can immediately strike emotional chords that can jumpstart a scene. I just can’t have the music playing while I write.

It is fascinating to me that other writers do listen while they write and I enjoy seeing what other writers use for playlists. When I did a Google search on this topic, I discovered that many writers create specific playlists for their books. The NaNoWriMo website even has a section where writers help each other construct playlists. There are playlists for “a female ex-assassin”; songs for “cutesy, happy” scenes; and “beautiful music for deeply powerful, inspirational” scenes. This is where I discovered my new obsession, a group called Two Steps From Hell. They do instrumental music for TV and movie trailers. The word epic is not epic enough for what they do. Their music not only inspires me to clean my kitchen floor, it makes me want to clean my kitchen floor while battling were-snakes with the hammer of Thor. One commenter described perfectly their song “El Dorado”: “This song shall be played when my wife has our baby and he will be borneth a Dragon!”

Many writers claim that writing to a soundtrack increases their creativity and output. In general, I use music in two ways: to ground myself in a time period or in a character’s, er, character.

In one WIP, my MC is a former model, a woman of larger-than-life personality, beauty, and charisma. Her life is over the top. Drama follows her. Her soundtrack is Big '80s all the way. The power ballads of Heart, Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, and Pat Benatar ground me in her personality faster than pages of character development.

When I wrote my short story, “Disco Donna,” I listened to the music of the seventies, the time period of Donna herself, especially the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever. The lyrics helped me get into the mindset of a young woman of that time plus gave me a handle on the way people of that era spoke and sang.

For my new work in progress, my MC Allegra Larkin is a dancer in her twenties. She’s just starting out in life. Her world is one of artifice, imagination, and beauty built on a foundation of hard, grinding physical effort. So she’s tough, though you wouldn’t think it when you look at her. Listening to classical ballet music like Swan Lake or The Firebird gets me in touch with her otherworldly occupation.

Do you listen to music while you write? Do you have a playlist?