Do You Listen to Music When You Write?

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I am seeing the light at the end of Blaugust!! I am really excited that I have been able to post every day so far. What I’m not so excited about are my other writing deadlines. Several that I am now noticing will be due soon and no words will leave my brain. I’m stuck. What do I even write?! So I was very glad when I logged into WordPress and saw that past me had scheduled a post for yesterday. I could focus on my other writing projects, right?! Yes. Did I? Well…

The easy and simple answer is that yes I did. The more accurate answer is that I did, for many hours, but my output was…almost nothing. I opened up those empty documents and just STARED. I had no idea what to write. I told myself I’d listen to some music, get those ideas flowing, and maybe even look at the lyrics for some inspiration

Why is my music either horny, major angst, or in a language I don’t understand?

In the end, I did get a bit of juice flowing, but it was more like 5 tiny drops instead of the floodgate I was hoping for. How did I make this idea less horny and less angsty? Oh, and this is for a short story I will be gifting to someone. I figured the best idea was to just start writing and see where the story took me, but even though the story was inspired by lyrics, the next thing I did was close Spotify. I turned off the music

That reminded me of something I said the other day, “Give me a second. I can’t think and find something at the same time.” If it weren’t automatic, I probably wouldn’t be able to breathe and, IDK, walk at the same time

It’s the same with writing. I can’t write and listen to music at the same time. I will either just start singing the song (or listening to it completely) and stop writing or I will write what’s in my head…which would very likely be the lyrics of the song I’m listening to. Imagine writing, “the door slammed open, making him jump waves this strong”. I probably wouldn’t notice until at least three lines later

And it’s not just music. It’s podcasts, the TV, anything that is audio. If I hear it, it will enter my brain and take over. When I write, I have to be in complete silence, but I also know it’s a very common question to ask people “what music do you play when you write?”. Then people will drop playlists and I’m here like, I CAN’T. If I want to take a break, then yeah, maybe I’ll play something, but simultaneously? My brain can’t handle it

But what about you all? Do you listen to music while you blog? Or some other audio content while you write what-have-you? If you do, what kind of music do you listen to? I’ve tried instrumental music and just, IDK, “cafe” type stuff but, for some reason, I still can’t. Unless it’s SUPER low, like, can barely hear it low and at that point why even have it playing?

Do you feel it helps your concentration? Gets you motivated? Do you have a special playlist? Or do you just kind of shuffle through your music?