On Different Note . . .

Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.
— Henry Ward Beecher

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
— Plato

Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.
— Yip Harburg

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
― Robert G. Ingersoll

Do you write to a play list, or do you prefer the silence?

I’ve read several books where the author has included a play list of the music they wrote their book to. Even my favorite author, Charles de Lint, has acknowledged the music his novels have been written under the influence of.

The last few years, especially since the pandemic started, I find I often prefer the silence. Not just when I’m writing, but in my daily life. And I’m not quite sure how it happened.

Maybe it’s because the world has become such a busy, noisy place. After I’ve had to deal with it I crave the silence for a time. And after I’ve had to deal with a lot of people, I find the silence is very soothing.

That being said, I like to listen to music in the car. Usually it’s just the radio set to a classic rock station, but sometimes I’ll remember to bring a CD or two with me. The hubby made me a driving CD one time – a mixed CD of songs about driving with songs like “Highway to Hell”, “I Don’t Drive 55”, that sort of thing. :-)

But back to the writing. Like I said, the last few years I’ve mostly been writing in silence, but it wasn’t always that way. I have a large CD collection and used to have a kickass little stereo in my office. The radio was crap, but the speakers for playing CDs were great.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, especially electronics, and the stereo died. It was replaced with a boom box that does not boast great speakers, so the sound for the CDs isn’t all that great but they work really well for the radio, which also works great.

The problem is when I’m writing I prefer my music to be instrumental music. If it’s got lyrics then I find it too distracting – I’ll spend more time listening to the lyrics or singing along than I do writing.

So . . . what kind of music do I listen to when writing, if any? For my Moonstone Chronicles I listened to a lot of Celtic music. It’s lively and put me in mind of Ireland (or what I imagine Ireland to be like, seeing as I’ve never been) which was the inspiration for the magical realm. And the lyrics are in Gaelic, as a rule, so they’re not distracting.

Two Steps From Hell is great to listen to while writing. Some of it is really inspiring for fight scenes, and some of it is just plain inspiring. I listen to a fair amount of Audiomachine too, and soundtracks are always a good bet.

The rest of my music collection is pretty eclectic. The hubby is a diehard classic rock aficionado, and when the daughter was a teenager she used to find some of the weirdest music (she still does) ever. They can both be a bit snobbish when it comes to music, but think I’m more open minded.

For me, music is like art. I either like the painting, or I don’t. I don’t care how famous the person is who painted it. With music it’s either pleasing to the ear, or it isn’t. But I’ll at least give it a try before I pass judgement.

So, while you won’t ever see me doing a playlist of popular music to write to, I’m not opposed to writing to instrumental music. Sometimes, the silence can be a little too quiet.

Maybe that’s what my writing needs – a return to music.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

The best thing I can say about this past week is that all of my posts were up on time, and I didn’t have to stay up late to do them. In fact, a couple of the posts were started a couple of days in advance.

I updated my writing journal finally, and while I was at it included a few lines for potential poems. They may not have been story idea, but I’ll take them anyway.

I might have accomplished more writing, but I got hit by a series of cluster headaches. You can’t really ignore them and there’s really not much you can do about them, just put up with them. But it does make it a little hard to focus sometimes.

NEW WORDS:
1609+638+558+540=3,345
UP – 45 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 pages
I’m still trying to work up some enthusiasm for Elemental Spirit. I’m actually thinking about skipping the beginning (that needs a total rewrite) and ignoring the historical records that are supposed to head each chapter, and just go straight to editing the rest of it. There’s no law that says I have to do it in the proper order, and I’m thinking once I have the body of it done, that’ll give me the incentive to do the rest of it.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

MARKETING:
Yeah, nothing new here.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up author page on Amazon; update book page on blog.

TECH & TRAINING:
Nope, I got nothing but thoughts about doing something.

Goal For Next Week:
Learn to use Dropbox properly so I can backup my files.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I got the informational part of my form done early, which was a good thing because the poem was a long one. I actually enjoyed the Trenta-Sei verse form, despite its length. I think I’d like to work on my example poem a bit more though – it ends a little abruptly and I’m not altogether happy with that.

It’s getting harder to find new forms to share, but if push comes to shove, I can fall back on the coded Welsh forms – there’s twenty-four of them but they’re all really hard.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
Well. The two bins I’d picked up for my fabric were just a little bit bigger than would fit comfortably into the closet of my new craft room, so I ended up having to buy some new ones. Three of them as a matter of fact. I divided the fabric from the giant bin in my old craft closet into them (and yes, it did take all three) and they fit nicely in their allotted space.

I used the old, opaque bin to hold donations for the thrift store and took a load up on Thursday. There is still a bin in the old craft closet that needs to be dealt with – it’s holding various knitting and crocheting projects I have on the go. I don’t have enough room in the new craft room for the bin, but I’m thinking I could use a couple of under-the-bed storage bins for them. Maybe one for knitting projects and one for crocheting. I just have to buy them first. :-)

Didn’t work on the afghan, but then that’s a project I usually do in front of the TV, and I didn’t watch much TV that was good for crafting to last week.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan. Finish craft migration.

WHAT I’M READING:
Read Midnight Bayou, and Public Secrets by Nora Roberts.

Still reading The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai, who ran the “Writing Vivid Characters” workshop at the fall Writersfest. It’s good, but it’s not a book I want to rush.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good reading habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

As I said above, I got all my posts done on time, and I didn’t even have to stay up late to do them. And I had half of my poetry post done on Monday, which was really handy when I ended up spending my allotted poetry time at a three-hour lunch on Tuesday.

No editing and no marketing, but lots of thinking about both. Now, if I can just move from the thinking stage to the doing stage I’d be cooking with gas.

I really do want to learn the ins and outs of Dropbox this week so I can back my stuff up to it. I’m getting paranoid with this computer – just this week it emptied my recycle bin without being asked to. Who knows what else it’ll do on its own?

This may not seem like a big deal, but I had a lot of stuff in my recycle bin (I have lots of space on my computer). Occasionally I’ll be looking for something from a while back and a couple of times I’d find what I was looking for in my recycle bin. It’s like getting rid of stuff out of your closet and then realizing you had a use for it after all.

I actually did my poetry post early, and I confess, while I didn’t stay up late Tuesday night, I only had three quarters of my poem done when I went to bed but managed to finish it before breakfast on Wednesday.

No work done on the afghan, but I am a step closer to finishing the craft migration. Two more bins and a work table and I should be able to call it done.

My reading is still being reasonable. Still not able to let go of Nora, but I’m not reading to the exclusion of all else, so that’s a step in the right direction.

I did not get back to my lists. Actually, I kind of forgot about them. But I looked at my day planner and didn’t like all the white space I was seeing – I’ve been using it to jot point form notes about my day for updating my journal. So I’ve been making an effort to do more with my days. If not writing, then at least something else.

So while I’ve been thinking a lot about writing, and some of the things I could be writing, the cluster headaches have been an impediment to that. If I can just get rid of them while I’m still feeling ambitious, I’ll be cooking with gas.