how do you write?

[cacian]

I like to write during day time, with a slight noise in the background, TV/news/radio for vocabulary purposes.
Lots of words I get from from just hearing them in the background. It works wonders. No music however I find it distracting.

I also like to read outloudish back what I write. I is something I do spontaneously. It helps me spell better for some reason.

what about you?

[Sancho Panza]

I find it easier to write in the evenings with heavy metal blaring through headphones that block out all other external noises, while the music itself gives me the energy to write and often subject matter inspiration.

I have tried writing in absolute silence, and this sometimes works, but more often than not leads to daydreaming and tangents.

[YesNo]

Most of what I write are documents and emails for the technical work that I do. This is done during the day in a relatively quiet environment.

Since I am not a professional literary writer, the occasional short stories, poems or posts to places like LitNet are done for my own entertainment whenever something occurs to me. They are a form of relaxation and challenge at the same time, like a puzzle, I guess. I can usually focus enough to ignore the surrounding noise, but I would not add to it by turning on music or a TV.

[Lokasenna]

I'm at my peak first thing in the morning, and can usually work effectively until late afternoon/early evening, at which stage I usually wrap up if I can. Unless deadlines are pressing, I listen to musical (almost exclusively classical) - I work slightly better with silence, but music makes the time pass faster and more enjoyably.

[B. Laumness]

If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

I can write any time as long as I have silence and feel no fatigue.

[Emil Miller]

If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

I can write any time as long as I have silence and feel no fatigue.

I agree, the slightest sound that cuts across my train of thought is very unwelcome.

[Lokasenna]

If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

Well, thank you for that patronising little summation of the creative life of every other person on the planet beside yourself. Clearly my list of publications has been a mistake on the part of my publishers.

If all artists and academics lockeded themselves up in monk-like solitude, the human race would be poorer indeed.

[MarkBastable]

If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

So you reckon no one ever wrote anything serious or thought anything profound in a city?

[Darcy88]

If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

I can write any time as long as I have silence and feel no fatigue.

If I remember correctly a relative of Einstein shared an anecdote with a biographer which told of Einstein sitting in a living room chair in the midst of a very busy and very loud family gathering. The television was on. He sat deeply immersed in his thought and studies, oblivious to the bustle and tumult surrounding him.

I'm all for quiet, but if one can't think on a profound level in the presence of certain degree of audible disturbance then I question the profundity of that person's thought.

[B. Laumness]

I know that most people dislike silence and need various stimuli and to be surrounded by sounds that prevent them from reflecting upon themselves. They are proud of being multi-tasking, for instance of being able to listen to music while they write. I wonder how they can carefully listen to classical works and meanwhile write serious things, fully concentrated upon their writing. Of course, it is possible to do many things at the same time, when these things are not very demanding, for example posting on a forum and listening to rock music. But when you need music, television or radio in the background, when this is not at all a problem for your concentration, I question your level of seriousness – and by seriousness I don’t mean scholarship or industriousness. You can be totally immersed in your thoughts and forget the surrounding noise, but this kind of situation is not the norm among the superior minds, even though it can happen. A sound situation is a relative silence. That means that writing in a city is not impossible, unless you try to write only on the market place. It is not necessary to go into a monastery either. Is a quiet room or a quiet garden too much in this world?

For your record, I wrote a few years in noisy places and with music in the background. For the anecdote, I remember I wrote good texts with the TV on: I was watching the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City between two profound thoughts, if you allow me to say that I may have profound thoughts — but maybe they were not that profound. I shouldn’t need to mention it, but it appears that some persons don’t believe that others know what they are talking about, unless these latter say that they have experience too.

[MarkBastable]

...it appears that some persons don’t believe that others know what they are talking about, unless these latter say that they have experience too.

Well, one could say the same about your belief.

The problem is not that you profess to need quiet to write. If you say you do, then you do.

It's that you said If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

You generalised your own preference, and said that anyone who didn't behave as you behave could be neither a serious writer nor a profound thinker.

Can you not see how that might p*ss people off?

[Scheherazade]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your arguments.

Posts containing off-topic and/or personal comments will be removed without further notice.

[B. Laumness]

Well, one could say the same about your belief.

The problem is not that you profess to need quiet to write. If you say you do, then you do.

It's that you said If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.

You generalised your own preference, and said that anyone who didn't behave as you behave could be neither a serious writer nor a profound thinker.

Can you not see how that might p*ss people off?

I don’t express only my experience. It goes beyond a personal opinion. By my culture and my judgement, I try to reach a truth. It goes beyond our own practices and publications. The fact is there are not many great writers who don’t prefer to write in silence.

[MarkBastable]

I don’t express only my experience. It goes beyond a personal opinion. By my culture and my judgement, I try to reach a truth. It goes beyond our own practices and publications. The fact is there are not many great writers who don’t prefer to write in silence.

I'd like to see the evidence for that. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'd just like to see the support for you being right.

[Darcy88]

I know that most people dislike silence and need various stimuli and to be surrounded by sounds that prevent them from reflecting upon themselves. They are proud of being multi-tasking, for instance of being able to listen to music while they write. I wonder how they can carefully listen to classical works and meanwhile write serious things, fully concentrated upon their writing. Of course, it is possible to do many things at the same time, when these things are not very demanding, for example posting on a forum and listening to rock music. But when you need music, television or radio in the background, when this is not at all a problem for your concentration, I question your level of seriousness – and by seriousness I don’t mean scholarship or industriousness. You can be totally immersed in your thoughts and forget the surrounding noise, but this kind of situation is not the norm among the superior minds, even though it can happen. A sound situation is a relative silence. That means that writing in a city is not impossible, unless you try to write only on the market place. It is not necessary to go into a monastery either. Is a quiet room or a quiet garden too much in this world?

For your record, I wrote a few years in noisy places and with music in the background. For the anecdote, I remember I wrote good texts with the TV on: I was watching the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City between two profound thoughts, if you allow me to say that I may have profound thoughts — but maybe they were not that profound. I shouldn’t need to mention it, but it appears that some persons don’t believe that others know what they are talking about, unless these latter say that they have experience too.

They've done studies which show that listening to classical music while studying aids in learning retention. Your subconscious literally takes on the rhythm of the music and it can be very relaxing. It engages parts of the brain that you don't use to think deep thoughts and so the part that you do use is free to do what it wants.

I think its the opposite of what you say. I think a weak mind cannot function in the midst of noise while a strong one can. Whenever I do lots of meditation I become less distracted by noise. Meditation increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, the most advanced part of the brain, the one that is used for higher functioning.

[jajdude]

So you reckon no one ever wrote anything serious or thought anything profound in a city?

This made me laugh.

[B. Laumness]

I had already quoted that excerpt:


Kant has written a treatise on The Vital Powers; but I should like to write a dirge on them, since their lavish use in the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things about has made the whole of my life a daily torment. Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at this, because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues. On the other hand, in the biographies or in other records of the personal utterances of almost all great writers, I find complaints of the pain that noise has occasioned to intellectual men. For example, in the case of Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul; and indeed when no mention is made of the matter it is merely because the context did not lead up to it. I should explain the subject we are treating in this way: If a big diamond is cut up into pieces, it immediately loses its value as a whole; or if an army is scattered or divided into small bodies, it loses all its power; and in the same way a great intellect has no more power than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed, distracted, or diverted; for its superiority entails that it concentrates all its strength on one point and object, just as a concave mirror concentrates all the rays of light thrown upon it. Noisy interruption prevents this concentration. This is why the most eminent intellects have always been strongly averse to any kind of disturbance, interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent interruption which is caused by noise; other people do not take any particular notice of this sort of thing. The most intelligent of all the European nations has called “Never interrupt” the eleventh commandment. But noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, for it not only interrupts our own thoughts but disperses them. Where, however, there is nothing to interrupt, noise naturally will not be felt particularly. Sometimes a trifling but incessant noise torments and disturbs me for a time, and before I become distinctly conscious of it I feel it merely as the effort of thinking becomes more difficult, just as I should feel a weight on my foot; then I realise what it is.

Schopenhauer, "On Din and Noise", in Parerga & Paralipomena

I won't spend too much time to cite all the cultural references that prove my argument.

[MarkBastable]

I won't spend too much time to cite all the cultural references that prove my argument.

Having someone agree with you - even him - is not evidence. It's corollary anecdote.

[B. Laumness]

Mark, are you naturally stupid or is it a game?

In this matter, there is no scientifical evidence, there are simply facts and habits given by the lives of the great writers.

[MarkBastable]

Mark, are you naturally stupid or is it a game?


It's structured argument.

If you make an assertion, you're likely to be asked to provide convincing support for it, and you should expect that support to be tested.

A statement as definitive as this one: If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker. requires some pretty watertight support.

[Lokasenna]

It's structured argument.

If you make an assertion, you're likely to be asked to provide convincing support for it, and you should expect that support to be tested.

A statement as definitive as this one: If you need music or if you stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker. requires some pretty watertight support.

Agreed. You can't simply make a sweeping, generalised (and actually pretty insulting) statement about the personal habits of all writers and claim it to be fact, particularly when it is in direct opposition to the practices of the people you are arguing with. And bringing in a single other voice, or as many as you please, to back up your argument still does not detract from the reality of personal experience.

I am a published writer, and I think I produce my best writing while listening to music. My favourite place for composing poetry is in the midst of a great bustling public area - I derive inspiration from it. I have plenty of friends, many of them published academics and/or published poets, who also have similar feelings about composition. But I would never say anything as crass as 'If you need silence or if you can't stand hearing a slight noise in the background while you write, you are neither a serious writer, nor a profound thinker.' Because I appreciate that, for some people (but not all), silence is necessary for composition.

[Darcy88]

Mark, are you naturally stupid or is it a game?

In this matter, there is no scientifical evidence, there are simply facts and habits given by the lives of the great writers.

I gave you scientific evidence disproving what you're saying in my last post. You made a bold unsupported claim when you said something like "no serious thinker/writer can think or write with much noise."

[BookBeauty]

I think that there are many types of writers. There are those who can listen to music, or require complete silence, and many things in between. Anyone can be brilliant, no matter the method. It's art and it flows from us in different ways.

I haven't really thought of writing with music. I'm not sure if it would aid me, but I doubt it would hinder me either. In all honesty, I do more writing outside of actually putting it down, if that makes any sense. Most of the writing I do is in my head, during the day. I'll be doing the dishes, meanwhile thinking of the way characters talk to each other, the way the sun is casting itself in a particular scenario, what will be the hook? What is the main idea? When I get a really brilliant thought, then I rush to put it down.

I suppose you could call this daydreaming, rather than writing, but to me I feel as if I'm constantly writing. I just don't have a pen in my hand, or my fingers on the keys.

Sometimes I even dream-write while I'm sleeping.

[prendrelemick]

How do I write? With difficulty. I prefer silence to music, but it isn't really an issue, I can never seem to get down what I mean anyway, not in the way I think it. Like Keats I have a teeming brain, but as he was short of time, I am short of skill.
I probably submit less than half of what I start to type on here, as it comes out all wrong (like this has.)

[cacian]

I find it easier to write in the evenings with heavy metal blaring through headphones that block out all other external noises, while the music itself gives me the energy to write and often subject matter inspiration.

I have tried writing in absolute silence, and this sometimes works, but more often than not leads to daydreaming and tangents.

Heavy Metal!!! you're kidding!!:eek:
If you are blocking out the sound with another even louder one aren't you psyching yourslef up too much?!
Sorry I do not mean to be rude it just surprised me:wink5:

[Kingbob]

I find it easier and efficient to write in the evenings，with music in your microphone. After finishing the composition，I don't like to read again myself actually，sharing with my friends is a good choice.

[Delta40]

I often write in public places. Inspiration is always to be found in observation and the conversations of others. I also write at home, with or without the tv or music. It isn't something I consciously think about. All I know in that moment is that I need to get out my journal, sit down and write.

[Alexander III]

Mark, are you naturally stupid or is it a game?

In this matter, there is no scientifical evidence, there are simply facts and habits given by the lives of the great writers.

Surley you cant actualy think that great art is created in calm and solitude?

Keats wrote many of his best poems while dying of TB

Lermontov and Tolstoy and Dante wrote some great stuff while they were at war

Fitzgerald wrote most of Gatsby drunk and This side of Paradise was written in an army training camp.

Cervantes spent most of his life either in the army or as a slave


The list goes on.

The only stupid thing on this thread is a sweeping generalization made by an un-published nobody (while many on this thread are published authors) regarding supreem knowlege of how every genius of the past worked.

Writing is most likley like sex, many different ways and styles, countless methods and subjective prefernces troughout history, and highly intimate.

I am just as likley to regard with sceptissim a man who tells me he knows how casanova ****ed, as I am to beleive a man who tells me he knows how he wrote.

Also like sex, a man who is overly fascinated with how others **** or write is often a man who is getting very little done personaly of both.

[Darcy88]

Surley you cant actualy think that great art is created in calm and solitude?

Keats wrote many of his best poems while dying of TB

Lermontov and Tolstoy and Dante wrote some great stuff while they were at war

Fitzgerald wrote most of Gatsby drunk and This side of Paradise was written in an army training camp.

Cervantes spent most of his life either in the army or as a slave


The list goes on.

The only stupid thing on this thread is a sweeping generalization made by an un-published nobody (while many on this thread are published authors) regarding supreem knowlege of how every genius of the past worked.

Writing is most likley like sex, many different ways and styles, countless methods and subjective prefernces troughout history, and highly intimate.

I am just as likley to regard with sceptissim a man who tells me he knows how casanova ****ed, as I am to beleive a man who tells me he knows how he wrote.

Also like sex, a man who is overly fascinated with how others **** or write is often a man who is getting very little done personaly of both.

Good stuff Alex. Touche.

[tylerdf]

Dead of night - metal/punk blaring - chugging coffee and chain smoking. The sun lets me know when to call it quits.

[Jair]

Having someone agree with you - even him - is not evidence. It's corollary anecdote.

Ha. Can't wait for you to try reading The Anatomy of Melancholy.

[GermanFan93]

I usually listen to classical music, especially when I write. It's relaxing and gives a lot of ideas.

[Delta40]

I usually listen to classical music, especially when I write. It's relaxing and gives a lot of ideas.

I find classical music helps me study

[cafolini]

I have no preference. I can write listening to heavy metal two feet away or Andy Williams preaching good peanut butter cookies at his Christmax party. Of course I realize that different setups cause different outputs. But the world is two big and things have their genuine place or they wouldn't be there. Anything is worth exploring, discovering and divulging.
As to motivation, I like macadamians vs peanut butter, walnuts over pistachio, and salsa parilla over kimquats. Have fun. These things might change. May I?

[GermanFan93]

I find classical music helps me study

True, I also listen to classical music when I study, but only sometimes. I actually need it to be quiet around me, mostly when I am reading.

[MANICHAEAN]

I need to have time on my hands. Favourite places/time to write are:

1. Airport lounges waiting for a night flight.
2. At 60,000 feet, cut off from the phone.
3. Quietly sloshed on good Bourbon in the Peninsular Hotel bar in Manila.
4. At 3am back in the UK when I cannot sleep & the brain is fresh.

[Bobbycrane]

I tend to write in a kind of binge, which usually ends abruptly.

Does anyone else have trouble structuring their writing?

[miyako73]

I need these five before I can write: laptop, ashtray, cigarettes, lighter, and suffering.

[Delta40]

I tend to write in a kind of binge, which usually ends abruptly.

Does anyone else have trouble structuring their writing?

One of the problems I have is alot of pieces of writing everywhere with potential and no way of knowing how I could assemble it all together into a masterpiece! They're in journals, usb's, boxes and even here on Lit-Net but it just seems like a Goliath task to do anything with it.

[dark desire]

I tend to write in a kind of binge, which usually ends abruptly.

Does anyone else have trouble structuring their writing?

Yes! It happens so much. I don't know the alternate to this. As soon as that mood of writing is over, so much restlessness takes over. I desperately want to show what I have written to someone. But then I get scared if I will not get the response I seek. With time I am getting braver. My girl friend is both appreciating and candid which helps. Still structures are nowhere in what I write. Only individual pieces. Structures to write do revolve in my head but what is the point in writing down a structure? Will it not be killing all the writing that has not happened yet?

As for sound and no sound is concerned about writing, I think enough has been said already on this post. One thing I'd like to add -

When I walk on the road,
Cacophonous noises have no melody
When I sit down to write
They become music to me

[Alecia Stone]

I tend to write in the morning mostly but I can generally write at anytime of the day. I think it depends on mood. I also like to listen to a few songs right before I start to write, not during writing. When I'm done with a scene, I tend to replay the songs while reading over what I have written.

[Sancho]

On an airplane, during an all-nighter, after the service, when the ‘stews are merrily chatting away behind the galley curtain, and my seat mates are snoring deeply and profoundly all around me, that’s when I like to write. It’s also a good time to read. I never get the headphones for the movie.

Permanent tinnitus means silence is not an option for me. It’s possible that I spent way too much of my youth in noisy places.

So then: pencil and paper, or computer keyboard?

[cacian]

Yes! It happens so much. I don't know the alternate to this. As soon as that mood of writing is over, so much restlessness takes over. I desperately want to show what I have written to someone. But then I get scared if I will not get the response I seek. With time I am getting braver. My girl friend is both appreciating and candid which helps. Still structures are nowhere in what I write. Only individual pieces. Structures to write do revolve in my head but what is the point in writing down a structure? Will it not be killing all the writing that has not happened yet?

As for sound and no sound is concerned about writing, I think enough has been said already on this post. One thing I'd like to add -

When I walk on the road,
Cacophonous noises have no melody
When I sit down to write
They become music to me
Interesting...still I cannot work out what cacaphonous actually mean although it does suggests it is unpleansant noises.
doesn't the word noise suggests unpleasant distractive sound anyway?

[Shea]

I write when I can which is usually at the local YMCA. I get 2 hours to myself while the staff keep watch over the boys. If I happen to be someplace where there is music playing, I can't write unless the music is classical. There's a coffee shop near where I live and I happened to go during open mic night. I only got editing done at that time.

I also have to do my writing with paper and pen, then type it up later. I can't create otherwise.