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The Sounds of
Writing We asked: What sound is in the background when you write? The winner: I often write at the public library to escape the distractions of home. I like having a separate location as it gives me a chance to get out, and makes me feel like I'm really going to work. Summertime in the library, however, brings with it an ambience not found during the school year. I am referring, of course, to Summer Reading Program. In my library, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings are devoted to the K-3 crowd. As our small town library is basically one large open room, anything over a
whisper is echoed and magnified. Hmm. Yes. I can have my Florida pioneering family first see their new home from the bow of an 1885 steamship...yes...and they'll sing "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round." No, wait. That's not right. They'll step onto the dock in their new town and be greeted by a giant talking bunny rabbit. What?! And then a friendly space alien will whisk them to the moon. No! Help! -------------------- More of our favorite entries: -------------------- My son talking about his latest heartbreak. -------------------- My husband & I retired in '98. I pursue writing while he has always been a Jazz musician. He used to play trumpet, but for the last few years he's been playing piano. Daily the sounds of scales waft through our home. Then jazz traditionals till he starts in on some heavy charts. There's a lot of Bossa
Novas and Latin beats. -------------------- I have the most lovely morning sounds to accompany the quiet sounds of my computer keys. The coffee pot brewing fresh coffee. I open the window to
listen to the birds chirping. The click click sound of my three dogs nails on the hardwood as the walk back and forth to welcome me to the morning. -------------------- My writing, or attempts at writing, were not long ago accompanied by the whines, cries, or can't-wait-to-tell-you
anecdotes of my three incredibly verbal daughters. Once, I was even serenaded with the ballad, "I wish you were just a stay-home mom like you used to be...". I had,
after all, increased my writing to a whopping 1 1/2 hours a day and they were feeling quite neglected. -------------------- Hissing. Whispering. Laughing. Ringing. Clanging. Scraping. -------------------- The first novel that I completed and to my surprise published was inspired by the sounds of summer. The rushing creek in my back yard and swear I could hear the taunting calls of fat trout calling my name. Included was the gentle breeze flowing through the tree leaves that dotted the deep mountain valley where I live, with the calling of hawks soaring above the peaks surrounding my quaint home. The constant tap of the keys on my keyboard melted in to those comforting and inspiring sounds. -------------------- What I listen to in the background depends on what I'm writing in the foreground. As I sit now and catch-up on my e-mail I choose to turn off the cds and simply listen to the rolling wheels and grinding boards as my son and his friend skateboard our driveway. When I wrote what I refer to as my "angry woman script," a spec screenplay about a woman too scarred by the memory of a brutal rape to love, I listened to Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia" CD over and over again; her music still makes me cry. When I wrote my adaptation of Tom Sawyer for a children's theatre camp this summer, I listened to fun, old campy tunes on CDs I still have from when my children were toddlers. When I wrote a multi-media planetarium script (that is currently in production; the premiere is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2004!) I listened to music from the "X-Files," plus classical piano and unaccompanied musical scores that reminded me of so many space age movies I've viewed over the years. I use the music to create a mood for myself, and then I allow myself to get lost in the writing moment. Dana Biscotti Myskowski -------------------- I used to write accompanied by Claude's licking. Claude, my Great Pyrenees, -------------------- "Mommy working?" When I write my daughter sits at my feet and as I peck away at the keyboard I listen to her constant chatter. When she was six months old I couldn't wait for her to begin talking. When she did, she never stopped, and then I wondered why I had been so anxious. After a bit of an adjustment period, I began to realize how much I actually loved listening to her. Yes, her never- ending conversations sometimes make it harder to concentrate but I have been steadily teaching myself to do
both: write and listen to her. Now, as I sit at my computer writing, I no longer feel the frustrations I did at first. I'm happier than I have ever been because I am doing the two things I love most. Being close to my daughter and writing. -------------------- I am sitting at the computer writing this piece. My fingernails tap the keyboard, the keys click in response. The sound of the fan inside my laptop is soothing, reassuring. Outside my home office, which faces the street, occasional cars whiz by, stirring the hot, dry, Arizona summer air and creating tiny dust storms behind them. My life partner, who loves the heat, is sitting on the front porch, rustling newspapers - part of his morning ritual. I have a window slightly open to hear the birds, but am aware of the start and stop of the air conditioner as it begins to struggle with the heat coming in from that tiny opening. I'll have to close the window soon. This is the quiet time of my writing - the only time of the day when I can pretty much guarantee solitude and peace. Later, I'll drive to my office at the writing center I own and operate in Sedona, and writing will take on other sounds, other textures. I will hear the noises from the bookstore in front of the center - the owners talking to customers, the laughter, the music on their CD. I may have my own CDs going, but in truth, I like the jazzy music they play out front, so I usually don't bother. My writing day will be broken up by clients coming by for consultations, workshops, writers who just walk in to network and to see who we are and what we're about. I will be reassured by the sounds of the computer next to me, and by the sounds of the printer spewing out contest and submissions guidelines for our members, that all is well in this writer's world. I may get pieces of my novel done, or not. Later tonight, my partner and I go to a poetry salon at a local coffee house. We meet in a small room made private by curtains. A dozen poets, give or take a few, meet each week to read new work, get feedback, and do a writing exercise or two. Music, usually jazz, oozes into our space, sometimes too loudly. Poets read, and sometimes their voices filter out as a phrase passes into my mind and I hurry to get it down before it passes back out. The coffee grinder and
cappuccino machines are like machine gun bursts, interrupting my writing momentarily. I get used to it. -------------------- When I am writing, I alternative between two musical subliminal prosperity tapes - Money/Prosperity from Potentials Unlimited and Prosperity/Living the Dream by Dr. Paul Tuthill. -------------------- The creative process requires a lot of stimulation and music certainly provides that. My writing music varies. If the teenagers are home, I need loud music so I can't hear them banging on the door. If they're gone, then it depends on the scene I'm writing. For scenes that are low in tension, I use nature sounds or Josh Groban. If the scene is intense, I turn to some of the darker composers or hard edged rock. For that I usually have to venture into the forbidden domain of my oldest child. I close my eyes, hold my nose and grab his CD notebook and get out before anything growing takes me over. -------------------- The laptop and me are writing. Syllables crashing into punctuation, puncturing the silence between breaths. Right now, second story, overtop the Gaslight District of Cicadannati, there's a silver wire mesh fan cage with a spinning metal parrot. Contraption on a sill, with a vocabulary of at least four distinct drone tones. The knob on the back points to "M" so the folded green leaves past the window screen flap slower than light or shadow. High hum of propeller, joined now by a vibrating whine up off the folded leg supporting the circle of electric wind. Reverse gust from the cityside drops the hum to one knee. If the bad ear turns the head and neck to let the good one get closer, the standing sound of a small round fan replaces imagined songs with steady reality. Me and the laptop keep writing. -------------------- Oh . . . sounds. It changes from hour to hour, day to day, depending on my
mood, what I'm writing, and whether I can be bothered to get up and close the
door/change the CD/kick out the cat. My favourite is purring - although the
door-scratching and mewling that inevitably follows drives me nuts. Classical
music comes a close second: a mixed CD (so I don't have to bother changing it -
see above), generally without vocals or I end up accidentally transcribing.
Choice of background noise aside, my habit of writing early in the morning has
led to an association of my pad and pen with my neighbour's mobile phone (yes,
every morning at 6.30 without fail), the postman and various alarm clocks
beeping throughout the house. -------------------- Aha! Peace at last. The kids have gone to school. Hubby has gone to the office. It's just me. But then, a lonesome utter with vibrating vocal chords comes from the corridoor. A furball on legs approaches jumping up and walking carefully around the keyboard with a soft swish of her tail she jumps down and sits on the tips of my toes, purring contently. Cici, our cat, provides the sounds and all the distractions I need while I write. Nadia Ali -------------------- I am a night owl, so I write at night. It wasn't until I had a spell of
writer's block that I realised that there were so many sounds when I once thought there was peace and silence in the dead of night. I was suddenly hearing pipes contracting when the heating switched off, creaking floorboards, birds (yes, in the 3am dark), cats fighting and to top it off; the low rumblings of my husband snoring from the other room - which somehow became even more annoying then while laying beside him trying to sleep. -------------------- When I write a screenplay I select a specific CD that resembles the mood of the script. If I am writing a drama it may be something new age. If I am writing a horror, I tend to put something gothic or heavy on. I listen to the same CD with each sitting. Then when I am in the car or wherever I need only put on that CD to put me into the frame my own writing. In a way the CD becomes the soundtrack to my own film. Hunter -------------------- I get my best writing done during the summer while listening to a baseball game on television. As a lifelong fan, the sounds of a ballgame are soothing to me. I'll often write for the entire three hours only to realize that the game is over and I have no idea who won. During the winter I'll turn on ESPN Classic hoping an old World Series game is being featured. -------------------- The most profound sound is silence. I keep the distractions away so I can listen to God speaking through my reading of his word and my prayer
time. I find the joy and peace of this morning appointment to last throughout the day. Sometimes I am outside and hear the natural sounds
of birds and squirrels which also enhances my special time. What do I write? Prayers and poetry. --------------------
Your question regarding sound has really opened my eyes. Six months ago,
I moved from Long Island, NY, where the sounds of traffic, sirens, loud
neighbors, music thumping from car stereos, the constant drone of planes
overhead and a train that seemed to run right through my living room every
twenty minutes or so was the norm, to a more rural street in North Carolina.
I now enjoy the sound of birds chirping, crickets, an occasional woodpecker
pecking on my chimney and the thumps of stray pinecones falling in my
yard.
I'd been wondering why my writing has been more productive lately,
thinking that I had possibly gotten better with time but I now
realize that it is more likely that I no longer have to struggle just to hear
my own voice. Thanks for the insight!
Robin Svedi -------------------- Invariably, I've got classical music playing in the background as I write, whether it's from our great classical radio stations, KMZT (K-Mozart) or KUSC (sponsored by the University of Southern California) or even from my own collection of LPs and CDs at home. The orderliness, the rhythm, the beauty, and the excitement of whatever is being broadcast or played help me to concentrate on the next needed idea in my writing. I was raised in a home that valued classical music, ranging from the Italian school through Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelsohn, Brahms, and their contemporaries, to later composers like Prokofiev and Lukas Foss. I can read music (which often helps in understanding the intentions of a composer), and I have sung and conducted myself, so the structure and energy of such music is not at all foreign to me. When I write, then, the background of good music helps my concentration, frees me to soar into the area of feelings so necessary to good writing, and forces me to consider my writing structures as well. :) Ursula T. Gibson -------------------- The sounds of my writing are very basic: living in a cottage high up on a Greek
mountain, I have grown accustomed to silence. My keyboard clicks, the refrigerator drones on and on, a dragonfly keeps bumping against the window, trying to get in. Then, suddenly, my dog decides to join in the conversation some other dogs further away have been
engaged in these past ten minutes. First they exchange gossip, then they start shouting at each other. Soon canine
obscenities fly across the ravine that separates my home from the rest of the village, my dog bordering on the hysteric. All of a sudden the argument seems to be closed. All is quiet. Some swallows, high up on the telephone line, are taking their morning
break, chatting along quite civilised. I hear a fly landing in my coffeepot. Silence. -------------------- With summer here, I write to these sounds in the background: -------------------- My CPU provides the only background noise I need. It is humming softly, sometimes accompanied by the refrigerator. In the nice weather, when the windows are open, I occasionally hear chirping birds, a helicopter overhead, cars on the street or a baby crying in the distance. On Mondays, the washing machine will be sloshing in the background, and the dryer provides white noise, too, until it startles me out of my concentration with it's shrill alarm, telling me it's time to take a break. On Tuesdays, for a few minutes in the morning I hear the garbage truck, and around noon everyday I look forward to the sound of the mailbox opening and closing and the letter carrier's footsteps on the porch. Sometimes I will work to the sound of a lawnmower, followed by a weed whipper. Other times, it will be to the sound of the wind, or rain and in the winter, all the outdoor sounds are muffled and I will be alone with just the computer and the furnace clicking on and off. Susan Remson -------------------- I write to two sounds: Sesame Street and blessed, blessed silence. Sesame Street comes on our PBS station two times a day: 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. I have a 17 month old son and a 7 month old nephew who comes to 'play' every day while his parents are at work. They are totally engrossed by Sesame Street, so we try to catch it once a day so I can write. If I had it on a never-ending tape I could probably pump out a book a month. Of course, the boys would be TV-addicted little monsters, so I think the trade-off is fair. One hour of writing and two well-adjusted little boys. My daughters (ages 13 and 9) are asleep by 9 (10 in the summer) so I manage to squeeze in a little writing time at night too--if the laundry piles aren't too high or I don't just fall asleep. Of course my family would tell you I write to the sound of myself muttering, the human thesaurus. "Excited? No...eager? No...enthusiastic? Yeah, that's it." -------------------- The sounds that physically wrap around me as I read my current issue of AbsouteWrite are somewhat unusual. -------------------- The background sounds of my writing are many and varied depending on my mood and my location. Some days I need total focus and type my work to the quiet
breeze gently slapping my vertical cloth blinds against one another. Other days I literally need external stimulation to juice my creativity and do my
work at the local library amidst the cacophony of inquisitive (or unhappy) children, the annoying ringtones of cell phones, and other busy fingers
beating on other keyboards. Undoubtedly, my favorite background sounds are derived from nature. The lively birds chirping in the morning, the pitter
patter of rain, strike of lightening, and booms of thunder, the wails of gusting winds, the guttural purr and mewing of my 13 year-old cat, and the
night creatures as the sun sets and the moon makes its way across the sky. -------------------- |
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