I find myself wondering lately what conditions most people write in. I’m sure they vary greatly. I, myself, need to leave the house altogether in order to get in a decent bout of writing done. It’s actually more than that. Let me explain.
I write to my moods. It’s really as simple as that. When I’m working on a short story, all it usually takes is one day to work out the gist of the story. Therefore, whatever mood I’m in pretty much dictates what style of story I create. Don’t get me wrong, the story is nowhere near being finished at that point. Only the original concept. Then comes the issue of recreating that mood when it’s time to revisit that story, or at least as close as I want to come to it. The last stage of revisions I’m usually detached enough from the mood it isn’t necessary to be anything other than in edit mode.
Now that I’m working on this novel, the rules are still somewhat the same. It helps me a great deal to get the feel of my main character when I’m in the right mind set. How do I do that, you ask? Simple.
Music.
I create a playlist of songs that I feel best describes the attitude of my main character. It also needs to have a similar feel to the overall story. Raven’s Mark is a fast paced ride with an anti-hero as the protagonist. Therefore, the playlist I’ve been listening to consists of hard rock, heavy metal, a dash of “Cookie Monster” rock, and always with a good-size helping of Blue Man Group. In a few scenes the mood is slightly altered so I threw in some instrumentals to help even out those times.
If I ever put on the tunes, and I just can’t listen to it, I have to do something else. Maybe work on another story, write a blog post, or read other blogs or stories. I find when I force myself to write when I’m not in the proper mind set, the writing suffers.
So how do you do it? Do you set up a sound barrier from the rest of the world, or am I completely alone in the way I go about it? Even if I am, I don’t think I’ll change any time soon.
