Beneficial Distractions

There are some writing days that are all about complete, focused concentration. Internet bans, snack moratoriums, noise cancelling headphones, padded walls....the whole shebang. Gotta give all the characters their best chance at being heard over the usual noise.

Other days, some distractions are helpful. I'm not talking about the "Oh, look there are two new tweets in my news feed. And now another three. Wow, people are really tweeting right now. I should read them. LOOK AT ALL THE TWEETS," kind of distraction. I've never found that to be a big booster of my writing productivity. Music, on the other, is very helpful.

I frequently think about what my MC is listening to at this point in her life. Why does it mean something to her? How was she introduced to it? This rarely makes it in to the story, but it does inform the tone of my writing. I've always found music to be very influential on my mood. On the days when my brain is feeling a touch sluggish, nothing gets me into my MC's headspace faster than listening to a couple of the songs that I've dubbed "hers."

And on days when I just need to exercise the old mind pan, I take a scene that's been proving stubborn and I set iTunes to shuffle. I rewrite the scene a few times, shifting the tone of it to match each new song, only stopping to skip if a Christmas one pops up (unless it's between Thanksgiving and New Years Day - there are rules, people). After fifteen minutes, I hit pause and check out what I've got. Nine times out of ten, there's something that clicks enough to get me back on track.

So, that's one of my creativity boosters? I'd love to hear some of yours.

While, you're thinking about that, I'm going to leave you with a song that embodies the general mood of a character I'm working on right now: