What songs cure your writers block?
I’m writing a book, but listening to music helps me when i have a block. What do you listen to?
- tigerlilly
3 Responses to “What songs cure your writers block?”
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January 1st, 2009 at 5:33 am
like Peace full music like the sound of a river it helps me paint
January 4th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Johnny Cash is the best….Sunday Morning Coming Down
January 5th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I’m a writer, too, and listening to music works in a different part of the brain than the part that forms language. People are stunned to know I spend all day writing with no tv or radio or any music on. I use music to clean; passive reception of information (music) works with promoting activity. For writing, I move, and use my eyes, outside or inside for brief stretches. Then I can come fresh to a page. A block is NOT really a block IMO. It is your creative process calling you to step back and NOTICE where your piece is going right there. You may have been drifting; voice may have shifted; narrative focus my have gone blurry. Try hard not to buy into the “block” idea too much. I always told my students that it tends to make us sound like precious little diletentes instead of the craftsmen we are. Carpenters don’t get blocked. We are creating in a different medium and sometimes what we think is a block is just the story/poem/essay screaming at you to pay attention, that the piece needs to be very clear right at that point or that some revising there will be needed later. I’ve listened to too may boors in bars talk out their novels and never get word to page. The bloody cowards (Hemingway wannabe drunks). This is HARD work and they’d best be prepared. I am a HUGE fan of Mozart but just because HE was genius does not meanlistening to him will make me one. So anyway, I would be concerned more wih sweeping away distraction and forcing your discipline (pages per ay, words per day, hours per day, whatever you use) to remain constant. YOU own the page, not vice versa. Since you’ll revise laer anyway, just plow through the bocks. Somtimes you get a nice surprise and the story goes a totally diferent and PERFECT direction.