Mind of Migg

Some writers prefer total silence.  For the most part, I prefer to write to music.  It has to be loud music though, and it has to be music that captures the tone of what I’m writing.  In a way, it’s similar to silence, because I use it as a way to drown everything else out.  I work best when I blast the music through my headphones instead of speakers and can’t hear anything else besides what’s in my head.

I used to think it was a way of cheating – stirring the specific emotion in order to write more easily.  I’ve realized that using the emotion from music is really more like a warm up though.  Sometimes I’ll leave one song on repeat to capture a specific beat or mood.  It would be torture to anyone casually listening, but once I get going, I don’t even notice it’s there.  There is also the rare occasion when I use the music to warm up and then go with silence when it’s an especially difficult scene.   Most times though, I opt for instrumental music.  When there are lyrics in a song, it can get in the way of the dialogue in my head.

So what do I listen to?  A wide variety.  A lot of it isn’t even my general musical taste.  It’s not like while I’m driving in my car I ever think, “you know, I could really go for some Clint Mansell right now.”  Okay, that’s not true, I’ve played his music in the car too.  But in general, it’s not music the same music that I would listen to while working on non-writing things or while driving.

Here’s a few of my current lists:

My TV drama pilot playlist –

• The Bravery – Believe (I’m so sick of this song, but it works great while writing)
• MGMT – Kids (Same with this one)
• Regina Spektor – Laughing With (I do this one on repeat a lot)
• Silversun Pickups – Substitution
• The Killers – Shadowplay

These songs make no sense together and have completely different vibes.  Granted, they don’t all work in the same section, but for any given part of the script so far, any one of them will do the trick.

For my sci-fi writing:

• Muse
• Zoe Keating
• Clint Mansell

And for my novel:

• Bon Iver
• Fink
• Regina Spektor
• Jamin Winans – Ink Complete Soundtrack (also works well with sci-fi)

I listen to a few of these artists outside of writing, but not much.  They get the job done while writing though.