On Distractions
This article has been approved by my girlfriend.
There's a twofold issue with music, which I had intended to put on my writing blog, but now looking I realize I never actually wrote.
The first issue is that we are distracted by everything. Peradventure you're fixing a car. The lights go out and you drop your wrench. The room is black and you can see nothing, so you have to search for the wrench with your hands by feel.
As you grabble in the darkness against the oil-slicked concrete floor, you might notice that you've closed your eyes. Why is that? It's pitch black. Why close your eyes when you already can see nothing?
It's because your eyesight is a distraction, even in pitch darkness, so you close your eyes to focus your concentration on your sense of touch.
A second example. You're driving through a state you've never been in on your way to meet your girlfriend, blasting some DragonForce from the speakers with the windows down, when suddenly you realize you're lost. What is the first thing you do?
Turn down the radio.
You have an innate awareness that in order to genuinely focus, you should remove the distraction of music, especially loud music.
So I recommend that if you cannot turn the music off, turn it down significantly.
The second issue is one of creative energy. If you already are in a creative mood, music can enhance it, giving you a caffeine-like boost; however, listening to music in and of itself is a form of creativity, or at least absorbing someone else's creativity, which can be nearly as taxing on your creative spirit, and like caffeine, can cause you to crash, leaving you emotionally depleted.
So in this case, listen to music that doesn't get you particularly pumped. Classical can work, or anything that you don't find so interesting you want to focus on it.
If we combine these two advices (sp?) then we will listen to inoffensive music that we listen to only with passive interest, and we will lower the volume so that it does not demand attention.
As a completely different piece of advice, we oftentimes try to remove distractions, but even if we're successful in removing them, we're generally still around those distractions, only avoiding them through some willpower or temporary restriction of some sort.
Instead, try removing yourself entirely from the distractions so that you have absolutely nothing better to do than write.
If you don't go to Facebook, Reddit or Youtube, but you could if you really wanted to, then that could be a problem; instead, go out somewhere that these distractions are not even a possibility. With no way to waste time that's more fun than actually writing, you may find yourself excited to get your hands busy with your manuscript.
