This is The Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 53: Does Listening To Music Help You Write?

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I am in the midst of a grand writing experiment. Now this experiment consists of the very advice that I give you every time you tune into my podcast, but like most people, I am notoriously bad at taking my own advice. So I’m actually taking my own advice. I am giving myself permission to call myself a writer, even if I don’t feel like it. I’m making some sacrifices and cuts in my life to prioritize my writing. So some social commitments, some leadership opportunities, I’ve kind of had to pass these up in order to prioritize my writing. And I’m being honest with myself about not only what I want to write, but when I do my best creative writing.

I know, I know, it all sounds so simple. And in a way it is. It’s very easy to tell someone, oh, you should do this and you should do that. But it’s another thing entirely to actually implement it and make it a part of your life. So I’ll give you an example. On Fridays at 5:00, I usually go out with my coworkers and we get beers or wine, or what have you and we talk about the week and we bond. And this week on Friday, I declined the invitation because I said, I’m going to prioritize my writing this week. So I went home and I work the type of job where I worked Monday through Friday, 40 hours a week, and I don’t work on weekends. And so I was able to go home on Friday, write Friday night, write Saturday and write on Sunday. So I got in three solid days of writing and it felt amazing.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I was posting pictures of my word count as a grew. So I started on Friday with, I think 22,000 words completed in my novel. And I ended on Sunday with 26,000. So I know different people write at different speeds. I tend to be a very slow writer, but for me, 4,000 words in three days was a huge, not only a huge accomplishment, but a huge improvement over the zero that I had been writing every day before that. So I went into this week trying to write and I wrote here and there a bit, but I learned two things about myself. One was that I need to give myself permission, not only to call me self a writer, but to produce a, I don’t swear on this show, I like to keep it family friendly, but other writers have called it a, we’ll say crappy first draft.

And so I gave myself permission to write poorly. What does that mean? For me, it meant not editing while I was writing. I’m one of those people who writes a paragraph and then I immediately, because I love words so much and because words are so important to me, I will go back into that paragraph and hem and haw over every single word that’s there, wondering, well, would I get better assonance if I used this word or, I don’t know if this really has the right feeling, maybe I should replace it with this word or where’s my thesaurus. But I didn’t do that this time.

I just gave myself permission to write with the knowledge that I have time to go back later and rewrite and edit. But for now my mission is to get the story completed, to write that first draft, because you can’t edit something that doesn’t exist. So my first step, my priority right now is making my novel exist. So that was really fulfilling. I’d forgotten how much of a necessity creative writing was in my life. And maybe it’s something I hadn’t wanted to admit. No one likes to be reliant on something else for their happiness, but you know what? I need creative writing in my life. It’s part of my DNA, it’s who I was made to be. And I just need to embrace that. And maybe you do too.

The other thing I learned was something that I didn’t really want to learn about myself. And I’ll back this up a little bit here with a story. So I read a lot. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I’m very interested in leadership and success and entrepreneurship and all of these other things where the individual can create things under their own steam. I always want to be, I hope this doesn’t sound narcissistic or non-humble, but I want to be a force of nature. I want to be something to be reckoned with. I don’t know, maybe that’s just this weird part of myself. I don’t know why, I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there.

I’d pay a lot of attention to ways that people can become better, ways that people can improve themselves, become better leaders, become more successful in their careers. And one thing that I kept running into was this concept of 4:30 AM. This is the concept of the early bird getting the worm taken to a literal extreme. It’s something that I’ve seen all over the place. And I think the place that I read it most recently was Jon Acuff’s Do Over, but I might be mistaken. Anyway, the concept is that the earlier you wake up, the more in charge of your day you will be, the more you will get done. The more you will, you know, insert awesome thing here.

So I tried it for weeks and weeks because some of you may know if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, I do this podcast, I work full-time at a digital marketing and website development agency. I also write for Forbes and I do all sorts of other leadership stuff in the community here. And so I was already getting up kind of early because I do my Forbes writing before work. And so I was like, okay, instead of being at the coffee shop at 6:30 to start writing, I’m going to be at the coffee shop at 5:00. Let me tell you something, 4:30 AM Sarah and 5:00 AM Sarah are very different people than 6:30 AM Sarah or 10:00 AM Sarah. As much as I wanted it to be true, I don’t think I’m a 4:30 AM leadership kind of individual.

And I say this because I was trying to write creatively first thing in the day. And I found that that is not the time of day when I am at my most creative and this recent Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that I wrote for three days, I tried writing at different periods throughout the day. So early morning, morning, afternoon, evening. And I found that I am least productive during the afternoons. So that like 2:00 to 3:00 zone, I am just no good for anything except maybe sitting there and staring at something. I found that I am not at my most creative at 4:30/5:00 AM, but I found that I hit this awesome sweet spot creatively and productive and focus wise at about 8:00 PM. I found that that was the time where it was easiest for me to get into the flow of writing.

And if you’ve ever found yourself just writing, racing ahead, enthusiastic about the plot, really driven by your story, just really in the mix of things, then you know what I mean by the term flow. So this week I have been setting aside the time between 8:00 PM and whenever my old lady self decides that she’s tired. So between 8:00 and 9:30, between 8:00 and 10:30, between 8:00 and 11:00, what have you, that’s when I’ve been doing my creative writing, that’s when I’ve set aside time, purely for my novel. And it has been wonderful. I hope it doesn’t sound too much like I’m bragging, but I’m really excited about this. I’m finally in a good place creative writing wise. And I really want that for you too.

Also, this update has gone on way longer than I intended it to. And I do intend to get on with today’s topic, which is writing and music and productivity and focus and creativity. Essentially does listening to music help you write? So back in 2006, I was working for a software company in downtown Chicago. And I had met some other folks in my office who were secret book nerds just like me. And they loved writing and reading and they had friends and family who worked in libraries and bookstores. And we just had this lovely little network of hooray for books people. One of my coworkers had a sister who was a YA or young adult librarian and her desk was across from mine.

And one day she sat down and she was like, oh my gosh, Sarah, I have to introduce you to this new series of books. They are all the rage amongst young adults and teenagers, and they’re going to be really big. And she says, I have a copy of the book and I’m going to loan it to you. But before I do that, just listen to the soundtrack. This is the soundtrack that the author used and listened to while writing this awesome, amazing book. And she handed me a CD. And I want to point out a few things here. First and foremost, the CD was amazing. It was this great mix of moody/energetic/angst driven/passionate/I don’t know, a lot of different things. And I loved it and it was very inspiring. And I was like, wow, I want to use this as background music to write my novel. And then I read the novel when my friend brought it in and I was like, whoa, the mood of this novel really does match the mood of the soundtrack. It’s so interesting how things can carry over.

And if you’re a book nerd like me, who knows what YA series was becoming popular in 2006, you know that I’m talking about Twilight. Yes, the much maligned, sparkly, vampire saga. So regardless of what you think of Twilight, whether you love it, whether you hate it, it still stands out in my mind that the author, Stephanie Meyer, publicized her playlist that she used while writing her book. I’ll link to it in the show notes for today’s episode, it must be a popular request that she gets because it’s still up there even now in 2017, more than 10 years later. But this is something that I talked to writers a lot about. When you write, do you listen to music? And then do you listen to music or do you listen to ambient sounds? Do you listen to music with lyrics or music without lyrics? Do you listen to classical Baroque music? Do you listen to thrash metal?

I have gotten the most interesting responses when I asked this question and I always frustrated myself a little bit because I never had just one thing that I could reliably write to. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what that means near the end of the episode, but for now, because I’m a huge nerd, I did a little bit of research that I want to share you about what music does to us when we write. I read one study that claimed that introverts tend to do better writing when they don’t have any sounds at all, so when there’s silence. And that extroverts tend to write better when there’s music going, which I don’t know if I agree with that 100% or at all. Maybe you have some feelings one way or the other.

I read another study that said without a doubt, classical Baroque music is the absolute best for stimulating creativity. But where I started to get really interested was when I started diving into articles about music curation, specifically for creativity, productivity and focus. Apparently this is a huge industry right now. And if you sign on to Spotify, Pandora, Apple music, you can actually find curated playlists around certain moods, such as focus, creativity, and productivity. And if you’re not sure what I mean by curation, what I mean is, if you go to a museum, a museum is curated. So the collections there are sort of gathered from different places by one person to appeal to a certain aesthetic. So essentially if you’re making a playlist, just you’re curating a playlist, you’re curating music.

One thing that I noticed was most of the focus and productivity playlists that I listened to featured very mellow music with no lyrics. So no words, no singing, a lot of them contained very long, drawn out, sustained sounds, very mellow beats, if any, at all. And I found that often they did lull me into a state of focus where I was just able to kind of turn my brain off and focus on pouring outwards. I’ve noticed the same effect when I listened to, I’ve talked about rainy mood before. Rainy mood is an ambient sound generator, which means that it plays essentially a thunderstorm on a 30 minute loop, and you can kind of sink into and out of that very soothing sound of rain.

And in that vein, I think they’re onto something. I have a quote here from Applied Acoustics that says, “Intelligible chatter, so talking that can be clearly heard and understood such as conversation or song lyrics is what makes for a distracting environment. Shifting focus to figure out what someone else is saying is the reason why speech is often considered the most troublesome element of a noisy office. In one study, 48% of participants listed intelligible talking as the sound that distracted them the most.” I’ll link to these studies in the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 53, if you’re interested in looking them up for yourself.

And I did notice that then when I switched over to music that had lyrics, that I was less focused and maybe a little bit more easily distracted by the words that I was listening to. They say that no one can really multitask, that our brains are created to focus, truly focus, on one thing at a time, and we can shift between things, but then that creates, okay, I’m getting into sciencey stuff here that I don’t fully understand, but it creates stress in our brains. And so we retain and produce less. So multitasking is not so good. It would seem that listening to music with lyrics doesn’t help us focus as well. But some of you who like to write while listening to music with lyrics are like, come on, Sarah, what the heck? And you’re right, this is not the whole story because maybe focus and productivity are not exactly what you are going for.

I mentioned earlier that I get kind of frustrated sometimes because I feel like I need a wide range of music for different things that I’m writing. I’ve had some of my most inspiring ideas come to me while listening to music that has lyrics. And if you go back for whatever reason and listen to Stephanie Meyer’s original Twilight playlist that I’m linking to in the show notes for today’s episode, all of those songs have lyrics. And what these songs do is not so much create a zone for productivity and focus, as much as they do a place of emotion, they create a mood, they create an environment of sound. This of course led me to more research. I found this wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review called The Emotions That Make Us More Creative and I’ll link to it once again, in the show notes for today’s episode.

And this article was written as a sort of reaction to a study that had been done that said positive emotions, so music that stimulates positive emotions in people lead to creativity and music that stimulates negative emotions in people leads to them laying on the floor crying, which might be true for some people. But it is not necessarily true for me or for this wonderful Harvard Business Review researcher. And I’m going to read a brief quote from the article here that says, “Over the past seven years, research conducted by psychologist, Eddie Harmon Jones, and his colleagues suggests that the critical variable influencing one’s scope of attention is not emotional valence, so positive versus negative emotions, but rather motivational intensity, or how strongly you feel compelled to either approach or avoid something.”

So basically he’s saying, well, it’s not necessarily whether the music makes you happy or sad that affects how creative you are, but rather the intensity of the emotion that it draws forth. And I thought that that was highly interesting. Music is one place that I know writers draw. A lot of inspiration from, and inspiration is often the spark for creativity, but with the focus and productivity music that we were talking before, I know a lot of people can’t, or don’t, draw inspiration from sort of the more mellow, drawn out, sonorous music. Rather they’re inspired by a soaring pop anthem or a certain strain of lyrics that just gets stuck in their head and has special meaning for them.

When I think of music inspiring passion and intensity, what I tend to think of is, I read another study because I’m here dork, a few years ago about marathon runners listening to music and their performance. And there’ve been a lot of studies done. I don’t know if necessarily this has been proven or not, but a recent article from Runner’s World says, “Studies have shown that external stimuli, such as music, can block out some of your fatigue and spur you to longer distances and faster miles, reducing your perception of your body’s limits.” I also think of old fashioned drum corps. So back in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, soldiers used to march to war accompanied by a drum beat, and sometimes also a fife or a bugle. And this drum beat, this music, accomplished a number of things.

First of all, it’s kept people marching. It kept them just going with a certain tempo toward a certain destination. It kind of drove them onward. It also allowed them to communicate. And so they would have certain cadences or roll offs that would be indicative like, hey, stop, or, hey, take this action or do this action, or what have you. And they did this because it’s very hard to hear one person shouting orders over the din of battle, but it was a lot easier to hear a certain drum beat and react to it. But most interestingly to me is the third use of this battle music. And that was to inspire, to keep people’s spirits high, to keep people excited about winning, to pump people up. We see this now, if you go to a baseball game and a player goes up to the plate and they play a little chunk of that player’s favorite song to pump them up before they’re at bat.

I’m also very vividly reminded of the new Mad Max movie where they have these dudes on like bungee cords, playing metal with guitars that are like flame throwers and these armies of war boys are just like, yeah, let’s go. It’s very inspiring. It’s very uplifting. So music does something to us and it’s no coincidence that I’m still using the word inspires and inspiring. The Harvard Business Review article also goes on to say, quote, “Other research has also found that people who reported experiencing extreme or intense emotions on a regular basis scored higher on measures of creative capacity than those who simply reported feeling positive or negative emotions. There is something about living life with passion and intensity, including the full depth of human experience that is conducive to creativity.”

So at this point you kind of have two different arguments for two different types of music to listen to while you’re writing. You have that sort of mellow lyric-less, consistent, ambient music for focusing and productivity. But then on the other hand, you have music that needs to draw out this depth of feeling, this motivational intensity, this passion, because those in turn lead to states of euphoria and creativity and innovation. And I like lyrics in my music for that reason because they tend to convey deeper meaning to music for me, they give a depth of feeling, and they give my brain words to chew on and phrases to ponder. And you know, that can be good for creativity. So at this point, what do we do? Is one more helpful than the other? Should we be listening to one, if we’re introverts and the other, if we’re extroverts? What a great question.

Several months ago, I hosted Jocelyn K. Glei on my show in Coffee Break episode number 27. And I’ll link to that in today’s show notes. But I subscribed to her newsletter. And she recently came out with this wonderful article talking about the types of music she uses to focus. And she talked about two different types of music for two different situations. And again, I’ll link to this in the show notes for today’s episode, but basically she talks about, and then links to, two different playlists. One of which was calm, atmospheric music for focusing and productivity. And the other is high energy, electronic music that she uses to sort of jar herself into a state of creativity. And I connected with this so much because I realized I do the same thing.

And this is kind of what I alluded to earlier when I was so frustrated with myself for not being able to settle on one type of writing music, because I looked at my Pandora stations and this is not to shill Pandora at all, but it’s just, it’s what I use. And I have two stations that I use for writing. My first one is based on a band called This Will Destroy You and it’s this post rock, ambient metal stuff with no lyrics. And I use that for when I’m really in the zone. And then my other one is this mix of Adele and John legend and Lorde and Lana Del Rey that I use when I’m stuck. So the first one I use when I need to focus, when I need to lose my mind and let it go sailing away in this wash of ambient sound, or when I need to drown out people talking on phones or espresso machines, or what have you.

And then the other one I listen to when I need inspiration, when I need to feel emotions that aren’t available at hand, or when I need to hear poetry or taste someone else’s words, as I’m writing. Writers have what the Harvard Business Review calls, messy minds. We’re not easily placated by one type of music. We’re not easily served by just one type of music, if you use music at all. And I love that phrase, messy minds, because I feel like it’s so true. So getting back to the question that I asked at the beginning of the episode, does listening to music help you write? The answer is that certain types of music can help you focus and be more productive, certain types of music can help you access emotion and achieve a sort of emotional intensity, and it can certainly drown out noise and provide a sort of chewing gum for your brain to chew on.

And so it may help you write, but I don’t think you can rely on music to make you a better writer. Only continued writing, habitual writing can do that. Writing and reading. Those will make you a better writer, but music can often help facilitate your writing if you’re having trouble focusing or having trouble becoming inspired. I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. Again, I’ve always been so fascinated by the relationship of music to our own creativity as writers. And so it was kind of fun to talk about this today. I would absolutely love to hear what sort of music, if any, you use when you write. I’ve talked to writers who don’t use any music at all. I have talked to writers who need to have music going. I’ve talked to writers who use film scores. So the score behind the Lord of the Rings movies or the Harry Potter movies have very moving orchestrated scores. And so they’ll listen to those while they write.

And I would be interested to hear what helps you to write, what’s on your writing playlist. If you want to let me know your thoughts, I would absolutely love to hear them. You can let me know in a couple different ways. First of all, is by leaving comments on the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 53. So you can go out to my website, sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com and navigating to episode number 53, and scrolling down to the bottom and leaving me some comments there. Alternately, you can go over to the contact tab and leave me a message in the little form there that goes straight to my email. Alternately, you can email me just by sending an email to hello@sarahwerner.com. So whatever way you choose, I look forward to hearing from you.

While I’m on the subject, sarahwerner.com is the place where my podcast lives online. If you go there, you can find my blog, you can find old podcast episodes, you can find different places where you can listen to my show. So iTunes, Google Play, all of that good stuff is linked out there. You can also subscribe to my email newsletter. It is accessible in the black bar at the very top when you visit my website, you can just type your email address there, and then you will start receiving emails from me. Or you can also access that list by going to my contact page and clicking on the link there. Joining my email list is a great way to stay in touch with me and a great way for me to stay in touch with you and to let you know when cool stuff is happening, such as me finishing my novel one day, maybe hooray. Yay.

We have come to the part of the episode where I say, thank you. This goes out to you. If you are listening to this, thank you. I would not do this podcast if there were not awesome people like you listening to me blather on about writing. So thank you for listening. I would also like to say special thanks to my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that lets patrons of the arts, so people who want to support shows like this, donates $1 per episode, $2 per episode, a billion dollars per episode, whatever you feel moved to do. And in return, there’s all sorts of cool little gifts and shout outs and swag and stuff that you can get.

If you’re interested in becoming a Patreon supporter, you can do so at patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/sarahrheawerner. That’s S-A-R-A-H-R-H-E-A-W-E-R-N-E-R. You can also search for the Write Now podcast and it should come up. There’s also a link to it in the show notes for today’s episode. So lots of ways for you to navigate to my Patreon page. If you do that, you will join the ranks of fine patrons everywhere, including patrons, cool cats, Sean Locke and Rebecca Werner, official bookworm Matthew Paulson, official rad dude’s Andrew Coons, and the Sioux Empire podcast and official caffeine enabler’s, pulsating, Colleen Cotelessa, and Warwriter.

Thank you all so, so much for your generous contributions. Seriously, thank you. I’m so excited that I get a chance to talk to you every week or every week ish, depending on how faithful I am being to my schedule, but seriously, thank you for being here, thank you for listening. And with that, this has been episode number 53 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’m going to go work on my novel.