I used to listen to music while writing (mostly movie soundtracks), but upon reading my passages later, while not listening to music, I noticed that they were dramatically worse than I thought they were when I was writing them. I attribute this to what I call “The Football Movie Dramatic Halftime Speech Effect.”

This is where the coach pulls the team aside, who is at this point losing by some incredible margin, and proceeds to bathe them in an inspiring speech that bestows upon them a common epiphany, as well as a miraculous increase in athletic ability, that leads them to decimate the opposition and come back in the second half for the surprising, yet inevitable victory.

This speech is almost exclusively accompanied by a rising symphony that lends itself to the words in such a way that if it is removed the speech actually sounds kinda stupid.

My point being that when I am writing with music I can’t be sure if it is me who is an incredibly inspiring writer worthy of a Hugo and lots of groupies who of course want to have sex with me, or if it is the music that is inspiring and my writing is actually kinda stupid.

Or should I write a book that plays loud symphonies during all my fight scenes?

Another thing that helps me during re-writes is to read what I want to work on the night before. It seems that my brain works on it while I sleep. The next morning, things go a lot smoother and I spend a lot less time deliberating on what to do.

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/100621.html

In regards to keeping track of daily word count, I use novel-writing software called StoryMill (although I know a lot of people prefer Scrivener, I like StoryMill better because of the cool Timeline feature). It allows you to plug in your word count goals for each session and set a (choose your own audio file) nice musical cue to let you know when you’ve reached your goal. Very affirming.

Winter 2008, I went over to a friend’s house and wrote in his basement. It was one of the trashiest places in Provo, but the basement was a good place for me to write, for some reason. I also went over right after working out. I think that the exercise really helped to wake me up mentally and get my mind more active.

Right now, I do a lot of writing on the public computer in the living room of my on-campus apartment. I pull up one of the really comfortable couch-chairs and set the keyboard on my lap. Sometimes I start to doze off on the chair, but on hard chairs my butt usually gets sore after an hour, and that distracts me. Usually I write late at night, so everyone else is gone and it works out great.

I also keep track of my daily wordcount and post it online. That helps me to keep producing every day, even if I don’t have a set schedule.

Why you shouldn’t write wearing shoes but no pants:

1. If you do BICHOK with a metal chair, your B may freeze to it.
2. When you try to polish your shoes on the back of your pants, your legs turn black.
3. It’s hard to tuck your shirt into your socks.
4. Curious cats climbing to see what you are doing may cause screams.
5. You thought spitting hot coffee on a keyboard was bad?
6. Caution. Bottom of the laptop may become extremely hot during use. Eyow!
7. Answering the door becomes an exercise in trying to remember what you are wearing.
8. School authorities may not understand why your child answers the question “What does Daddy do?” with, “Daddy spends all day at the computer without any pants.”
9. If you drop your pen or pencil, you never know where it may land.
10. That’s not what “turn the other cheek” means!

What’s your reason? Come on, folks, let’s help Howard out — er, in to his pants.