Step 33: YouTube music

I was being ironic in the last post, in case anyone was offended. To be more specific, I was articulating the crazy crap I reckon so many of us think from time to time. But nevermind all that, its step 33.

I rarely listen to music when I work. I find the lyrics distracting. Sometimes I will use a white noise generator like simplynoise.com especially if I'm in a public place- even coffee house conversation can get me.

I have found the exception. It's working very, very well with the fantasy- I listen to ambient music that evokes the setting. As I run role-playing games, I often use music- in fact, I always use music in the background. The atmosphere's for the players, but also for me- I find I can narrate better, I can describe better, and a similar thing happens with the fantasy novel when I'm listening to desert-related music. High fantasy doesn't do it for me, but what works well is anything a bit Saharan, or something related to Dune.

When I'm stuck, I close my eyes and the music creates images. I reckon, for writers, that's probably a common experience. Having something that stimulates the production of images, scenes, that captures the tone, is a huge help- a way of artificially prompting 'inspiration', the way we do when we see something as we go about in real life, or during whatever random conflagration of influences births the 'idea'. YouTube is god when it comes to this. Search for any kind of ambience and you'll find it.