This was not my view looking out my back door this past Christmas was the brownest brown that you can have in mid 30 degree weather. But one can still dream, right?
As most of you have been able to pick up on throughout the years, I need to have near total silence in which to write effectively and efficiently. I say 'near' because of where my den is located (under the living room), so if I get at least 97%, I'm good. If it drops below that, I'm not so good and I have to find someplace else to write, or blog for that matter.
There was only one time that I had made an exception to rule, and that was strictly due to a plumbing issue that ultimately deposited nearly two inches of water into the basement early summer 2021. So naturally, I had to relocate my computer and printer up to the dining room for the rest of the year.
In addition to those two pieces of equipment being relocated, I was able to save four manuscripts from permanent destruction, so that I would have material to work on.*
*manuscript #1; manuscript #2; rewrite of previously published novella; and my fantasy series.
So here's where the exception comes into play. Dining room is on the 1st floor, with the kitchen directly behind me and the living room directly to my left. Because I do not play well with others when it comes to my writing, we whipped out the headphones, opened up the endless world that is YouTube and went exploring.
Now we didn't just choose any old music to serve as my temporary white noise, we needed music that was completely lyric free. Like the only words I want to hear is someone introducing a song. Because I had an early childhood exposure to classical music (thank you Carl Stalling), classical is what I went for first.
Any possible woodwind or string instrument related to classical, I found every conceivable type of music for. Once I had reached my tolerance level for a particular instrument or composer for that instrument, I moved on to another type of music or instrument, or even obscure stuff like Medieval choral music.
I eventually finished my classical feed bag and moved on to the type fantasy music that one would create for RPGs (aka role playing games), followed by metal bands that would create that kind of music, which was then followed by fantasy music of the ASMR variety (trust me on this one), We soon pivoted to Americana and Bluegrass instrumentals.
I eventually finished my instrumental journey by listening to a few movie soundtracks (e.g. spaghetti westerns), which worked out perfectly for me, as within days of finishing I had to vacate the dining room, as the basement was reasonably cleaned, pipes were fixed and everything was put back in decent order.
I calculated that I listened to nearly two hundred hours of instrumental music of a variety of types stretched across at least a half dozen genres. I came to that educated guess by assuming that, on average, I listened to two hours of music per day, seven days a week, for about five months.
Not since that fateful summer, now going on 4 1/2 years, not one note of classical music (although I do play snippets while running my evening errands) or any fantasy music has knocked at my chamber door. I know it sounds odd, but think of it as having to consume something out of medical necessity for months on end, then when the medical crisis ends, you never touch that item ever again.
There are a myriad of sacrifices that we make when we're in the writing groove, but this was the only time that I had written original material to music for my entire fifteen (and counting) year writing career. Every other time I've listened to music while transcribing, which is another story for another blog post.
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Lay it on me, because unlike others, I can handle it.