Day 19 of the A to Z Challenge and post 17. Good old letter Q.
When you sign-up for a challenge where you have to post about each letter of the alphabet, certain letters JUMP out at you at having the potential to be difficult. You might think J and Q, X and Z would be problems. Basically, all the high letter scorers in scrabble.
Q is one that I had a few ideas milling around. I thought about writing a post on Query Letters, but I’ve never written one and if I go the Self-Publishing route, wouldn’t need one. Another idea was about Quarantine and linking that to editing.
In the end, as I’m not at work today and plan a day of writing, I thought about the noises that might distract me.
That got me thinking about Quiet.
Do you need silence to write?
Are you a writer who needs to have peace and quiet to allow your brain to conjure up the words on the page or screen?
I’ve commented on a number of posts over the last six months discussing this very issue. I don’t have problem writing with noise in the background. Often, I have a News Channel on when I write. The volume is low, but I can hear them. I do like breaking news 🙂
When the voices are on a drama, I find it difficult to write. If I’m working and my wife is watching TV, I plug-in my iPod and listen to music to drown out the noise. Any music is fine apart from classical. For some reason I have to stop what I’m doing and listen to classical music.
I wrote the first 30,000 words for August Camp NaNo last year with the Olympics on in the background. I timed my breaks to the events I wanted to watch (Go Team GB!) but wrote with it on all day long. Maybe I could have written more if I wrote in silence. I might have to give that a go on my next NaNo’ing experience.
How about you? What type of environment do you need to help your writing? Do you put up a sign with Quiet please, writer working?
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This is my Q post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. A list of all my A to Z Blogging Challenge posts are to be found here.
Today’s photographs are from the QUEEN’S house, old Buck Palace. This is the best I had for Q!
You’d make an offer to live here wouldn’t you? Not sure about the pink sky, the photo just turned out like this.
The Queen Victoria Memorial
Pete Denton 
Excellent choice for ‘Q’ (though I am curious about Quarantine…)
I dream of a quiet place to write. Not silent, but quiet. Tranquil. Somewhere like my grandparents’ cottage, alone on an island in a lake, loons calling in the distance, songbirds chattering, maybe a motorboat going by every so often.
Never going to happen. I have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old. Only one is in school this year, so there’s always some level of chaos here. If I put up a “Quiet, Please, Writer Working” sign, I’d have little people everywhere asking, “What’s this? Why do you need a sign? What are you writing? Why are you writing? Is this quiet enough? What does it mean you’re a writer? Can I have a snack?”
There are the precious hours after the boys are in bed and when my husband is working nights, but at this point I’m so used to writing with one ear open and to background noise that I almost can’t work without it. Breaks my heart, I tell you.
Music helps when I write, anything I like well enough that I don’t have to stop and skip over songs. When I edit, white noise is the best thing. Words befuddle my brain at that point. 🙂
(I could have written a post on query letters, but the language would not have been suitable for all audiences.)
I’d be interested to read my post on Quarantine. I might do that at some stage anyway.
You certainly make me appreciate my working environment more. My cat just meows a couple of times and then has a nap. Not the same nagging for snacks 🙂
While I don’t write fiction, I am studying part time, so plenty of assessment tasks. I find I use either music or silence when writing. I use music to time how long I need to spend on a section of the task. One album – may be half a page – to a page of text… it doesn’t always work but it is a good motivator.
Good plan to use album length as a barometer of success. I might try that one. 🙂
Just don’t use ABBA – too short. 🙂
I’ve found it depends on what I’m working on. If I’m writing a scene or dialogue I really like or am excited about, I can block out pretty much anything. If I’m struggling, I need total silence.
Thanks, Kenneth. A good point about comfort, if the scene is easier to write you can work through pretty much anything, silence for scenes requiring more concentration. Good idea. 🙂
I really like silence these days, because having two toddlers to look after, I so rarely get a moment to myself. But I do sometimes listen to music, ideally something like Mike Oldfield. The other thing I like to listen to is the Self-publishing podcasts (Jonny, Dave and Sean.) But most of all I just like silence.
Good luck in finding some moments of silence for your writing with the toddlers. The podcasts sound a good idea.
I definitely need silence to work on a story … blog posts I can do either way … but a story with plot, dialog and such, there’s no other way. Interesting, your story on classical music.
For some reason I can’t work to classical music. I find it too distracting and have to relax and listen to it. Any rabble passing themselves off as musicians and I can work through it. I’m strange like that 🙂
When thing are really rolling, I could write in the middle of a war zone. But when it’s not going well, I need utter silence.
I guess that points to needing our powers of concentration more when things are not going well. Maybe, I’d achieve more if I wrote in silence. I might have to give it a go. 🙂
I am just going off of writing my blogging posts and I can have noise, that is fine, but like you I cannot have those talking heads from tv dramas droning on in the background! Argh. Blah blah blah blah blah, guns shooting, people screaming, blah blah. It totally stresses me out! Husband has been watching Homeland or The Wire or Boardwalk Empire and there are some nasty scenes in those shows, especially if you don’t know what is going on. 🙂
Yes, just say NO to droning drama. Whilst writing of course. 🙂
I don’t need silence, although silence doesn’t hurt my writing. I can screen most things out, but not drama or horror (even if I’d been a fan – the screams get through my personal filter).
Good to know screams filter through in case you need to react to them to some impending doom. I’m thinking about trying silence to see whether it makes a difference. I might get more done 🙂
Great post! I don’t need it to be completely silent, but I can’t work with too much noise around me either. Ideal for me is keeping the TV on just a perfect level: not too high, not too low. Music, strangely enough, doesn’t work for me at all – it disturbs me and I can’t concentrate.
Thanks, Linda. I like a little distraction in the background. I do like the TV on just enough to hear the noise, but not enough to stop me from what I’m supposed to be doing 🙂
The queen’s home certainly lines up with my “Q” post today! 🙂
For writing, I need music to function. Everything I write has a soundtrack and that helps me stay focused.
I think that’s it with me. A like a soundtrack to my stories and so the music helps bring me to the mood I want to write the story.
I can’t write in silence, but I have a very tough time if it’s too loud too. Ideally I tend to write first drafts in one room while a radio is on very low in the next one over. That way it provides a bit of background noise without distracting me with the content.
Thanks, Rhonda. A bit of background noise seems to be the consensus 🙂
Oh dear. I really have to get back to writing.
I’m sure when you’re ready the words will flow. 🙂
Quiet is a funny thing… mostly I’m home alone with the radio or TV in the background… and the trains, or in the office with its customary soundtrack of people and printers… occasionally like today, the G.O. is home & chatting, the dishwasher & TV are on and I have to adjust to sharing my attention around it all… best not to hope for too much.
The soundtrack of life. 🙂
Sometimes I have to have it quiet, sometimes I need music. I know that I can’t write with the tv on- I find that incredibly distracting. But when I do listen to music, I find that songs with either no lyrics or lyrics I don’t understand tend to work best. So usually it’s either instrumentals, or if I want something more pop-y I listen to my daughter’s J-pop and anime theme songs. They’re fun, but since they’re in Japanese I don’t understand what they’re saying so I can just tune it out. LOL!
Good idea. Listening to foreign language music might be a good thing. I don’t tend to listen to the lyrics anyway so that’s probably why I get away with it. I agree about the tv on being distracting, particularly drama.
Quiet is my preferred mode, although I don’t mind too much that I can hear my husband watching TV downstairs when I do. Much as I love music, it’s far too distracting for me to listen to it when I’m writing.
Strange how we all have differences in the way we work although perhaps it would be even stranger if we were all the same. 🙂
Pink sky…cool! I like background noise, no lyrics or I sing along. Although when I was a teen doing homework I’d listen to charts and miss lots so I guess I shut it out when I’m working.
I don’t know what happened to the sky. It was a blue sky when I took the picture. Something happened between then and it hitting my computer.
Usually I hate silence, but I’m trying to write in silence to see if I can get more done.
I need quiet mostly and don’t like being interrupted or too much noise (hmm,is that being in the zone?). Yes I’d be inclined to bid on the big house, especially if you could guarantee the pink sky, but haven’t won any Lotto, let alone multiple times 😉
I think you’d have plenty of rooms to seek out quiet in that house 🙂