I can not work in silence. It drives me absolutely batty.
When I was at University, my housemates would often remark about how I would always listen to music whilst writing essays, and how they couldn't possibly work with music. But, for me, silence is far more deafening than music.
It's weird, because I can sometimes be sat at my laptop, writing a story for maybe an hour, and I'll realise that I can't remember what music I've been listening to. I guess, music is my background noise, I can control it's volume, tempo etc in a way that I can't control other noises in the world around me. I can't tell the screaming baby next door to not cry whilst I'm writing, or ask the guy own the road to mow his lawn some other day, because the world just doesn't work like that. But, music allows me to drown all of that out. And with the advancement of MP3 players, I don't have to disturb other people either, which is pretty good, since the boyfriend and I have very different music tastes! Understandable since we were raised in different decades (him being a child of the 80s, whilst I was a child of the 90s).
I haven't done much writing recently, I've been busy with my new hobby of making jewellery, but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things soon. I wouldn't say I suffer writers block more writers paranoia! One minute I totally believe 100% that what I'm writing could potentially be the next big selling novel, but so far in I lose my cool and I question myself. My head and my heart are just never going to be friends, but I think when it comes to my writing, I have got to start letting my heart win for a change, because at this rate I'm never going to believe in myself enough to finish a full-length novel. I've finished loadsa short stories, but long stories, well that is just something else all together!
Now go read a book x
