I’m sitting here after finishing up a stack of articles for my employer. Nine 250 word articles on various topics ranging from home improvement to teaching jobs. When I write these non-fiction pieces, I can’t concentrate if anything is going on outside. A gardener whacking weeds with a gas-powered tool would kill any focus I might have. How do I cope? Louder, more chaotic sound.
I pump up Trent Reznor’s dischordia as loud as my little Boston Speakers will allow. Then my neighbors start banging on the cinderblock walls and I must push the music through my Sony MDR-V500 Headphones.
That’s when the magic happens. I can crank out 2500 words in a little over an hour. That might not seem like a lot, especially when I pound out more than 5000 words in an hour when I’m writing fiction, but prose saps the energy from my normally manic fingers.
When I finished writing the articles, I didn’t stop writing altogether. Instead, I pulled up my huge archive MP3 archive and dove into the collected works of Jim Morrison and The Doors. Mojo Rising.
I just hammered the keys like raindrops on a tin roof and when I finally stopped, amid the Lizard King’s infamous live performance of Roadhouse Blues at the Whiskey. That man can wail.