The Autistic Writer: Music (Not) To My Ears
I’ve noticed a common perception out there that music and writing almost always go hand and hand. Interviews with authors, author forums and other such platforms usually come round to the question of what soundtrack any given writer plays while working.
Don’t ask me to cite a study on this, but it seems the more fanciful the material, the more interest there is, (and the more assumptions made) about the author’s taste in background music. In my experience, the general non-writing public tends to assume a fantasy writer immerses themselves in bombastic classical or meandering New Age compositions.
Yet even more “down to earth” fiction lends itself to certain stereotypes when it comes to the writer’s soundscape. Many think of thriller writers pounding away at the keyboard to the sounds of upbeat, high percussion pieces, or romance authors carried away be string rhapsodies as they weave their tales of love.
For all I know, all of these are true more often than not. Speaking only for myself, I can say I almost never have music on as I work.
It happens. It’s just that it doesn’t have to happen. Furthermore, it’s counterproductive more often than helpful.
My theory is that music and writing, despite being cousins of a sort in the creative arts actually “live” in two different parts of my Autistic brain. Though writing obviously requires a strong imagination and willingness to explore same, in the end writing a story becomes an external event. The words I form go onto the screen or onto paper, in order to grant the rest of the world access to same. An obvious expression of interior thoughts and feelings, but not a permanent resident of my mind exclusively.
From an early age music, of all varieties, has pulled me inward further. I consume music, as opposed to actively creating it as I do writing. Someone else has done the work for music, and I am often carried by it deeper into myself. I may encounter an idea that becomes part of my writing in such a state, but the act of writing becomes difficult there. The images I am creating conflict with the images, feelings and emotions of the song that wrap around me.
This may not be as intense as it was when I was younger, but still very much the case.
Even the times I have sought out a specific type of music to aid me in writing a particular scene or story, the results have been mixed. The proverbial stars must align just so for music to enhance as opposed to hinder my writing.
Pure silence would be problematic in its own way; I like there to be some aspect of ambient noise. Yet given the choice, I fall closer to the “no noise” end than I do the “playing music” end of things when it comes to work.
Not a weakness. I have no regrets. I just have a far less interesting answer to the common question of “what do you listen to when you write?”
Ty Unglebower 