Ten

This week, I’m offering up my last three pieces of advice when it comes to how to maintain your creativity during a month that tends to sap it away. It’s been a fun month for me, a month when I’ve really gotten to try out some of these things, to show just how well they work. It’s been a month full of creativity. Unlike the past two months, this month I’ve written two chapters nearly every week (that’s 16,000 words a week), which is back to what I used to write a few years ago, before life got busy. How awesome is that?

So today, I offer my personal favorite way to maintain your creativity:

Listen to Music Without Lyrics

Some of you won’t like this. I know, because I’ve suggested Two Steps From Hell to several of you, and several of you have responded with “You listen to weird music.” Yeah. Maybe I do. So what? Your music is probably weird to me, too. My point still stands. Here’s why.

Music with lyrics can often draw us out of our creativity and into the words of the song. We end up writing to the mood of the song, to whatever its lyrics contain. Sometimes, that’s not what we’re going for. Actually, a lot of the time it’s not what we’re going for.

However, music without lyrics does exactly the opposite. There’re no words to draw you away from what you’re doing, and it can really set the tone for what you’re working on. It’s like having a soundtrack to your book—and really, how many of us dream of that happening?

I strongly suggest listening to soundtracks themselves, or epic music (some of my personal favorites are James Newton Howard and, of course, Two Steps From Hell). They help to write, to paint, to create, by evoking emotion and idea through the notes instead of the words. It helps to prevent your being drawn out of whatever you’re doing, by having no lyrics to distract you. In fact, this style of music really helps me to ground myself and concentrate on the things that I’m doing.

Right now, for example, I’ve been listening to a lot of Helen Jane Long. Her music is light and breathy, emotional and full of feeling, and it perfectly matches what I’ve been writing about.

Nope, I’m not going to tell you what that is.

But try it out. At least give it a go. You don’t have to listen to it all the time, just when you’re in your creative zone. Find some on YouTube. Give it a go.

You’ll be glad you did.

[love]

{Rani D.}