Background Noise: The Good and the Unhelpful

It really goes both ways

🦉 A Tip
How does background noise work for you, or does it work? Does it soften the other noise so you can focus or does it distract you?

As I was trying to fall asleep one night last week, my brain would not let go of the refrigerator’s hum. It’s a background noise I hear all the time, but in this instance, it became my focus and stopped me from achieving my goal of sweet, sweet slumber.

Photo by Mak on Unsplash

That made me think about background noise of all kinds, from the sound of appliances to the lo-fi playlists I listen to while writing to social media to just what happens in the background of our mind every hour. Then I thought about how often I find those kinds of background noises helpful. Some you have to live with, like the sound of my air conditioner running is the sound of my air conditioner running.

But what’s happening in the background noise in your head? Think about if ideas are baking to perfection back there or if they’re shiny objects preventing you from doing your creative thing. Just having an awareness of background noise’s effect on you will bring clarity.

🌠 A Prompt
Apply this to writing, art, crafts, whatever fits for you!

A rainbow stretches over the sky and the colors wave as it moves closer to you. You can actually see its end, in front of a hill across a meadow. What do you discover there?

🍄 A Tool
A free or low-cost tool to help your productivity & creativity!

Thanks to a tweet from Victoria Aveyard I learned that Stanford has a free-to-use site that will help you with how long it would take to travel from point A to point B if you were in the Roman Empire. This information easily translates to travel time in fantasy novels. Fantasy rings more true when it has some grounding in fact, so use this tool to figure out how and when your characters might travel. It's also just a fun tool to play with when you need a distraction.

🌜 Something Helpful
Something I’ve found helpful in my creative endeavors!

Write. It. Down.

This is not anything innovative but it is remarkable how often I (probably we) trust ourselves to remember something later. That something could be an idea for a book, a note for a scene (I had a perfect one for my romcom last week and thought, “This is so good I’ll remember it!” but reader, I do not remember it and I’m so mad at myself), a name of someone you need to reach out to, and it goes on and on. Write it down wherever you will remember to check. I use the Notes app on my phone for a lot of things so I look there first for stray things. Maybe you want to carry around a notebook; I support it, there are so many small and portable options.

Just write it down.