Sometimes silence is a good thing for writers. I love to sit with my dog and look out the window together, letting my mind wander and brainstorm. But most of the time I’m listening to music. And I think there are many benefits to listening to music while you write.

I’ve always felt that different forms of art can influence each other. Music influences my writing. My writing influences my paper crafts. The Bible, which is God’s Word and a work of art in its own right, influences everything I create.

Music can be a great source of inspiration for writing. Different genres and tones of music can influence your ideas. For example, I like to listen to music that reminds me of a character or a story in order to brainstorm. But the main way music helps me is by keeping me inspired during the physical act of writing.

I have the radio station K-LOVE on pretty much non-stop. Listening to Christian music and worship songs is a great reminder of God’s presence. The music helps me remember that God is always with me and that I need to look to him when I am creating.

K-LOVE helps me when I’m reading, brainstorming, working on social media and my blog, and doing pretty much everything else during the day. But when it comes time to get my word count down for the day, I can’t seem to listen to lyrics anymore.

Instead I turn to movie scores and other soundtracks and classical music. Orchestral music helps me so much when I am writing. I try to pick music that has a tone and pace similar to what I’m writing so that it helps me keep my head in the right place. Some of my favorite movie scores to listen to are Inception (or anything else by Hans Zimmer) and the Harry Potter movies. I also like listening to Cirque du Soleil soundtracks when I want something a little different-sounding. When it comes to classical music, Beethoven has always been my favorite.

Movie scores, soundtracks, and classical music keep me inspired and focused on what I’m doing. It’s so easy to become distracted and turn away from your writing, but a lot of the time I’ll use albums as timers: For example, I know that the Inception soundtrack is approximately one hour long. So if I’m having trouble focusing, I can turn that on and tell myself I have to work until it is over, and that will keep me focused for a whole hour.

Another tip I’ve heard before is that video game soundtracks are even better than movie scores to listen to while writing because video game music is specifically designed to keep you concentrated. I’m not much of a gamer and I only have one video game soundtrack (Epic Mickey), so I don’t have much experience to know if this really does help. But movie scores help me just fine.

No matter what music you like, you can look to is as an inspiration for your stories and use it to help keep you focused while you write.

Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?