Background Noise

If you speak with twenty writers you'll hear twenty different versions of how, when and where they write.  Some need total quiet and peace, some write in snippets of time, some spend solitary, uninterrupted hours at the keyboard.  Others can write anywhere, minutes or hours at a time and somehow make it work.  Some people love to work in a public coffee house or a quieter setting like a library.  A few fortunate writers can escape to a serene B&B or something similar and have near solitude, protected from the distractions of family and the noisy world.

I grew up on a farm with a full house.  Seven children, a dog and lots of family chores to fill most hours of the day.  Free time could be measured in minutes not hours.  I did my homework in front of the TV because the only hours I had to watch it and were the same few hours I had to spend on my homework.  Even with the distractions of my favorite western shows, the buzz of family conversation and usually my father snoring away, I managed to complete assignments and study for tests.  Perhaps that early training with all the background noise is why I write best when I have a movie or the TV playing nearby.  It has to be a rerun, of course, and usually I select it by theme. 

Currently I have Firefly playing on the desktop computer while I work on my laptop.  I'm not going to go into what my WIP is about but the movie gets me in the correct mood.  Later I might slap in something like Sense and Sensibility though I might have the dialogue memorized already.

So what do you need keep the writing flowing, quiet or noise? Public venues or your office with the door barred and locked? Does what you're working on influence how and where you work?