The sound of writing

Can you hear the music? Can you hear the muses?

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

The sound of paper

Writing by hand on paper is the more subtle sound of writing.

I love the soft sound of the pen scratching the page in my notebook as well as the sound of the cap of the pen when opening it; or the snap when pushing in, if it’s a click one; the pass of pages when looking for the next empty one to start writing.

The sound of typing

More is better in this case for me. Typing has this marvelous property of musicalizing not just what I write, but my own process of thinking.

I touch type and I may be a little below the media in words per minute, but my typing is as fast as my train of thoughts and that’s enough for me.

Not sure if my typing follows the speed of my thinking or my thinking follows the speed of my typing.

Perhaps neither of them, and it is a matter of synchronization. Or better, of entanglement.

I’ve been using a keyboard for forty-five years, so not sure what was first. Today, typing and thinking are entangled.

And the sounds of typing are also part of my thinking.

I would like to try a mechanical keyboard — those that are harder to type and make some noise (one of these days!). As I said, I’m typing since we used typewriters machines, so some nostalgia may be involved in wanting to listen to some noise.

I had found some apps to add key sounds when I type on the computer. Not the ideal solution, but it works.

The sound of background music

I like to play background music when I start writing. Usually, I only need it to get some focus in the beginning of a session. After ten or twenty minutes, I forgot the music. Yet, it’s important to get focus, so I have a playlist for that.

Coffee shops are magic places for writing to me. Not all, of course. Beyond the basics (chairs, tables, Wi-Fi, services, and coffee), the sound of a coffee shop is an essential element for a good writing session.