Noveling at 154 BPM (Patreon)

As I mentioned earlier this year, I'm working on a near-future SF rom-com novel. It's been very fun and a cool new challenge. But I have been struggling with focus and maintaining energy levels in trying to work on the novel at the pace I was hoping for.

Writing speed has been a variable for me. There was a while where I could hit 1000 words a day pretty regularly for 4-6 days a week. That came in very handy when I was stacking contracts and jumping between drafting one book and revising another. 

The pandemic did a massive number on my writing. That and the challenge of working on a really ambitious project that ultimately got shelved has left me feeling like I'm back at square one in trying to form a new writing habit. 

I've often used music when writing to try to help me find the right mood and/or to occupy just enough of my ADHD brain so that I can focus on what I'm doing. In the past, those playlists have just been "whatever new music I am enjoying and already listening to a bunch." But since I've fallen off of searching out lots of new music, I don't have that stready stream of material that I can listen to and then use for writing once I have gotten used to it.

Because I find that when I'm trying to write to music and the music is unfamiliar to me, I lose focus and just attend to the music.

You can see the problem that spins out from this. No new music, no new writing playlists. Which then feeds into my feeling of being stuck, of spinning my wheels.

I've done some work looking for new music, but yesterday I tried something new. I'd heard that some ADHD folks were finding that listening to music at 154 BPM helped them "reset" and focus. I wasn't so much looking for a reset as a tool for focusing, a playlist I could use on a regular basis for at least the length of this first draft.

The playlist in question is the link above, titled "154 BPM ADHD reset". About 85% of the songs on that playlist are ones I know or know well.

With this playlist, I wrote about 2x what I'd been able to get in most previous sessions working on this novel over the last couple of months, and in less time. 800 words in an hour to an hour and a half isn't the fastest I've written, but again it's much better than my recent average.

There's something to be said for intentionality and *wanting* this new approach to work. And I've only used it now two times. So I may get bored of it, I might find that the music was less of a factor than having slept well, eaten well, etc. But right now, at least, I am hopeful that this playlist and others like it (with familiar, fast-paced music) may help me get back into the writing groove.

Do you write to music? If so, what has worked best for you?