Over the weekend, a bunch of friends and I were talking about the Arts and why it doesn’t flourish in Singapore. Apart from the usual suspects, such as the money chase and the lacklustre image artist(e)s have here—”Actor? Singer? Must be cannot study, one!“—one reason that eventually emerged was the general inhospitable landscape of inspiration that is our concrete jungle.

But does it mean you’ll be able to write better if you live by a lake? Or a whitewash of pillow-soft snow? Gotta love those eskimo novels. Mm-mm.

The real problem, anywhere you go, is the inability to tune out the world we live in. That’s why, go to any McDonald’s, and you’ll see students plugging their ears up with loud music, white noise, and goodness knows what else. I remember how the teachers back in school used to complain about that, saying that no good work ever came from anyone who distracted themselves with music.

But distracting yourself from a world of distractions; do two wrongs make a right? (Or a write, in this case? Ho ho ho, get it? Get it?) Max Barry says he listens to streaming Internet music on a station that picks the next song for you—Pandora plays what his preference of “synth bass riffs, a highly synthetic sonority, repetitive song structure, a tight kick sound, and prevalent use of groove”.

I tried doing the same, because Max Barry is a successful novelist (and creator of NationStates!) and I figured, if it helps him write, I’ll try anything once.

Turns out my music station of Broadway and folk didn’t work. At best, I was keeping my mind on not singing along. Max Barry’s station of drum ‘n’ bass worked a little better; there were no distracting lyrics, and it made me feel like I was writing a dangerous spy novel, or was tapping away as a dimly-lit computer hacker in one of those movies. (I realise this fantasy might not work universally.)

Does music work to oil the chains of one’s mind? The jury is still out on this one. I know it doesn’t quite work on me, at least. My sister, in her schooldays, used to have earplugs in while I practiced the violin in the afternoons. I now know not to have been offended—surely it was because she didn’t want to be distracted by my harmonious fiddling.

…

I have a sneaky suspicion that even if I quit my job and ran away to a remote, serene lake to get some writing done, I’d be distracted by the birds chirping overhead, or the water rippling, or the wind blowing the grass a certain direction. Or the lack of it. And then I’d wonder why the air was so still, where all the birds went, and why the water was so stagnant. And why I moved to a stinking, stagnant lake.

Rather than fight the sludge of mental output that my mind continually drowns itself in, I’ve found that what works for me is to write a little list of keywords, or trigger words, at the bottom of the page (or bottom of the document) whenever a new one pops to mind as I write that’ll unlock further thought later. Trying to clear your mind and write in a logical, sequential and mostly flowing manner may be a gift some have, but when my mind’s branching digressions put even the most rambling geriatric to shame, I realise I simply don’t have a big enough RAM in which all further information may be temporarily stored. (However, I do have a big enough hard disk with which to remember all previous grievances, which has been both a blessing and curse.)

Lifehacker says not to check your e-mail first thing in the morning. Good tip. Here’s another: don’t check your RSS reader to see who’s updated, either. Chances are, everyone has, and before you’re done reading, it’ll be noon, and colleagues will ask you out for lunch and there goes half your workday.