So it came down to me, and that old foe: the blank screen. My word processor was up and I had plenty of ideas that needed to get on the screen and out of my head. A character was actually talking to me. He was hanging out in my kitchen, taking my food, and bugging the hell out of me so much, I need to trap him on paper, like a djinn.

I couldn’t, though. That’s a problem, of course, for some fool who thinks of himself as a writer. It was too quiet. The high pitch of silence was too much to take, so I turned on iTunes to remedy the problem. I put on some Dirty Three, its record titled, She Has No Strings Apollo. It is an evocative instrumental collection, a mix up of rock and chamber with no vocals to get in the way. Soon enough, that blank screen was filled up with words. And wouldn’t you know, it got me thinking: I need music there, for comfort, noise, a distraction while I write.

What about all those other authors out there, banging away on their keyboards, giving life to characters, and telling stories that resonate in the lives of their readers? Do they need music to work? Is it simply a background, or does it find a way into their words? It wasn’t really a surprise to find a lot of the writers I spoke with had similar, lyric-less requirements when it comes to their own writing habits.

Vincent Louis Carrella, author of Serpent Box, says he listens to mostly “jazz, early jazz - Coltrane, Miles, Monk etc.” when writing, but prior to sitting down, he will sometimes play some emotional music by “Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, maybe some Neil Young," depending what he is working on. Turns out, and I noticed this while reading through Serpent Box, that Tom Waits was an influence. Carrella says, “I borrowed a lot of cadence and manner from Tom and his music definitely bleeds into my work. His rhythms of speech, his language, his instrumentation.” Carrella went on to talk about how certain songs were so influential, that he’d written whole stories around them. “I wrote one based on "Lay it Down" by the Cowboy Junkies and based on "Look Ma, I’m Only Dyin'," by Bob Dylan,” he says.

Similar to Carrella, author Drew McCoy, whose story, “How to be Loved”, has been turned into the short film, Jack and Jen, by T5G productions, listens to a lot of music right before he sits down at the computer. “I'll listen to Amos Lee and his voice, that southern feel of his voice and the cords bleeds into my writing,” he says. “I wish I could listen to music while I write, but I just find myself nodding along to the beat or mouthing the words, and then everything on the page just gets all screwed up.”

Rick Moody, whose second novel, The Ice Storm was the basis for the 1997 movie of the same name, straddles the line. “I generally like things that move me in some dramatic way, a song like "Birdland," by Patti Smith, has always served well, or the entire Time the Relevator album Gillian Welch, or something from Blood on the Tracks, or, right now, very early Merle Haggard,” Moody says. Either that, or for him it has to have no lyrics, which can distract his writing. He continues, “sometimes, so-called world music, or indigenous music in a non-English language, can serve. I like African music a great deal, hi-life music from Ghana, e.g., or Juju, and so on. I like Indian classical music a great deal." More than that though, he has a fondness for “experimental or serious music that doesn't have lyrics." For him, this includes music by La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Arthur Russell and Rhys Chatham. You can check out his latest, Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas, out on Back Bay Books.

Another author who needs something instrumental is Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria, both released by MacAdam Cage. “I can't have lyrics coming at me while I'm trying to work with my own words,” he says. “The music never really bleeds into my work, but I do try to pick music that fits the tone of the chapter I'm working on.” Lately, though, he hasn’t had a set place to do his writing, a pit, as he calls it. Instead, he says, “I'm wandering the city, parking at a coffee shop or park to write for a bit. I actually get a lot of writing done on the local subways or trains. Instead of plugging in my iPod, I have to forcefully tune out the ambient noise which actually helps me focus on my work even better.”

Todd James Pierce, whose 2006 collection, Newsworld, won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, uses music as an “artificial sense of isolation”, as he calls it. Pierce says, “Writing is about emotion that comes from within. A lot of loud, forceful music, for me, damages the connection between language and personal feeling.” To get around this, he uses the scores of Thomas Newman. “I've listed to American Beauty and Scent of a Woman well over 100 times each. If it turned out to be over 200 times, I wouldn't be surprised. His music is atmospheric yet introspective. It interrogates emotion.” Pierce, the father to a pair of twins, might have trouble finding that same sense of isolation, but he's got an easy way to circumvent it. “I've got some Shure earbuds with the foam tips that block out all sound. Give me 10 minutes and I can be deeply back inside my own world as the Starbuck's espresso machine sputters away,” he says. Check out Pierce's "Columbine, the Musical" from Newsworld.

More to coming soon. This is Part 1 of a 4 part series in iTunes and the Pen.