Kids! Don't Try This At Home

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Some writing advice is stranger than others.  The oddest useful advice I can think of is this:  Don't listen to the Guyoto Monks while writing.

The Gyoto Monks are the Dalai Lama's crack spiritual troops, best known for the fact that they can chant in chords.  Individually, I mean.  Scientists who have looked into this say that clearly what is going on is that they hold the larynx motionless at the first and second resonance points.  Then, like a plucked guitar string held motionless at those same points, the result is a chord.  Exactly how they learn to do this is a mystery because scientists and Buddhist monks simply do not speak the same language.

It is claimed -- and I believe it -- that listening to the Gyoto Monks chant raises your mind to a higher spiritual level.  Again, there's some speculation about alpha, beta, and gamma brain waves, but the explanation still eludes modern science.

The reason I believe the claim is that I used to listen to music on headphones while I wrote.  One day I put on a tape I'd just bought of the Gyoto Monks chanting and began to write.  As they chanted, I grew increasingly calm and peaceful.  And I stopped writing.

I got up and got a cup of coffee, did a couple of minor chores around the house, went back and started writing again, still listening to the monks.  I started out with a clatter of keys, slowed, stilled . . . stopped.

This happened several times.  The chanting would raise me to a higher level of consciousness in which I no longer desired to write.  Writing, it appears, is an inherently low form of consciousness.  Possibly, it may even be sinful.

I mentioned this to a writer friend and he said, "Yeah, the same thing happened to me.  Eventually, I had to throw the tape away to get any writing done at all."

Which is what I did.

The monks, most likely, would tell me that my spiritual well-being is more important than anything I might write.  But, as with the scientists, they and I simply do not speak a common language.


And for those of you who are big Kindle readers . . .

Somebody over on Facebook alerted me that Amazon has The Best of Michael Swanwick available in Kindle format for three bucks.  For a collection of stories that took me over a quarter-century to write, that's pretty cheap.

You can find it here.

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