I don't listen to music when I write, even when I write about listening to music: When there's music playing, it almost always gets my full attentionand I'm no good at multitasking. (And if I'm around music that's awful and I'm powerless to stop it, I have to leave the premises.) A rare exception is when I listen to CDs while proofreading, because proofreading is fairly brainless stuffand as playback formats go, the Compact Disc isn't the most musically compelling.