This morning I was listening to one of my favorite "oldies" from the eighties and besides asking "when did a song from 1984 become an oldie?" I wondered how music, even with its simple lyrics and even simpler message, manages to grab and hold our attention.  

Part of the answer is rhythm.  Whether it be the driving beat of Bruce Springsteen or the pastoral measures of Vivaldi, music demands our attention even if the lyrics are inane or in some cases, absent altogether.

Those thoughts all led to the inevitable conclusion that music is an often overlooked and underestimated part of good writing.  Content, of course, is important, but rhythm binds the words together, giving them a forward rush that draws the reader first through a sentence, a paragraph, a page and then a book, never allowing them an moment of inattention.

Although some writers achieve beautiful rhythm without any conscious effort,(and those people I hate) I spend a lot of time polishing a sentence so that it reads easily and smoothly.  Without a good plot and vivid characters, a tale is just and empty string of words, but when those words are steeped in music, a good story will also sing.