A driving power is applied to a light source to control emission of a light beam to a recording layer of an optical storage medium, the driving power including a sequence of mark and space portions, each mark portion having a pulse width that corresponds to a multiple of a period T of a write clock. A multi-pulse waveform of each mark portion of the driving power includes a front-end portion having a first pulse width t1 with a high-power write level Pw and starting from a middle-power erase level Pe, a multi-pulse portion including write pulses each having a second pulse width t2 with the write level Pw and a third pulse width t3 with a low-power base level Pb, the multi-pulse portion having a duty ratio z=t2/(t2+t3), and a tail-end portion having a fourth pulse width t4 with the base level Pb and ending at the erase level Pe. The waveform is controlled, when a linear velocity of rotation of the medium is set in a range from 5 m/s to 28 m/s, such that the first pulse width t1 ranges 0.1T to 1T and the fourth pulse width t4 ranges 0.2T to 1.3T.