Music to write books by

I have been writing a book this summer, in the usual mad tearing hurry. (Much as I admire those who take four or five years to write one, I have to ask, how do you eat? This isn’t by any means a sensible way of making a living.)

Intense workload, though, means music, and lots of it. Many writers simply cannot work with tunes blaring out of nearby speakers; I cannot work without them. Music masks my tinnitus and distracts the part of my brain that would otherwise be trying to distract me from my work. You know, the Facebook part. The videos-of-cats part. The Marks & Spencers chocolate-covered shortbread part.

Normally, when not writing a book, I would play quite loud, beat-heavy music while working: ‘the rhythm of rhyming guitars’, in Bryan Ferry’s deathless phrase. But as stress levels rise, so the need for calmer music becomes more acute. Calmer, but not blander. I need my anxiety to be soothed, but I still need the non-writing part of my brain to be engaged. What to play? And then what to play after that?

The problem is that there’s an awful lot of quiet, bland, sweet and pleasant music around. If it could be composted, landfill sites around the world would be full to bursting and we’d be firing the stuff off into outer space. I can’t tell you how many CDs I have bought over the years, hoping that this or that variety of quiet, pleasant music wouldn’t be sweet or bland, but in truth it’s easier to make a Kings of Leon album, for example, than almost anything else in the world. (A knitted scarf? A cup of tea?) To make quiet music of substance takes more than talent and application: I think it takes luck as well.