Writers will try almost anything to help them write. Gertrude Stein had assistants herd cows into her line of view for inspiration. Hunter Thompson alternated between cocaine and Chivas from all day trying to find his zone. Victor Hugo instructed his valet to hide his clothes so he was forced to write in the nude, removing his temptation to leave the house.
Of the more widely practiced (and legal) writing aids, listening to music is one almost every writer has experimented with in their career. For some, music is the destroyer of any good writing session. Others see music as the fast lane to a creative promiseland. A way to shut out everything else around them and produce their best work. And in contrast to the methods mentioned in the introduction, studies have shown that listening to music can help facilitate divergent thinking stimulate focus.
If you’re a writer in the pro-music camp, one question remains: What is the best music to listen to? Well, procrastination ends here. Below are the tunes that nine bestselling, award winning authors use to jumpstart their sessions. (Bonus: here are all the songs in a Spotify playlist if you’re ready to give them all a try.)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose novel The Sympathizer was a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, and the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, is a recent convert to music-while-writing. Early on, he was careful not to listen to much of anything when he wrote. Viet explained his change of heart:
“I preferred silence before I wrote The Sympathizer, but on The Sympathizer I thought: Okay, let’s try this with some music, but not anything too distracting. I’m usually not listening to anything with lyrics for the most part. I actually listen repetitively to Philip Glass. With The Sympathizer, especially The Hours. I wanted to have some of the feel of his music in the rhythm of the prose.”
Two songs to get you started:
Bestselling author Ryan Holiday calls music his “instant flow tool.” For him, it’s a way to not only drown out external noise, but also a way to quiet parts of his conscious mind that could otherwise be a distraction. His method is to pick one song and listen to it on repeat—sometimes hundreds of times in a row—to get into a rhythm. Holiday goes on:
“There’s very few albums I’ve ever been able to do this to. Bon Iver’s 22, A Million is maybe the only one (and that’s because it’s better as an album than singles—if there was one standout song, I’d just do that). Basically I treat the music as sort of disposable, instant flow tool. I use it until it stops working, and then I move on to the next song. I use the same song that I am writing to when I run later, or if I go for a walk. It’s just creating a continuity to the creative process.”
Two songs to get you started:
Jeff Goins, bestselling author of five books including Real Artists Don’t Starve and The Art of Work, employs a similar method for repeating music while he writes. Jeff likes Sigur Rós—an Icelandic rock band—as one of three things he listens to when he’s writing. The other two? The Texas-based rock band Explosions in the Sky and the soundtrack to Last of the Mohicans. “There’s something about the monotony of listening to the same thing over and over that allows me to focus on the task at hand.”
Two songs to get you started:
As Jeff Goins mentioned above, Explosions in the Sky provides the perfect writing combination of an upbeat tempo and lack of distracting words. He’s not the only pro writer to say so, either. Paul Shirley, former NBA player and accomplished author, most recently of Stories I Tell on Dates, explains why he likes to listen to Explosions in the Sky during his writing sessions: “It is possibly a sign that I am not all that intelligent that I cannot listen to music with lyrics while I write. So, I listen to a lot of post-rock/ambient music: Explosions in the Sky, Tycho, Mono, Eluvium, Sigur Ros, Russian Circles, and my favorite, Cloudkicker.”
Two songs to get you started:
Viet Thanh Nguyen went on to explain that while he does mostly listen to music with no lyrics, he made an exception for this album by Richard Hawley, who is a British Rock musician:
“That album sort of obsessed me and I listened to a lot of that as I was writing The Sympathizer. Many of those songs felt like they were contributing to the mood of the novel. So now I try to curate a playing list that might affect the mood of the novel or somehow part of the scenery of the novel.”
Two songs to get you started:
Classical music is one of the mainstay genres for any writer who prefers to listen to music while they write. The obvious allure of classical music is that there are no words to distract the listener. Biographer and congressional speechwriter Rob Goodman especially prefers the music of composer George Handel:
“If I need to drown out background noise, I’ll listen to some classical music. I’m particularly a fan of Handel, but the important thing is that the music can’t have words, or else I won’t be able to concentrate at all.”
Two songs to get you started:
John Avlon, an author and the editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, finds his inspiration in music and has an interesting theory that explains why he swears by listening while he writes:
“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters—and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye. As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the soundtrack for writing different books. They serve as snapshots in time. So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts—lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman—and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”
Two songs to get you started:
Priscilla Gilman, author of The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy, created a specific playlist she listened to over and over again while writing the book. On that playlist she included songs from the soundtrack to West Side Story. It’s not uncommon for writers to prefer listening to specific soundtracks while the write: Other soundtracks that writers have recommended included Last of the Mohicans, Inception, and Hamilton.
Two songs to get you started:
At first glance, Metallica may seem a bit…much…for a writing backing track. You’d be hard pressed to find a co-working space that played heavy metal on repeat. Yet, if Stephen King is any indication, music of a heavier variety might be just what it takes. King told the The Atlantic he listens to, “Metallica, Anthrax…There’s a band called the Living Things that I like a lot. Very loud group.” Bestselling author Mark Manson shares King’s habit, as he told us in an interview, “I need to write with music. Loud and intense music. Electronic or heavy metal.”
Two songs to get you started:
BONUS: Here are all the above songs on one convenient Spotify Playlist:
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