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I came across my go-to writing playlist in the cold months of 2023 during a sound-focused art exhibit in Berlin. The space was otherworldly: rather than paintings or statues filling the vast white hall, rows of headphones hung along the walls. As I listened to a sequence of avant-garde pieces, I found myself drawn to the minimalist pioneers Arnold Dreyblatt and Charlemagne Palestine. Their works looped a mere two or three notes, producing a type of consonant harmony—the subtle, phantom sounds that linger between tones. I shared the pieces with a friend, and they remarked, “That sounds like what madness might sound like.” When I later played the tracks while typing, the reaction I had was simply: This is perfect.
What makes a song suitable as “writing music” is a plus that many artists would weigh differently. The act of writing often benefits from a dash of melodic oddity. It evokes rites of ritual that aim for heightened meditation or ecstatic focus—think whirling dervishes in Sufism, monks circling a sacred statue in Buddhism, Muslim pilgrims circling the Kaaba, or Catholics repeating prayers with rosary beads. Across time, people have relied on cyclical patterns to strip away the trivial parts of themselves and open a door toward deeper cognition.
Take, for instance, James Baldwin’s experience while composing Go Tell It on the Mountain. He relocated to a secluded Alpine village in Switzerland, carrying with him a single Bessie Smith record that he played relentlessly. In Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin explains that it was “Bessie Smith, through her tone and cadence” who helped him reconnect with the way he believed his own voice ought to sound.
For some writers, like Baldwin, the music feels intensely personal. For others, it’s more of a practical choice. Metallic Realms author Lincoln Michel often cycles through Sleep’s sprawling stoner-metal epic “Dopesmoker” partly because of its length: “It’s a convenient time marker at 64 minutes,” he told me recently. “That way I can tell myself, ‘I have to write for at least two Dopesmokers today!’”
Yet for others, music is not a tool but a source of anxiety to mute: Joan Didion famously insisted on blocking outside influence as she wrote, sequestered in a windowless room. Her sentences carried a rhythm of their own, and she worried about disturbing the metronome: “I don’t want anybody else’s talk rhythms in my dream,” Didion remarked in a 1978 Paris Review interview.
In a similar vein, Jonathan Franzen works in near-darkness with earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones that emit pink noise—a deeper, more balanced version of white noise.
Very few writers emulate Franzen’s level of asceticism when it comes to sonic interference, but many gravitate toward instrumental pieces without words. Still, preferences aren’t universal—Veronica Roth, author of Seek the Traitor’s Son, remains open to almost anything. She listens across genres—pop, film scores, folk, rock, metal, alternative—and she’s always aiming for the mood that best suits the book and the particular scene she’s writing. She doesn’t mind drafting with lyrics in the background.
From my perspective, discovering the “right mood,” as Roth puts it, involves two distinct stages of listening. The first stage centers on the writer’s mood while contemplating the work, and the second is about sustained concentration during the act of drafting. In the initial phase, song choice is all about atmosphere. Lyrics are permissible, or not. Playlists can evolve with the project. The requirements are looser, focusing on framing the story’s mental space. While drafting my debut novel The World Gives Way, with its forward-looking, multicultural setting, I sought music in as many languages as possible. When I tackled a Gothic ghost story, Kate Bush’s music became a constant companion. The rule was simple: let whatever feels right guide you.
When the time comes to actually put words on the page, the musical needs shift. The second phase demands a different kind of focus—one that can sustain concentration for long stretches.
“It should be intricate enough to anchor my wandering, anxious thoughts, yet not so overwhelming that it pulls me away from the scene I’m shaping,” says Backstitch author Marian Mitchell Donahue. Jazz often fulfills this role—lively enough to keep energy up, but not so frantic that it distracts from the moment.
What seems to connect all writers is a hunger for repetition—regardless of style, they tend to replay the same tracks to slip into a creative trance.
Soundtracks function similarly, designed to accompany as a melody that fuses with a story already in progress. Scores from cinema are the classic choice, though music from video games is gaining popularity. Travel writer and essayist Matt Ortile finds that the most effective background music comes from video-game soundtracks—tunes played in late-night, in-game library-like spaces that unfold a scholarly atmosphere.
In literary circles, the sweeping tones of Dario Marinelli, the intense propulsion of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and, above all, Philip Glass, often come up in conversation. “Philip Glass stands out as a uniquely writing-friendly composer,” Ortile notes.
Mitchell Donahue echoes that sentiment, explaining her preference for repetitive instrumental pieces and naming Glass as a longtime favorite.
In a conversation with Common Reader, novelist Brandon Taylor cited Philip Glass as his primary musical instrument while composing Real Life. “I would put on Glass’s score for The Hours and type away while the centrifuge spun.”
Glass’s reach makes sense once you consider the breadth of writers’ musical appetites. People crave all sorts of sounds—some want instrumental tracks, others tolerate vocal lines, some seek soft classical tones while others lean toward heavy metal or another driving beat. Yet a shared thread seems to emerge: repetition. Writers repeatedly return to the same songs to slip into a flow state.
That’s exactly what happens to me when I loop the two-note motifs of Dreyblatt or Palestine. I can’t stand listening to stoner metal or pop while I write, and jazz is rarely my go-to. I’m drawn to something Glass-adjacent, perhaps Glass with a few extra miles of improvisation, a hypnotic, shifting tempo that unsettles my ordinary thoughts. I listen in a trance, and I feel my mind detach from daily concerns. It’s music that nudges me toward the right kind of madness for creation.
Like most writers I know, I’m chasing a form of cyclical contemplation, a way to keep the imagination alive without letting it wander into chaos. No matter the style, to write something true and lasting, you have to leave a piece of yourself on the page. If we can nudge our inner selves toward transcendence while we write, even just a fraction, there’s a chance that trace of our soul will find its way into the writing itself.
