Pieces

Wednesday’s about writing, or reading, or both. Today, I look at the way I’ve worked across the years — always with music — speeding up, slowing down. Getting it down. On paper. On a screen.

In my early 20s, I might stay up right through the night — and start writing at four or five or six o’clock in the morning. I might have watched some movies, been out drinking — or both — and then it was time to create some poems, or stories, before turning in mid morning for a sleep; sometimes going right through the next day too — crashing out early that next evening. Eventually. A couple of dozen pages to show for it, sometimes more. Often none of it was worth having, but I kept it all.

Now, I’m more often up at 5am and writing. But it’s after some sleep. I might put on an Enya record, or some classical music, a soundtrack, or some Pink Floyd or Tangerine Dream. I have my music — always. It acts as a companion, and it helps to trigger memories. It’s also just a hard-wiring, layover from when I was reviewing albums a lot.

That’s the piece in-between my early 20s and now. In my 30s and early 40s, I would get up and write record reviews more than poetry and stories. I had blog posts to do for a long-running gig for a while there too. But that was all part of it.

Music to spark the ‘story’ — whatever form I was writing, let’s call it all story work — and then sometimes the writing was overtly about the music, other times it was reflected in some more subtle way.

Now it’s everything. And something else entirely. It could be a review, it might be some new creative work — why can’t they be one and the same, at any rate? People that have never written reviews, and only ever been offended by them, have some very strange ideas about what a review is, and what purpose it is meant to serve.

I will write under headphones. I will write listening to playlists, or streaming a particular album. I can write in bed. Or in a chair. I can write listening to a specific album on a loop — or a set of key songs I’ve chosen. But my favourite thing to do is put an album on the old-fashioned way: A record, a CD, a cassette…

It’s useful to me to have to get up to change the material, to flip sides or make a new CD selection. I don’t want uninterrupted flow — I like to fit the work in around things, and the micro-break of choosing a new record means you fill your water bottle, get breakfast, make another cuppa, maybe even stop to fold some laundry.

All of this is not only useful to writing, I believe that on some level it is writing. It is as much a part of the process as reading Joan Didion or Sally Rooney for tips.

I don’t obsess too much over getting the music right, nor, as might be evidenced here, on getting the writing right. It is about getting it down. Put the record on the platter. Press the keys. Put the words on the screen. Get it down. Lock it in. It can always be revisited, revised.

There is tomorrow to play a better record, or write a stronger newsletter.

There is always another chance. Until there isn’t.