I once told a medical-profession-type lady that I didn't sleep well, that I awoke all through the night and was awake for hours. "What do you do when that happens?" she asked. I said I lie there listening to music and thinking. "Thinking about what?" she asked. I said everything, but mainly about whatever I'm writing. Said she, "Don't worry about not sleeping — you're writing. It's part of your process." And so I awake, I grab my iPod, I listen to that week's or month's playlist, I think, I sit up and flip on the lamp and make fuzzy-eyed notes: the perfect word I couldn't find earlier, a new patch of dialogue, a major plot turn. This here playlist is cobbled together from some of the songs I remember not sleeping to as I scribbled down bits and pieces of
Descent.
1. "Young Americans" by David Bowie
This is one of the few songs I never get tired of hearing, and when I was writing the scene in which a bunch of old veterans take my young male protagonist under their collective wing, I had them call him the Young American. Thereafter, when I heard this song, I thought of that scene, and the song seemed to insist that I keep going and finish this book, if for no other reason than to get that crossover moment — my character, Bowie's song — into print.
2. "Don't Kiss Me Goodbye" by Ultra Orange and Emmanuelle
This song has been haunting me since I first heard it in the movie The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, which is about a man who suffers a stroke and...