Barnaby Martin, author of 'The Quiet' - Writer, composer and YouTuber discusses influences, why it's all in the edit, and being anxious to get things done
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Barnaby Martin is a busy man. He works as a teacher, runs a successful YouTube channel with over 10 million views, as a composer he's had pieces performed across the world, and now he's released his first novel, 'The Quiet.
It tells the story of a dystopian world covered by the Soundfield. A domer which surrounds the Earth and changes everyone's life. It brings deadly heat, ravages food and water supplies, and everyone lives with its constant background hum. When scientist Hannah learns her son Isaac has a gift which could threaten the Soundfield, she must battle to keep him safe.
We talk about why his influences across science and music have all led to this story, and how everything affected the other. You can hear why he was surprised about one key difference between writing and composing, and why he's always anxious to get new ideas done.
Barnaby's YouTube channel, 'Listening In', dissects how music is used throughout our lives and the role it plays in other entertainment, and it's got more than 10 million views with over 200k subscribers. How does he divide his creative energy between all these projects?
You can hear about who is novel is influenced by and how heavily he can wear those in the narrative. We discuss his quest to make things new and exciting every time, and what questions he asked when given a brilliant initial hook of an idea.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine. This week we're chatting to Barnaby Martin, whose new novel is inspired by his love of science and music. We talk about how likely you need to tread with |
| 0:22.9 | your influences. Also about why, when having a lot of ideas, the worry is getting things done. |
| 0:29.5 | And I have this sort of slight, it's a little bit of an anxiety that's already always existed in me |
| 0:34.1 | that I might lose an idea if I don't put it down. I don't know where this comes |
| 0:39.8 | from. I don't know if other authors or creative people experience this. But when you have an idea, |
| 0:44.2 | it's not that I fear that other people are going to take that idea or write the idea instead, |
| 0:48.1 | because that just will never happen with a novel. Even if you write something in a similar |
| 0:52.4 | vein, no one is going to produce exactly |
| 0:54.7 | the same novel as you. But I have this like, it's like an energy to get something down reasonably |
| 1:00.7 | quickly and then I can sort of sort it out afterwards. And you can hear why he was surprised to find |
| 1:07.1 | out that unlike writing music, writing novels, it's all about the edit. |
| 1:11.9 | And actually I had to learn that for my first book is I was really surprised how long we spent |
| 1:16.9 | editing the book. So I worked with my agent on the novel and we spent about six months editing. |
| 1:22.4 | And I just, I never anticipated it would be that much. People always say you find the book in |
| 1:26.7 | the in the edit. And it is true, you know, not necessarily the content, but you find the spirit of the book. You find the flow of the book much more than you do in music. I think music is much more, you sort of, you plan, you feel your way through the piece, and then it's sort of done because it was a single expression. |
| 1:44.5 | And you're like, okay, there we go. |
| 1:45.6 | That's what I felt. |
| 1:46.5 | It's all on the way with Barnaby Martin sharing about his new novel, The Quiet. |
| 1:56.7 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine. |
| 2:00.3 | My name is Dan. This is the show where we take a look inside an author's working day. I was pleasantly surprised to see the other day. The podcast got a recommendation of a shout out in I think the Guardian's culture column on one of the Saturdays just gone, which is obviously fantastic. If you have found us because of that, brilliant, love it. Thank you for being there. It always strikes me as really funny that you never told about these things. You just buy papers willy-nilly on the hoof, and they might be in there. Or your mate, WhatsApp through a picture. Oh, I saw this podcast in there. |
| 2:35.6 | Well done. |
| 2:35.9 | This sounds like yours. |
... |
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