Will Get Back On Track Soon
Well my mind has been just about everywhere and one place where it hasn't been is on my blog and music. The past few days I have been very busy dealing with personal matters with my next door neighbor/childhood best friend who died at the age of 21 on Sunday. Anyway, now I am going to start coming back and devoting more attention to my beloved blog. Because I don't really have much to write about I will talk about my guitar playing expedition. I've been playing for nearly a year now and have finally started to feel the motivation to write my own songs. I've come up with a few ideas for songs and wrote some songs without the lyrics. Although, I am almost finished with my very first song which is about the Rwanda Genocide. For me I find it very hard writing solid lyrics, not so much actually writing them but actually building up the motivation to write. I feel like I don't care quite enough about anything to write a song about it, which isn't exactly true because I have many deep passions but when it comes to writing about my passions I find myself with writers block. To me I figured the easiest thing to write about would be about my girlfriend Chelsey whom I've been dating for over three years, I know everything about her and nothing in the world means more to me but yet when it comes to write a song about her or our relationship I just cannot do it. I think the problem is that I'm trying to be a perfectionist, I don't want to write anything that will be sub-par or anything that will even be just alright. I want to write something that will be great and if it isn't great than I don't want to write it. Maybe that is a good thing but I also find it as crippling because I lose the motivation to write. I guess in the end I just don't want to do an injustice to the things I care about most. When I do indeed finish writing my first song maybe I'll post the lyrics on here and if one day I ever build up the confidence to post the actual recorded song online maybe I will. So before I end this post I would just like to ask the question, has anyone else here written their own music (Neo I know you are a pretty accomplished song writer, also click on his name to see his great blog) and also if you have did you find it was difficult at first?On a side note, I realize this post was a bit all over the place but I think I discovered why I have such a hard time writing songs. Maybe I should write my problems out more often and then I can come to bottom of them...
posted by Jeff at 12:42 AM
4 Comments:
Jeff,
Again, I am sorry for the loss you experienced recently.
As far as writing you've struck a chord with me (no pun intended) because writing is my passion. I just finished reading about writer's block and later will scan that page from the book and email it to you.
I have a writing mentor who has been teaching me so much lately. I don't think there is much difference between writing a song, a poem or a story because they all come from our heart.
One cause for my personal blocks is fear of what others will think of me. You mentioned perfectionism. That can be a HUGE hinderance to a writer.
In order to be a good writer you need to block out ALL your concerns and let the words flow out of you. They don't have to make sense or sound good. Grammar doesn't count...just write it all out without stopping to think about the words at all. THEN after they words are down you can begin to craft them.
This takes practice, but it really works! Don't sit down to write a song - that's overwhelming! Sit down and write "Chelsey" on the top of a page then just go..go...
Write words that describe her, how you feel about her, why you love her, what you know about her.
Then go back and Comapare/Contrast/Associate the words you wrote to exand on them.
Maybe this makes no sense at all. I hope it helps in some small way. My writing mentor gave me this book to read and its very good"
"Writing Down the Bones - Freeing the Writer Within" by Natalie Godlberg.
I know you have lyrics inside you...don't try so hard. Let them flow.
I've created this one technique to help my writing where I just write down my main idea for the song and then just write things describing it and when I feel I've written down many supporting ideas I find what the central theme with all those supporting ideas are. From there I start putting together all of those supporting ideas and create the lyrics. Seems to be working pretty well so far. Also thanks for the book recomendation I will have to check it out.
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Jeff - Hmmm, thanks for the props.
The thing about writing songs is this: Don't think TOO much about. Like Layla said just get the raw ideas down, then filter out the bad parts.
A lot of the time I write songs, I normally just whip out the guitar and find a grove and just start singing to it until it feel right.
One of the things you'll learn as your work on the lyrics is that you have to write crap to get to the good stuff. This doesn't imply that you aren't a good writer, it's just that you need to get the static out of your lines before you can get the good stuff out.
That's the difficult part.
Build the songs one lyric at at him, then let your choruses come to you. Sometimes I write the chorus to a song before I write the verse.
Treat on a song by song basis.
When I first started to write songs, trust me I had some crap! Somewhere tucked away at my mom's house are pages and pages of crap.
That's how you learn.
Give it time, it'll fall into place.
Peace,
- Neo
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