Making Your Creative Mark – Fabulous new book from Eric Maisel

May 132013
 

Every few days I end up in a conversation with some musicians where the topic is, “Why we all hate marketing and business stuff surrounding our music.” Musicians hate marketing, hate cold-calling DJs, hate negotiating gigs, and hate asking to get paid to play.

In his new book, Making Your Creative Mark, Eric Maisel gives some great reframing or thought-substitution techniques to get through the discouraging stuff. The basic idea is to be attentive to your inner conversations, and eliminate thoughts that do not serve your interests.

Here’s an example:

“I have to call three or four people today to start setting up gigs for this winter.” OK, that’s a good, sensible, useful thing to have in your head.

Then along comes the next thought. “I hate calling people. I wish I didn’t have to do that stupid stuff.” OK, this is where you need some substituting. You hate making business calls, but it’s not useful to think too much about that. What could you substitute?

“I don’t like making biz calls, but it only takes about twenty minutes. Then I can get on with something more interesting. Besides, I haven’t talked to Carol in Colorado for a while, and she’s always great to talk to.”

That substitution will give you a much better chance of actually getting those calls done. Kind of obvious? Yes. But discouragement and procrastination are built on gloomy moods, not following what is obvious and logical. And as Maisel points out, it is often very useful to let go of a thought even though it may be true. You hate doing something, fine if that’s true. But let go of that thought if it doesn’t serve your creativity.

Of course artistic passion means more than simply finding ways to get tedious tasks done. Obsessed, devoted, impetuous, falling madly, lustily, foolishly, hopelessly in love with your creativity. Forget discipline–this isn’t military training. It’s your romance with that instrument, that moment of writing, that dance, applying tools to wood and stone, speaking to the canvas with your brushes.

In the same book, Maisel writes that passion is what separates artists from dabblers. Some people can create casually, occasionally working at something, but usually one must stay passionate and be in the work day after day to create well. The concept of “getting into flow” is often spoken of in terms of immersing into something for several hours. But flow can also be a way of life, where artistic passion is a driving and directing force behind everything you do day upon day.

A runner must have strong mental and emotional focus during a race. But she also trains day after day with that same competitive drive and intensity. The passion to succeed is not a switch she can turn on right before a race and then forget it afterward. Success comes from wanting it and living like she means it. That’s the same kind of passion needed to live a fulfilling artistic life.

This new book from Eric Maisel is one of the best things I’ve seen in a while for the creative personality. He covers the most common difficulties and struggles facing artistic people–your thoughts, confidence, passion, identity, freedom, and relationships. If you’re not on the bandwagon reading every new book that coms along for artists, writers, or musicians, that’s cool. But this is one book I’d recommend to everyone with the desire to create.

Inspired Mind Vs. Industrious Mind

Apr 152013
 

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison
(source)

From a young age Thomas Edison had a significant hearing loss. Legend says he took advantage of the impairment to isolate himself from social and educational experiences in pursuit of his experiments and speculations. Perhaps he came across as arrogant or unpleasant if he didn’t socialize much, but it’s obvious that his contributions to technology, science, and commerce have been immeasurable in the past few generations. The light bulb and the gramophone have changed our world’s history, and those are just two examples of Edison’s inventions.

I think of the creative person as having two minds–the inspired mind and the industrious mind.

When time is on your hands and you’re looking for the next project to start, turn on the inspired mind. Take in lots of inputs, take long walks, read, listen to music, wonder and speculate. Cast a wide net, open up, and let your right-brain imagination make unexpected connections. One definition of inspiration is when your brain makes odd connections between things that you and other people wouldn’t usually think to connect. Love is like a playground, a politician is a cat sleeping in the sun, and a hopeless heart needs a box of tools and a trip to the grocery store.

The industrious mind is very different. You’re deep in a project, so you need to put your head down and work. You don’t want your mind wandering around in many meandering trails. The industrious mind needs you to create a little world in your work, and to live deeply in that world. You close the door behind you and work. Emotions about your work are very distracting. Thinking about the whys of yourself, your work, and your little created world will disrupt your progress. The industrious mind relies on steady effort and immersion, closing yourself off from the world to get work done.

Sometimes all you need is inspiration. If you’re writing limericks or cute little poems like Ogden Nash wrote, the sixty-second intuitive burst is more likely your approach. I actually don’t know how much time or effort were required for Nash to complete one of his poems, but he wrote hundreds and hundreds of them so basic math says he must have cranked them out pretty quick.

On the other hand, writing a novel requires the industrious, meticulous approach stacking inspiration upon inspiration. As Walter Mosley points out in his book This Year You Write Your Novel, the complexities and innumerable connections in a good novel require hundreds of days to build. A writer cannot hope to hold an entire novel in her head at one time, let alone create the whole thing in a single, spontaneous bang of creativity.

In The Music Lover’s Handbook by Elie Sigmeister, the work of Schubert and Beethoven are contrasted along these lines. Schubert wrote songs, small pieces of fine music. His work operated on spontaneity and inspiration. Beethoven, on the other hand, created vast stretches of sound in longer forms such as the symphony and the concerto. Beethoven worked over his manuscripts and notebooks time and again. Scholars today study his notebooks to analyze the progress of his works from raw inspiration stepwise to the finished work.

What if Edison had spent more time asking if his work was worthwhile? What if he succumbed to feelings of boredom and discouragement? Part of creative work is being a little selfish, a little aloof, a little arrogant. You’d have to be playing deity to even intend on creating characters, scenes, and plots, let alone entire worlds.

Some people can turn off the speculative thoughts and turn on the industrious mind quite easily, while many others struggle to tame their unruly minds. This is where breath, thought, and meditation exercises can help strengthen your ability to intentionally focus on some things while pushing aside others.

Maybe you are in a place where you need to open up, play, expand, and imagine in order to fuel your inspired mind. If so, then turn off your industrious mind, don’t be too logical and serious. Don’t confine yourself to a little world, whether that rigid compartment is your artistic work, your family, your job, your sense of self, or your discouraged gloominess.

On the other hand, turn off the inspired mind and turn on the industrious when you have a piece of work underway. Enter the little world of that creation, and limit your mind’s wanderings. Less time thinking and feeling, more time creating. Don’t predict or expect, just work and sweat and see what the work brings you.

“Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” – Thomas Edison
(source)

What A Dozen Hours Can Do (Plus Wacky Songs About Mesopotamia)

Mar 142013
 

A dozen is quite the popular number. Donuts, eggs, cans of beer and bottles of wine all come in dozens. When we want to show an impressive number, we use dozens. “She has dozens of friends in Chicago.” “He has published dozens of articles on the subject.”

If you’re feeling really enthusiastic, you can join The Dozenal Society of America, which advocates a worldwide switch from base ten to base twelve. I am skeptical that base ten will be replaced any time soon., but who knows? Base twelve was in use back in ancient Mesopotamia, so it’s not just a new-fangled fad. Check out the song links at the end of this post, and you may be persuaded to join the ways of ancient arithmetic.

Now, to the real point of all this number talk.

The most common cause of unhappiness and frustration among creative personalities is resistance–the inner resistance that keeps a person doubting, worrying, fearing the vulnerability, and dismissing artistic endeavors as less than meaningful. It may clothe itself in procrastination, laziness, lack of focus, low confidence, or squandered talent. Whatever form it takes, but resistance lies behind anything inside a person that keeps him from doing the work.

Dedicate yourself to a dozen hours of creative work each week. It will change your life.

One musician plans her dozen hours a week this way. She practices for an hour every day. That’s seven. Then she spends five hours on emails, searching for gigs, keeping her website and press kit spiffy. Several months later she is performing more, growing her following, and pushing her music to a higher standard.

Another musician feels he is lacking in some foundation skills. He decides to practice ninety minutes a day. That’s ten and a half hours a week. Plus he puts a weekly lesson on top of that, and his dozen hours are set. He’s going to be a much better musician in just a few months.

Walter Mosley states that ninety minutes a day for a year is the minimum for finishing your first novel draft. Imagine a writer starting on this daunting adventure for the first time. Ninety-some minutes a day, a dozen hours a week. In about twelve months she’ll have six hundred hours poured into her draft, and that might make for a pretty solid piece of reading. Dabbling for a few hours every once in a while on a bored Saturday afternoon isn’t the way to good writing. Putting in the sweat and time is the only way she will get her best writing done.

If you have a job, kids, school activities, yard work, and your volleyball league, finding twelve hours might be tough. You’ll need to scale back on some things. The two-hour volleyball session could be replaced with an hour of running. Some of the school activities you volunteer for could go to other parents this year. Maybe TV isn’t always worth the time.

No one can guarantee that your work will find financial success or critical acclaim if you give more time to it. But it is guaranteed that a second-rate effort will never lead to excellence. Think of it this way: No one could promise that an hour a day in the gym will make you an Olympic athlete. But if you want to feel great and be in the best physical condition possible, that hour in the gym seems like an obvious plan. Work hard and you’re more likely to do very good things.

I’ll wrap up here with those promised songs of historical importance. I do have a soft spot for Mesopotamia from my days in ancient Near East studies. I spent the summer of 1992 translating the entire code of Hammurabi for an Akkadian independent study. So of course I have to point out some great music about the land between the rivers:

Every Time They Say “No”

Feb 182013
 

Every time a musician says “no” to a gig, he is making his circle of opportunities a little smaller. When he’s feeling tired and wanting some chill time at home on the couch, someone else with more motor will take his spot and keep it.

Every time a pianist says “no” to practice, she’s saying that music is not as important to her as it is for some others. On the days she doesn’t practice, someone else is racing ahead to push the music a little further.

Every time a singer says “no” to fixing a mistake in practice, he’s telling himself the mistakes are OK. He’s made that mistake twenty times in the past, and he’s sung it correctly maybe once or twice. He may need to sing it right fifty or a hundred more times to patiently untrain the mistake.

Every time a novelist says “no” to writing, she is missing the opportunity to make her draft a little better. Other writers out there aren’t skipping as many days, and some of them will make it mainly on their drive and dedication.

Every time an artist says “no” to his most important project in order to dabble in something else, he is robbing the left pocket to fill the right one. Spending energy on a frivolous diversion with no intention to complete it diminishes the soul of his main pieces.

Every time a poet says “no” to working because she is worrying and doubting, she acts unkindly toward herself. Doubting herself means she doesn’t consider herself equal. Worrying denies that working very, very hard is what makes brilliant art. She does well to hold onto the truth: She is equal, and the best thing she can do for her creative heart is to work like she loves it and means it.

When you feel discouraged, lazy, distracted, or worried about your artistic work, bravely say “yes” to your creativity.

Escaping Your Artistic Quicksand

Dec 272012
 

Are you stuck in artistic quicksand, unable to get going with your art, music, acting, or writing,? Perhaps you see yourself in the following picture:

You have conflicting emotions about your work. You procrastinate consistently through sophisticated techniques of diversion and distraction. You spend about ninety minutes this month on your work, but next month you promise yourself that you’ll dive into it every evening and weekend to make up for squandered time. And you keep wondering why you have such frustrating flaws when others seem to be so prolific.

Getting unstuck is no simple job, but there are some common tactics that many find helpful. First, understand that feeling trapped in artistic quicksand is practically a universal experience. Most people find digging deep and creating to be tough stuff, so don’t think you are unusual because you can’t get going. Writing a novel requires you to sweat and struggle far more than writing a business memo or a grocery list. Finishing your painting is much more demanding than helping your third-grader finish his homework. (Well, it’s supposed to be, but some third-graders can be pretty stubborn.)

Sometimes the answer is getting your mind back into practical things. It’s hard to work when you keep asking yourself, “Am I talented? Does my work matter? What if I’m choosing the wrong project? What if people hate it when it’s done?” Better to quiet down the mind and give yourself over to the task at hand. Turn off your super-busy thoughts, and pick up the paint brush, pen, script, or score. Trust yourself and submerge yourself in your work.

On the other hand, you might feel overwhelmed by the myriad little steps that lie ahead. You’re chugging along on your novel, and you keep thinking, “I’ve still got tens of thousands of words to write. I’ve been working on this for a year and a half, and my inspired feelings left me a long time ago. It’s enough to make Sisyphus pity me!”

The bored, uninspired times are to be expected, even when you have endless energy and an optimistic attitude. When you feel a deep doubt inside, it may be a good time to consider what you value most. Usually the answer is something like, “I keep forgetting how much I love my work. I’ve been so busy worrying that I’ve lost sight of my artistic heart. I have to remember that if I can work for ten hours a week, I’ll have this project done in maybe twelve to eighteen months.” If your inspired mind can cheer on your industrious, methodical side, then you have a good chance of getting through the dull days.

You might try investing in some non-creating time for renewal and strength. Like a tennis player who works out in the gym to improve her game on the court, you may benefit from some supporting activities. Here are some suggestions.

  • Meditation and attention exercises to strengthen your mental focus
  • Healthy diet and physical exercise to increase your stamina
  • Attending workshops, reading books, and relying on the expertise of others to gain business savvy
  • Relaxation and stress-reduction techniques to manage anxiety
  • Taking long walks to refresh your mind and feed your imagination
  • Investing a little extra time into planning and scheduling to keep your projects on track
  • Loving yourself, being your own number-one fan and supporter

Artistic quicksand is no joke. When you’re stuck, it’s miserable. But almost all of us feel the doubts and worries that you feel. And there are practical things that might help you in your particular little patch of quicksand now. Push yourself, ask a friend to keep you accountable, find a supportive group of peers, or get a creativity coach. The path leading into the quicksand is well worn, but the path out is probably a lot closer than you think.

What To Do When You Have A Notion For A Novel

Oct 212012
 

Writing workshops. Writers’ groups. Online courses. Masters of Fine Arts programs. Writing books full of writing exercises. Writing coaches and creativity coaches. Blogs. Dictionaries, thesauruses, and grammar books..

With all these great resources available, you’d think that our society would be over the top with prolific and enthusiastic novelists. So why is it that very few people who want to write a novel can’t get it done?

I recently read a great little book by Walter Mosley called This Year You Write Your Novel. Mosley is a successful novelist with many books to his credit. And he put everything he knows about writing novels into this useful little book. You should give it a read if you’ve ever had a notion for writing a novel.

Day By Day

The title is kind of bossy, right? This year you get the job done, no messing around. Getting started is tough, and finishing is tough. But if you have an idea and a willingness to write, you better just get started.
Stop thinking about writing and start writing.

Mosley emphasizes the importance of showing up and staying at your writing every day. There are no shortcuts, and no one is going to hand something to you. If you want to produce something good, you need to spend the time and brain power on the task. Mosley says that ninety minutes a day is the minimum amount required, and I wouldn’t argue with that.

Writing every day isn’t just about dedication. According to Mosley, your subconscious mind needs continuity to do its best creating. When you keep heading back to those characters, that scene, that plot and that other subplot, your imagination can stir around the story without breaking momentum. It’s like a musician rehearsing–you don’t practice for a week, and you’ve got some ground to make up.

Step By Step

Mosley talks through the practical steps of writing. Get started, don’t stop to revise and edit until the entire draft is done. Then revise and revise and on and on. You’re done when you keep trying to make it better, but you make it worse instead. That’s when you know it’s as far as it’s going to go.

The book also explains basic techniques of novel writing. Metaphor, simile, dialog, scenery, plot, point-of-view, showing rather than telling, etc. If you’re not familiar with these things, this book is a good place to start.

Again, it’s like a musician practicing her techniques. As you use the tools and methods of novel-writing, you’ll get better at them. There are no writing exercises in Mosley’s book. He says that writing the real stuff is the best practice you can get.

What Happens Next

Mosley finishes the book with an overview of the publishing business. He describes the roles of agents and publishers, and how a book deal is made. Again, the process is explained, but you’ll have to try it and fail at it in order to eventually get better at it.

There’s no certainty of success here. No one can hand you a step-by-step guide to getting your first novel published. Some writers are lucky and others are not. Putting in your best effort for one year will get you a solid draft, and that’s as far as Mosley’s book promises to take you.

A book about writing should be brief and to the point. You have an itch to write, then get going. Understand the tools and techniques of the trade, and then start showing up for work every day. If that sounds good to you, take a little time to read Mosley’s book. Then off you go.

See the book at Amazon

The Discipline Of Whimsy

Oct 142012
 

May was two weeks into her summer job and one full year into her new life of Christian faith, and she felt emptied out by both. Her boss Joanna sat her down after lunch for a little lecture.

“I know you’re new here and you’re a fairly new believer, so I’m just trying to help you adjust. We don’t wear earrings here at the retreat center, but I keep seeing you with earrings on. I know people have different views on these things, but we have to keep one standard so everyone feels comfortable and in harmony. And this shirt you’re wearing today, the sleeves are too short. If you’re going to wear a short-sleeve shirt, the sleeve needs to cover most of your upper arm. Things like this will become second-nature after you’ve been here a while. Is that OK?”

“Yes, I got it,” May said, tired and angry. Earrings and sleeves don’t matter, she thought, so why all these stupid rules? But she said no more and got up to leave.

“Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll see you later.”

May was between her second and third years of college, where she had fallen in with one of the campus Christian fellowship groups. The camaraderie and fun she had with the Christian crowd helped her survive the doubts and loneliness of campus life. Sarah, one of her friends from the Christian crew, told her about the retreat center when she mentioned looking for a summer job.

“It’s run by some independent Christian people, kind of a Bible-based approach to a retreat center. And they run some summer-camp programs for kids. I was an apprentice there for a year before I came back to college last semester.”

“You liked it there?”

“They really push you to grow in your faith. It’s a place for spiritual growth and accountability. I think it would be good for you too.”

May was distracted as she resumed mopping the dining hall floor. She had read through the employee handbook that came in the mail a few days before she started the job. There was nothing about earrings or short sleeves. Is this what Sarah meant when she said the job would be good for her, some kind of army-style attitude adjustment?

She missed her classes at college. The other art students were very talented and a little wild. Well, she didn’t know how wild they really were. She got along great with the other students in class, but they seemed kind of careless and disorganized. They would often stumble into class looking like they had woken up just minutes before, mismatched socks, wrinkled clothes, hair a mess. She assumed some of them were hung over a lot of the time, though she had no proof of this.

There was a small circle of art student girls that were friendly to her. They invited her a few times for a midnight run to the donut shop, but she never accepted. She needed her sleep to make it to all her classes during the day and the fellowship meetings most evenings. Back in April a couple of those girls had invited her to someone’s house in the country for a party all weekend. They said there would be some fun people, and they’d be way out in the middle of the woods where no one could bother them. May felt kind of scared of that invitation. What kind of party did you have in the middle of nowhere? Maybe it was OK, but she couldn’t just ask what they would do at this party. That would look pretty dumb. She’d be trapped out there and couldn’t get away if she wanted to. Her Christian friends would notice that she wasn’t at her usual Sunday morning worship service, and she definitely couldn’t tell them she went to some wild woodsy party with a bunch of art student girls for the weekend.

The weird thing about those girls was, they did awesome work. One of them did such striking, almost disturbing sculptures. A couple months ago she did a stone owl that made May gasp when she first saw its menacing face. It really looked like it was turning its head to look at her. Another one was great with ceramics and pottery. May fell in love with a particular piece of hers, a stout green coffee mug standing on little legs doing a dance. May couldn’t understand how the students who seemed the most undisciplined, the up-all-night and party-in-the-woodds girls, how did they accomplish so much good work?

During her afternoon break she walked out to a peaceful, isolated spot among some trees behind the horse barn. She flopped down on the ground and leaned back against a wide, old tree to get her brain straightened out. Why did she let Joanna push her around? Why didn’t she argue back that there weren’t any rules about earrings and short sleeves?

At school she had tried to stay disciplined and accountable like her Christian friends always talked about. They would tell stories at Bible study about John Wesley and other old church people who were so spiritual and holy by living a methodical life in every way. Every minute was planned, every cent was spent intentionally, every word and thought guided by the desire to be holy and pleasing to God. But what the heck did that have to do with earrings? If she wanted people to boss her around all day, she’d join the stupid army.

She sighed loudly as a horse whinnied in the barn. A few weeks back her favorite art professor had told her that she should throw herself into her work, because she had untapped potential. Something she had read about Leonardo came to mind. Something about his mind being totally enslaved by a drawing or a tiny bit of a painting. He would just think and look all day without doing anything. Then he would finally make a few strokes with his pen or brush once it was absolutely perfect in his mind. That was probably what the professor was talking about, but how do you get there? Her mind was always bouncing around, thinking about where she needed to go later or about what happened yesterday. She was especially bad about thinking over conversations, wondering why someone said this or that to her. Leonardo probably never had problems like that.

She shook her head slowly and chuckled. Sarah, the Christian crew at school, and this Joanna person, it seemed like the one sin that a person should avoid was doing something impetuous or unpredictable. Why were people so afraid of … what? Whimsy, was that what you call it?

Joanna walked around the building one more time, but she couldn’t find May anywhere. No one had seen her for hours. “look,” she told a few of the people preparing dinner in the kitchen, “I gave her a little lecture about keeping her appearance modest. So maybe she got upset about that. Just let me know when she comes back so I can talk to her. I’ll be in my office”

As she was about to sit down at her desk, she saw something on her chair. It was a piece of paper folded up. It was a note from May.

“Thanks for the opportunity to work here. I apologize for leaving with no notice. I know it’s not the Christian thing to do. Please say goodbye to everyone in the kitchen for me. I’ve realized that I need to be more accountable to my imagination rather than to other people, so I have to go. Plus I want to see if some of my art-major friends want to hit the donut shop tonight. Good-bye, May.”

Journaling For Time Travelers

Aug 032012
 

We all get stuck in artistic quicksand from time to time. That bored, uninspired, pessimistic fog can creep in and mess with the imagination. What do you do when you find yourself saying things like this?

  • I feel blue and uninspired about what to work on next, but I don’t know why.
  • I have no motivation.
  • I don’t have any good ideas left.
  • the project I just finished was a huge success, and I got lots of positive feedback on it–so now I feel gloomy and discouraged about the future for some illogical reason.
  • My last project was a flop. I don’t feel like going through that again, but I want to work on something.

There are lots of things you could do to get yourself motivated and inspired. You might take some walks. Maybe talking about your struggles with a friend helps you get unstuck. For a lot of people, journaling is one of the best exercises to clear some debris and undergrowth from the creative path.

Journaling? Really?

Maybe the idea of journaling sounds frivolous or boring to you. You might say, “Look, I’m not the type of person to write a hundred pages about how being a third-born sibling set me back fifteen years in my emotional development. And I’m not about to write out some plan for what I will do every day for the next five years. The last thing I want is some homework assignment to take up what little time and energy I have left.”

OK, none of us wants a boring burdensome introspection project, fair enough. But I actually have something simpler in mind. For me, journaling is writing down your reflections about yourself and your experiences over some time in order to maintain a broader perspective on yourself. It’s just using the act of writing to orient yourself so your moods and problems don’t completely cloud over your view of things. I’m suggesting that you simply spend time regularly reflecting and writing about yourself.

If you’re feeling stuck or uninspired right now, then start writing down your thoughts about that. Use the pen or keyboard to bring some order and logic to the problem. No deep self-psychoanalysis necessary, just getting your mind a little more focused on what you want to do about your quicksand.

Here are some practical steps for getting started with journaling:

  • Next time you’re at the drug store pick up one of those 100-page composition books that kids use in school. The smaller ones with fewer pages are great so you don’t feel like you have lots of blank paper that you need to fill up.
  • Pick a specific time and place to journal every day for a few days. Mornings are often a good choice, because that is when your mind is rested and not yet cluttered with the irritations and stresses of the day.
  • Just write. You can ask yourself questions. You can talk to yourself. You can just write silly rhymes and weird musings that pop into your mind, if that is helpful or meaningful. No one else needs to read this, so just write what you need to write.
  • Go into it with no expectations. The journaling might be a waste of time, or it might change your life. Everyone’s experience will be a little different. Try not to expect anything–just see what happens.

You don’t need to make journaling an intense, life-long commitment. I personally don’t like to journal much, but I do find it helpful from time to time. There’s no “should” here–just try it if you think it might be useful, and forget it if it doesn’t do much for you.

Time Traveling

Try one of these prompts to get your words flowing:

Travel to the past: Think of someone from your past that is one of your heroes. What advice would this hero give you for today?

Travel to the future: Imagine a conversation with your future self–maybe yourself five or ten years from now. What wisdom and encouragement would you get from conversing with your future self?

Give it a try for a few days. Jot down a few paragraphs every morning for the next week or so, letting your past heroes or future self offer some advice and perspective.

And, while we’re talking about time travel, allow me to recommend my favorite time-travel novel, Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater. This little novel is no longer in print as a stand-alone, so you might need to look for a used copy to buy. Or, you can buy it as part of Pinkwater’s Four Fantastic Novels collection. Or, you can listen to the free audio book at pinkwater.com.

Sermons, Stories, Songs, and Friends

Jun 262012
 

When I was a spiritual person in my younger days, I loved a good sermon. Now you ask various church people what makes a good sermon, and you’ll have trouble getting a lot of agreement. Some people want to hear comfortable, familiar platitudes, and some like loud shouting and stomping around. Others expect the preacher to give a deep academic exposition of a text or topic. I knew one strange guy who would say, “If I don’t feel guilty and ashamed after a sermon, then that preacher isn’t doing his job.” Whoa, yikes!

I always felt that a good sermon simply meant telling a good story. When a person could stand in front of an audience and paint stories in their imaginations, well that’s what I liked. And when I had the task of delivering a sermon, I tried to put together twenty minutes of good stories. I modeled my sermons on Garrison Keeler and John Steinbeck rather than Billy Graham or Jimmy Swaggart, the most popular preachers back then.

After many years as a church person I came to the cynical conclusion that most people go to church to see their friends and to be entertained by the sermon and the music. I’m not a spiritual person now, but I do have a great appreciation for friends, stories, and music. I’m always finding intriguing new melodies from fiddle tunes and old songs, and writing my own songs is my way of making up stories today. I’ve had the privilege of performing and recording in recent years with some good friends such as Bud Burwell, Marcy Cochran, Loralyn Coles, Tom Bodine, Harny, Al Bernier, and Brother Lou.

I spend time sometimes thinking about where that shared territory might be between spiritual people and unbelievers. It’s hard to see it with so many words spoken publicly out of fear, frustration, and old-fashioned meanness. But I think stories and songs can help people understand each other.

Not that I’m trying to do anything grand with my songs. I’m just writing stories that I like, and I figure that if I like them, then other people will probably like them too. If the song is going to mean something to someone, well I can’t order it to do that. I can’t say, “Look here, song, you better get out there and help people get along with each other and forget their troubles.” Nope, the songs have to just do what they are going to do.

Jason Blume Gets Inside A Songwriter’s Creativity

May 242012
 

Jason Blume is a successful songwriter with huge hits in pop and country in the 1990s and 2000s. I recently picked up his book, Inside Songwriting: Getting To The Heart Of Creativity, and I found it a quality read. Whether you’re into songwriting from the “artistic” perspective or trying to make it in the music business, Blume shares some great ideas and anecdotes here. He emphasizes creativity, craft, and professional poise, explaining that being a successful songwriter is more than finding the secret shortcut or learning the magic formulas. The book gets a bit repetitive with the anecdotes, but overall it offers some great practical advice.

Homework

Blume gives some good homework exercises to break down your assumptions and dogmas. One exercise is to listen to CHR (contemporary hits radio), current country hits, or other formats of new hits on the radio. Most songwriters I know don’t listen to this stuff because a) you’re working in a non-commercial style, or b) you’re old enough to have “retro” or “classic” tastes. blume instructs you to listen to see how the current hits are constructed. Is there a key change from verse to chorus, or into the bridge? What is the range and contour of the melody? What interesting rhythms, rhymes, and phrasings can you find? How do the lyrics connect the writer with the audience? As Blume points out, the radio is a huge, free course in new songwriting ideas.

I tried this out on a new country station for an hour, and I noticed some real interesting stuff. I was surprised that there was almost no fiddle present. I expected fiddle to be there because it was pretty big in the Garth Brooks ’90s country, which is the most recent country period that I’m familiar with. I also heard , a lot of lyrics that were more sensitive and reflective, but not in a whiny or crying-at-the-bar kind. And I heard a lot of fun ’70s rock influence. Yeah, I also heard a lot of disposable stuff that made me shake my head and say, “Ugh!”

Here’s another exercise from this book: Take one of your recent “finished” compositions and rewrite it with five new melodies. I decided to try this on a song that I have finished and felt was totally solid work by me. I thought, “It’s just an exercise, but this song has already been through a dozen melodic revisions and doesn’t need to change.” I picked up my guitar and started singing the first new melody that came to mind, something a little more driving and contemporary-sounding. And poof, that melody was actually an improvement over the “finished” one. All in a few seconds.

That instant new melody–just add water–was a surprise, and usually you won’t get that quick of a result when you try five new melodies. But blume teaches us something important here. When you think you’re done, try putting out another 500% on that song. It might not change at all, but you need to have a ridiculous level of diligence and effort if you want to finish songs at a higher quality.

Excuses

Blume tells us songwriters to get rid of our excuses, you’re not too talented or not talented enough or too old or too young. He spends a little time breaking down the biggest excuse of them all: “The odds are a million to one. Why should I think that I’m so special?”

His answer is this: Each person is special and unique. No one can write the way you can. You just have to do the ridiculous huge amount of hard work to be the best you that you can be. Maybe it’s all been done before, but no one can do it the way you can.

Communication

You ever find yourself saying to someone, “I know in my head what I want to say, but I’m having trouble putting it into words”? I do this a lot sometimes, which means that my brain, my mouth, the other person’s ear, and the other person’s brain are all working at different speeds. I have to slow down my brain or my mouth to get all these parts understanding each other clearly.

Blume’s book talks about how communication works in songwriting. You write a great song, something that feels so urgent, intense, fun, or deep for you. But when you play it for others, they seem to say, “What does the broken clock mean? And why was there a dog barking on the mountain?” Time to think about synchronizing your feelings, your song, and your audience’s feelings.

Blume points out the big difference between what you feel from your song and what others feel when they hear it. That’s why your upbeat love song might need to be done as a slow heartbreaking ballad. Subjective versus objective. Try getting into other people’s heads a bit to get that communication flowing a little more clearly.

Success

Blume writes that there is no magic shortcut or secret to successful songwriting–just hard work and always trying to get better. You can’t get enough feedback. You can’t rewrite enough and improve enough.

You’ll have friends and peers who scoff at the idea of honing your skills. My deal is this – Learning techniques doesn’t mean you follow formulas slavishly. A technique is just another tool in your toolbox, so use it when it is needed.

Most of us have very specific, well-developed daydreams about what our success would look like. So what would successful songwriting work look like? Lunch with awesome musicians, glamorous parties with glamorous people or what? This book focuses on the songs themselves as career success. A successful songwriter would be a busy person, working hard at music, having frequent collab sessions with other writers, working out details with singers, getting feedback from publishers. Late nights, rushing to meet deadlines. And of course taking lots of verbal and written rejection.

To wrap it up, here’s one of my own exercises: How would you explain to someone the work of writing a great melody? If you’re like me, you stumble and stall at that question. Give your mind a try at that, and leave a comment to let folks know what you come up with.

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