“I hate writing. I love having written."
- Dorothy Parker
The hardest part about writing songs is finishing them. Ask anyone who tries to write them. Starting is pretty easy. You have an idea or a thread of something. You might write a first verse, or maybe part of a half-baked chorus and then set it aside. “It's got some potential, maybe.” you think. You have some ideas. You'll come back to it.
Later on you look at it and add a line or two and… put it away again. Perhaps a muse will light on your shoulder and whisper in your ear a magic way to get it to all come together…Ta-Da!. It never happens. Before you know it you have ten partially finished…somethings. They're words on a page but they're not songs.
A few days ago, I heard two different people say, independent of each other, that if you're going to write songs then you have to actually write them. Finish them. Then I saw a fellow on youtube mention a personal challenge he had undertaken. He would write one song, one complete song, every day for thirty days. Just get it done no matter how wretched it might be. Finish it. I thought that was an interesting idea. I decided I would take that on and I have.
I'm on day 8. I have seven complete songs in the bag. Some are embarrassing, but some are okay. In fact, I liked one so much that we recorded most of it this past Monday. We'll put the finishing touches on it next week and it will go on the next album. It's called Will You Still? It's pretty all right. My little project has paid off already.
In songwriting, as with anything we create, self-criticism is a real obstacle. It's hard to get past the inner critic and just get something going, no matter how lame. If you've ever heard any well-known songwriters discuss their craft, most will testify to having written hundreds of absolutely terrible songs, but out of the process comes that ONE. The ONE they were looking for.
So, whatever you're out there creating in the world, create it. Enjoy the process and keep an eye out. You never know, as a friend of mine used to say, you might "find a diamond in a billy goat's butt.”
Birthday's in Music: Jay Bennett (1963-2009) Multi-instrumentalist on the first four Wilco albums.
Name That Movie: “You were drag racing…in a Prius?”
“I don't win a lot.”