Life is a seesaw between chaos and order. Why should Songwriting be any different?
There’s nothing like the excitement of a new idea. It’s like getting in the car to start a trip I’ve looked forward to for a long time. But then… I get lost. It’s night; it’s dark. I’ve got no map… and even if I did, the overhead light’s broken. No other cars on the road, no gas stations open…
See where I’m going here? Often, that’s Songwriting. Occasionally, writing a song is a pretty straight shot from A to B. More often, a good bit of the writing time is spent lost and wandering, looking for a sign, looking for the turnoff, the trail. And that’s OK. That’s as it should be; that’s how it is.
Tolerating being lost, and trusting that I will find something that works, is and has always been a big part of writing for most writers… Learning to minimize the descent into a self-defeating ‘I suck’ or ‘this sucks’ just because I’m lost at the moment and don’t have an answer to my problem… yet.
Speaking practically, if I’m lucky enough to have a Chorus or even just a Title, that can be my North Star. It can orient me when I feel lost, remind me of where I was heading. If I haven’t got that yet, mostly I have to wander… try to not give in to the terror or the boredom… and try to enjoy the scenery (really!). And, as I’ve written before, sometimes I can even change destinations if on my travels I find a more interesting idea (though I have to be careful not to be distracted by every shiny object I see).
And finally, I try to remember that just because I feel lost doesn’t mean I am lost. In retrospect I’ll connect the dots and understand – that the time I thought I was lost was just a part of the process of writing that particular song. But when I’m in the middle of it, I don’t know how or if it will work out. All I have is hope and commitment.
The song might not pan out… and that’s OK too. As long as I’m trying, I’m learning. And my craft as a writer is improving with practice (even if you might not know it from the song that didn’t work out).