|
Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Writers Block OT
Writers Block OT
Page:
1
greeno
19 posts
Mar 21, 2012
5:55 AM
|
While we are discussing songwriting on another post, I was wondering how many members write thier own stuff. Also (a live topic for me at the moment)has anyone experienced writers block, and do you have any tips on breaking out of it. Mine has lasted about 2 years.
Greeno
|
CapnKen
38 posts
Mar 21, 2012
7:44 AM
|
I do write my own stuff but normally just the lyrics and a bacis melody or tempo , then I colaborate with our guitar player to complete the song.Writers block is real frustrating, but 2 years? No, I get an idea for a song at least once a month. If im having trouble finishing one I put it away and don't even think about it for a week or two, then get it back out and work on it again later.I write down every hook that comes to my mind, then I look through them one a month or so, sometimes a song just jumps on you and you cant stop until its done. Thats usually the way it hits me.
----------
LINK
"Blues with a vigor and determination hitherto unknown to the people of this area." Mudflap Nichols
|
BronzeWailer
438 posts
Mar 21, 2012
1:45 PM
|
I write my own songs but play mostly others' stuff. No writer's block as such, but I have to want to write about the subject at hand. Sometimes the songs write themselves and just come to me.
Busking with my buddy last night I just started making one up on the spot. Now if I could only remember it....
|
nacoran
5421 posts
Mar 21, 2012
1:47 PM
|
I write a lot of our lyrics. Writer's block can be tough. Until just this last week I ran a very small songwriter's group. We'd brainstorm for a crazy topic and then have to write something for the next meeting. The deadline forced me to write some very bad lyrics, but it forced me to write, and writing eventually turned into some good writing.
One project that was sort of fun was we made a list of all the cliches that it seems every band takes on at some point in their career. We made a point of taking them on and trying not to be cliche about it.
Some cliches-
A song about the type of music you are playing (rock, blues, whatever)
A song about the first girl you loved
A song about the woman who just left you
A song about a car
A song about drinking
A macho song
A self-deprecating song
A travel song
A song about someplace famous
A song about selling your soul to the devil
A song about religion (other than selling your soul to the devil)
A song about the place where you grew up
A song about writing a song
A song about war
(To name a few)
One thing I find useful is car rides alone, without the radio on. Take a little digital recorder with you. Set it on the seat next to you and sing. Collaborating can help too, but I've found it can take a while to get to the point with someone where develop a good working relationship. I also try to take something to write with to whatever open mic I go to. I find hearing new music gets my brain thinking in new ways. Somebody goes up and sings about pink goats, and that gets me thinking about animals that are weird colors. Someone else sings a song about boxes, and my brain goes- boxes, weird colored animals, box turtles, pink box turtles, no, that's no good- blue box turtles... box turtles with the blues! It doesn't even have to be music. Reading or watching things with new ideas seems to work the same way. The new ideas try bounce off all the old stuff in my brain and form new ideas, and that gets me writing.
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
|
waltertore
2121 posts
Mar 21, 2012
1:52 PM
|
I have really never had it for more than a day or 2 and when I did it wsa because I was not willing to let my uncensorded soul express. My head critized and depressed my soul. These have been very rare and usually follow a major life issue of not good stuff. But then I let go and sing about the meaning of life and soon I am back. I create a cd of new songs, at least, everyday. Life is a song. I don't have time to write them. I just sing and now that I have a recording studio, record them. Stop judging what your soul has to say and forget what the world deams good and bad. If it makes you feel good it is great stuff! I am taught this everyday by my special education high school students. Many will draw the same simple stick figures for hours on end and are as joyus about them as one can be. Life is too short to be worrying about what the world thinks. I am mixing a dozen songs I just recorded as I type. Songs are there for the taking if you are ok with being naked in front of the world. Walter
----------
walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
3,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Mar 21, 2012 1:55 PM
|
tf10music
140 posts
Mar 21, 2012
5:14 PM
|
Despite the great amount of respect I have for Walter's music, I emphatically disagree with the post above. Even though I'm pretty young, I've been writing songs for a few years now, and am a published poet (I try to operate without the pretensions of that occupation). I haven't had writer's block for longer than a month. If you include the poetry, it's even less than that, and I've been writing since I was seven years old (at which point I was single-mindedly attempting to be the next William Blake).
While I agree with Walter that artistic creation is contingent upon a belief that what you have to say is important, I disagree with the assertion that all that matters is that what you produced makes you feel good. Your soul has very little to do with the final product unless you express it properly. I can have something incredibly beautiful that I want to say, but I may very well be unable to find the words or the sounds with which to communicate it. Furthermore, I've always thought that the 'sing like nobody's listening' stuff is a load of trash -- unless you're living in a vacuum, you've heard music and read things. It follows that no matter how strongly you delude yourself into believing that you're creating only for yourself, you have a set of standards, tropes, and expectations ingrained in your mind as a result of that prior exposure. I call it the imagined -- or constructed -- reader. You have a sense of your audience, whether it exists or not, and that informs your creative process. Thus, while the phenomenon of inspiration is spontaneous (I actually argue that it mirrors birth, but that's for another time), the process itself can be utterly meticulous and deliberated, depending on how the lightning strikes. W.B. Yeats is famous for having spent weeks laboring over a single line. The Beatles took ages to finish the White Album, and so did Springsteen for Born To Run.
To Greeno: a trick that I've always found helpful during writer's block is to write about writing, or to sing about songs, or songwriting. It helps you find something to say, and then it often changes into something that is entirely your own. I once wrote an ode to the blank page, and it eventually became something entirely more fundamental to me, while at the same time remaining a commentary on the act of writing. It doesn't have to be blatant -- just keep the songwriting process in mind, and write your song as a commentary on it. Hope that helps!
----------
Check out my music at http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/
|
waltertore
2123 posts
Mar 21, 2012
5:44 PM
|
tf10music: I am not writing to argue your disagreement. I wrote my truth and you yours. But I can tell you that I live in me and what I typed was the God's honest truth for how I do my art. I have a disability(ability) to disregard what is supposed to be and simply entertain myself, southe myself, and whatever other emotions hit me. When I perform in front of people they usually join me for the journey and what transpires is something I could never have found on my own. I have walked away from many opportunities that could have easily made me a name on the music scene but the approach was to mull over every word, chord, note. I said no without hesitation because to control my process in any way destroys it instantly. That just is not how I am wired. Sure I could learn the stuff and go through the motions but that is a waste of life to me. I would much rather be here typing this than getting ready to get onstage with Dylan or such guys and do music the standard way. Some people that have "investigated" how I do music have suggested I have a strain of autism. Could be. I have had autistic students that if you put a million dollars in front of them and asked them to do somethng they didn't like, they would not do it. Yet they would give that whole pile to somebody that was preventing them from doing a simple thing like rocking back and forth.
I have been doing this for 55 years and I continue to tap into the child in me that had not learned anything about what is right or wrong with art from societies rules. How I retain this I have no idea. I think it is my drive to express what is inside is bigger than worldly things. I was always amazed at my musicians friends. They would compromise so much and enjoy it. I could never do that. We all hopefully find out how we are wired and follow it and not control it. Children are the greatest teachers for the arts. I don't expect others to agree/understand/join what I say but I do and that is all that really matters with art for me. I am happy you have found your groove too! Walter
----------
walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
3,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Mar 21, 2012 6:01 PM
|
tf10music
141 posts
Mar 21, 2012
6:16 PM
|
Walter: I totally respect where you're coming from, and am impressed that you've maintained that approach for so long. I resent the notion of 'compromise,' though. I don't think I compromise in my art, even if my process is more drawn out and outwardly oriented than yours. I respect your method -- it's similar to the ideal they had in the late 18th century, where novelists would claim to have written 400 pages in a couple weeks. The idea then was that once you've tapped into the 'Sublime,' your creative process moves very quickly. When I was in my early and mid teens, I used to write at least a poem a day, and they'd take maybe 5 minutes apiece. I have since altered that, because I began to feel as though I was expressing myself LESS truly due to the frequency with which I rehashed whatever it was that I wanted to express. As I write less often, the outpouring that I used to experience at least once a day becomes more effective and more unique. This approach takes the best of the images, words, and melodic ideas that have been bouncing around in my head, and helps me to communicate them more efficiently both to myself and to others. The process itself remains unchanged. However, the 'post-process' becomes more relevant: both music editing (production, mixing, mastering, etc) and poetry editing have become far more important to me.
----------
Check out my music at http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/
|
shadoe42
143 posts
Mar 21, 2012
6:43 PM
|
oddly enough I read the original post I thought to myself(CHUCKLING) now here is a subject Walter won't really be able to speak to :) Now again understand it was a humorous thought as I promptly thought there had to be times when he did have block.
But it occurred to me Walter comes from such a totally different place and method than the rest of us :) As you have said before there is no one that does what you do.
The approaches you and tf10music take I think are both valid. But in some ways vastly different. In some ways maybe not so far apart as they would seem.
Walter approach is not the traditional one. on one hand. But on the other it very much is. MANY sets of instruction materials will tell you that the pure brainstorm exercise is a good one. Pick up your instrument, play and sing whatever comes to mind. Do not censor or edit just sing and play. Or WRITE. Then go back and edit later.
Walter takes this brainstorm approach to its ultimate extension I think. He has what I call an internal editor that I am not even sure if he is aware of. He has in the past described his process as walking into a song and seeing it as if a movie.
But in a more clinical look at it. He is writing, editing and producing all in one go. His pure spontaneous approach has become so refined over the years that much of what others do by writing it down and then editing Walter basically does before the line ever leaves his mouth. I look at it as one of the most refined creation algorithms in existence :) He does it all automatically, it just comes to him. But that is pretty much what any creative inspiration is. and intuitive leap of logic from point A to point D bypassing B and C in between. It comes from a combination of pure talent and long experience.
For the rest of us however we have to be more deliberate.
When i get writers block I will fall back on some of those exercises.. just sit down and write..anything..everything... no editing just get the brain moving and the thoughts flowing again. Later I will read what I wrote and either decided some of it is workable or toss it all. The point is to get the brain moving again.
I also like tf10music's idea about writing commentary'ish. will have to give that a go next time I have block.
----------
The Musical Blades
My Electronic Music World
|
nacoran
5423 posts
Mar 21, 2012
9:20 PM
|
I think I experience writer's block differently than you do tf10Music, I don't find it's tough to say things eloquently, I find that I just don't have anything to say. (Which, thankfully, is a rarity!)
I was an English major in college, but I minored in Journalism, with a lot of Creative Writing thrown in for good measure. They all had very different approaches. Literature seemed, for the most part, to focus on pretty language, Creative Writing focused on clever ideas and Journalism focused on structure.
I went through periods where I wrote in styles rooted in each foundation, but at the moment I'm most focused on a combination that tells a story simply, but then gets to a turning point, or a reveal, where the rest of the story comes out, or the main plot gets reversed or revised. I sort of aim for a spot about 2/3's of the way through the song and try to set up the story by then. Then I deliver the turn around.
When I'm in a rut though, I'll radically change my style. Again, it goes back to the idea of running different ideas into each other and seeing what sticks.
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
|
tf10music
142 posts
Mar 21, 2012
11:10 PM
|
Nacoran, I have difficulty understanding the division that you're making here. How do you convey a feeling? A feeling isn't the same thing as 'something to say,' and yet it is something that many desire to express. I can turn on the 'eloquence button' anytime I want, whether or not there is anything behind it. My point in my previous post was that writing about writing is a way to alleviate that emptiness. I haven't done any journalism, but in my experience creative writing and literature are separated by an emotive/visceral approach in the former, and an intellectual approach in the latter. I attempt to marry the two in my own endeavors.
----------
Check out my music at http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/
|
nacoran
5427 posts
Mar 22, 2012
12:52 AM
|
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I usually don't approach what to write as trying to convey a particular emotion, at least not at the start. We seem to be getting stuck in different parts of the process. I usually try to start with a story idea, and then work it out and let people feel the emotion of the story. The story idea is the starting point, not the emotion, at least most of the time. That for me, is somewhere pointing towards journalistic style. If I can't come up with a hook (in writing jargon, not musical jargon) I have a hard time getting moving forward.
That's where I'm writing from lately. I've gone through phases though where I was really focusing on the words, but lately I've been mostly focusing on what the story is and less on the words, and then maybe, if the words are really rough I'll go back and do some polishing.
At other times I've approached writing very differently. I've got lots of old lyrics and poems and fiction that were strings of words before they were an idea. I'd write strings of sentences and eventually I'd see a unifying idea to pull them together.
I'll give you an example. Take J.K. Rowling. She writes stories that millions and millions of people read. I've told friends (and it's nearly got me beaten!) that I think she is a terrible writer. Before I can even finish the thought all the highbrow people in the room start to cheer for me. I finish the thought by saying, 'She is a terrible writer, but a great story teller.' What I mean is that the story is good, but if you look at any one given sentence (a few clever puns aside) they are abominations. If you take them and drop them onto a page they are ugly things. I'd say she leans more towards the journalistic style, or at least mindset. Her sentence structure isn't journalistic, and of course it's entirely made up.
An example of the opposite may be 'The Wasteland'. It's not very accessible from the point of view of story, but you can see the emotion and depression in it. It's more literary. I think, oddly enough, a lot of grunge songwriting might fall into this category.
I'm having a hard time sussing out how I'd differentiate creative writing from the two. It's got elements of both.
I like stuff in all these categories, and there would be other stylistic categories too. The one I'd single out as a potential hazard zone but that gets used a lot is editorializing. Some of the worst music I've ever heard falls into this category. There is a terrible song by the Cranberries, that I can't think of the name of right now (I like some of their stuff). It's about a famous case were some children killed another child. It just goes on about how terrible this is. Of course it's terrible! Children killed another child. Compare that to something like, 'Early morning, April 4. Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.' Another lyric about something terrible, but an entirely different effect.
But, back to my point about different styles of writing and getting over writer's block. Sometimes shifting back and forth between the different approaches can unstick you. As for writing about writing, (I guess this could fall into that category), sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I guess I've been stuck enough times, so that maybe it's become associated in my mind with being stuck, which just feeds the loop. :)
I've been much more concrete of late. Back in college I did stream of consciousness stuff. One of my favorite things I ever wrote is a two page piece consisting of two sentences. The second one is 'Shut the box.' The first sentence is just all sorts of imagery and alliteration. I really love the piece, but it's not how I usually approach writing these days.
Whew! I feel like I just wrote a term paper! :) At least I didn't bring up Derrida!
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
|
tf10music
143 posts
Mar 22, 2012
2:21 AM
|
I see our difference now. I don't care about narrative, insofar as it retains its definition as a 'story.' It's probably because I've been fixated on the poem for my entire life. In any case, I don't believe in categories -- one of my creative writing teachers once tried to convince me that reading is inherently separate from writing, and I think my scoff could have won a world championship in something. I'm not a douchebag, by the way. I promise.
I'm with you on the editorializing, by the way. It's like a guarantee that your lyrics won't be engaging (unless you're Dylan or Dave Van Ronk, or someone with similarly preternatural abilities). And I love Pride (In The Name Of Love). One of U2's best songs, and that's saying something.
Over the past year, I've been milking a specific theme, because I'm working on a collection of poems (due to be published in 2014). I've found that such a focus has helped to prevent writer's block, because my poetic mythology is constantly bolstered and enriched with regards to specific themes. If i'm blocked, I can always just fall back on those to snap out of it. I do the same when I'm working on albums of music. That said, I'm only 19, so I'm sure my process will undergo more than a few upheavals.
Part of majoring in English is being in class with that one kid who won't stop bringing up Derrida. It's like a rite of passage.
Cheers
----------
Check out my music at http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/
|
waltertore
2124 posts
Mar 22, 2012
3:44 AM
|
tf10music: Again I am glad you found your groove. If you don't compromise, you don't. Again I was sharing my truth and not judging you or anyone. My musician friends that do say it straight out. I saw them get signed and have to abandon much of what they were doing before they got signed. Michael Been was a good friend of mine (may he RIP). He was telling me about playing John the apostle in the movie the last temptation of christ. I told him I wanted to be an actor someday but wondered how it felt if you did a great scene and the director said do it again. He laughed and told me each scene is shot multiple times regardless of what anybody felt about it. That nixed it for me.
Shado42: That is some insight on my process! Maybe that is what is happening. I don't know. Nigel Price who is writing a book on my life wants to have my brain activity monitored as I play and compare it to a normal musicial approach brain wave. I hope to get that opportunity someday. Being different is no big deal until I start to share my process with others. Most just look at me blank. Like in a club someone may ask me to do a cover song. When I explain how I do music they listen attentively and often respond with - cool but could you do such and such a song? Others are curious about it and ask a few questions, and the minority seems to get upset by it. I still believe I could easily teach this method to anyone if they were willing to trust in themselves enough and let the subconcious flow without fear of bad stuff immediately yelling at it from the brain. The brain doesn't like the soul running things. It is a control freak!
The commercial art world (anywhere you make a dollar off something not just pop culture) I think is threatened by how I do my thing. It eliminates the infastructure that is in place to "shape" an artist/writer/musician/actor to achieve "greatness". this includes teachers of the accepted ways to do these things all the way up to multi million dollar publishers/producers/directors. I have been told this by an established record producer. I find it sad that the world is so afraid of new ways of doing things and often the artist lives their life in obscurity until they die. Then these people come in and make them famous. They can control him in death but not life. I think about burning all my recordings when I die and have all my music removed from the net to prevent such a thing happening.
Our culture and much of the "educated" ones of the world feel a spontaneous creation is a weak one. A mulled over, edited, scrutinized, one is much more deep, fullfilling, and artistic. Such is the kazillion messages we recieve ongoing since being in the womb. I don't know how I ignore this stuff. It affects me in most of my life but not in my music or painting/drawing. Thanks for the compliment too! Walter
----------
walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
3,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
|
jbone
835 posts
Mar 22, 2012
4:46 AM
|
i have had blockage in my creative regions. sometimes for a year or more. i think one crucial thing to remember- and this was on NPR yesterday- creative people have to become frustrated in order to set the right sequence of events in the brain in motion, in order to create something new. the author of a book on the subject used bob dylan as an example, how he in 1965 was fried after a 6 month european tour and just had no clue what to do next. he decided to quit music and somewhere along the way found himself vomiting words on paper for days on end. that turned into "the times they are a changin'".
i have periods where nothing happens for me, and then suddenly 2,3,4 songs pop into my brain and i have to write them down immediately or lose them. sometimes i just get a line or a phrase down and when i have enough fragments collected i put them into a song or 2 or 3.
something that has helped me a lot in recent years is collaboration. wife and i put our heads together on lyrics and then on arrangements as well, and we end up performing our stuff as much as we do covers.
there was a time i had no partners to bounce stuff off of and would instead take my songs to the local jam and get with the stage band leader and tell him what i was looking for musically as best i could, then we'd launch into a brand new song i had written. sometimes it was roses and sometimes manure. i do not regret anything i have written since it was all necessary to bring me to where i am today. our latest cd was all originals and we have another planned the same way but with full band and guests. i and we are not famous but our last cd went to memphis and competed in the IBC and placed pretty well. much more honor and glory than we'd anticipated. not that it matters in the long run but it was a nice compliment.
Jolene and i are dedicated to do music as long as we are able. part of that is creating new songs. most usually they are inspired by life's events and informed by the blues heroes we grew up listening to. this has been so far one of the most fulfilling times of my life EVER, even with desert zones of no ideas flowing. those times do pass.
----------
http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000386839482
|
greeno
20 posts
Mar 22, 2012
5:58 AM
|
Wow! I didn't expect such an informed and profound thread to emerge from my initial post. Now I feel I need to explain myself better. When I say I have had writers block for 2 years, I don't mean that I haven't written anything, but that I haven't written anything that's any good. I get ideas - riffs, hooks, the odd line, some of them IMO pretty good as far as they go, but I struggle to work any of them up into a coherent song. It's like something is missing in the process. In the past I have written stuff that I'm still proud of, and still bears repeated listenings without sounding stale. Stuff that sounds like me, rather than anyone else. Lately I have been reduced by desperation to writing stuff that is deliberately derivative, because I can't seem to be original any more. I am also aware that I am accepting 2nd rate lyrics because I can no longer write good ones, and I feel I need to produce something at least. This is very frustrating.
At least you guys have given me some extremely interesting food for thought to take away, and inspired me not to give up.
----------
Greeno
|
shadoe42
145 posts
Mar 22, 2012
10:12 AM
|
One exercise I have tried is often credited to David Bowie. Bowie would takes papers and magazines and cut the phrases and words. Then dump them all in to a a paper bad shake them up and them pull out the phrases and turn them into a song. here is an article I googled to find it. Don't think this was the original article. Want to say I read this in a songwriter magazine at one point.
http://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/a-la-bowie/
----------
The Musical Blades
My Electronic Music World
|
nacoran
5428 posts
Mar 22, 2012
11:28 AM
|
Greeno, that sounds like the type of writer's block that my friend gets. He has notebooks full of stanzas that don't fit into larger pieces and stuff he's not happy with. If you've got someone who you can collaborate with sometimes that can get you unstuck, but it can take a while to build the sort of rapport where you trust someone else with decisions about your babies! If you keep too much control for yourself then the other person gets bored (and if they take too much control you get bored) but if you can find that right mix it can be really productive.
Shadoe42, I've done that exercise. It can really be fun. It's interesting. I think it' a physical version of what I'm suggesting with exposing yourself to different ideas.
Walter, I think I mentioned this in one of your other threads, but I think if you want to explain yourself to other people in a way that they quickly understand you might want to describe yourself as being related to slam poetry or an improv comedy, or maybe even performance art, the kind where watching people throw paint around is as much fun as the final product. Rappers cutting heads with new rhymes... I think there are other people out there doing what you do, just not in our genre.
I subbed as host at an open mic a couple weeks ago. There was a snow storm so the crowd was pretty small. There was a group of poets who went up and when they ran out of prepared material one of them started out calling out letters and the other two had to improv rhymes back and forth starting the line with that letter. They'll never do the same poem the same way again. It was about the moment.
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
|
jbone
836 posts
Mar 22, 2012
9:53 PM
|
i know this about writing lyrics. they have to come from what i'm living. case in point, texas guitar wiz holland k smith wrote "walking heart attack" after seeing one in a red dress at a club one night.
mine are possibly more mundane but to me it's not the topic as much as the personal twist we put on things. sure part of it is turn of phrase but it's also what your unique interpretation on a given event or topic is.
you MUST believe what you are creating. and it's funny it doesn't even have to be true but you have to put yourself in the shoes and walk a ways to have the feel. i grew up poor and got my heart broken early on several times. these thing probably affected my outlook and attitude and helped me find the dark side of my nature later on when i was looking for substance to flesh out a song here or there.
----------
http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000386839482
|
nacoran
5434 posts
Mar 23, 2012
8:08 AM
|
"you MUST believe what you are creating. and it's funny it doesn't even have to be true but you have to put yourself in the shoes and walk a ways to have the feel."
Well said jbone! You have to write from the voice of the narrator of the song. It doesn't have to be you, but people should believe it's you for the duration of the song.
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
|
Post a Message
|
