Is feeling a smidgen of inspiration. Writing the final part to a newer song. Being reminded of the power of the 4 minor chord at the right place and the right time.
You write so clearly and express what you mean so well, especially when you're talking about songwriting. You seem like the last person who'd have trouble with lyrics!
If I could be so bold as to suggest an exercise? Try copying a whole slew of your posts' text, pasting it into a word doc, and going through copying out all the most evocative turns of phrase. Set them to one side as you go. When you have a good dozen, 2 dozen snippets, look them over and see if any of the phrases have anything to say to each other. Group together the promising ones, shuffle them up, reorder them. Try to put them together in ways that generates curiosity and interest. Play with line breaks, and try writing the lines that bridge the gaps. Maybe none of the original copied lines would make it into a finished song, but an unusual combination might set you off in a fruitful direction! Prune out what you don't need, as you go.
You can try the same cut and jumble trick with a much-loved book, or loaded religious text, or anything else that arouses strong feelings that you might want to write about. Obviously the goal will be to kick-start your own words flowing, but once you get your own end result, what got it going is nobody's business but yours!
You write so clearly and express what you mean so well, especially when you're talking about songwriting. You seem like the last person who'd have trouble with lyrics!
ReplyDeleteIf I could be so bold as to suggest an exercise? Try copying a whole slew of your posts' text, pasting it into a word doc, and going through copying out all the most evocative turns of phrase. Set them to one side as you go. When you have a good dozen, 2 dozen snippets, look them over and see if any of the phrases have anything to say to each other. Group together the promising ones, shuffle them up, reorder them. Try to put them together in ways that generates curiosity and interest. Play with line breaks, and try writing the lines that bridge the gaps. Maybe none of the original copied lines would make it into a finished song, but an unusual combination might set you off in a fruitful direction! Prune out what you don't need, as you go.
You can try the same cut and jumble trick with a much-loved book, or loaded religious text, or anything else that arouses strong feelings that you might want to write about. Obviously the goal will be to kick-start your own words flowing, but once you get your own end result, what got it going is nobody's business but yours!