WRITER'S BLOCK, OR WHY i NEED A SHOWER
I’m writing a lyric for a new song. Or, rather, I’m not writing a lyric for a new song. I’m trying to. I’m working on it. I’m thinking about it. I’ve written pages and pages of ideas for the song, but nothing that even begins to resemble a lyric.
I have been self-diagnosed with a severe case of Writer’s Block.
I like to write blog posts about successes, about the joys of the process, the huge satisfaction I feel when a musical theater process is coming together beautifully. But this week, I’m giving you a glimpse into the torturous, not-so-glamorous side of writing a musical.
It’s our first song for a new musical Eric and I are writing; a project so new we can’t talk about it yet. This is an existing story that appeals to us for a million different reasons, and we suspect that it could become our next Big Project. We’re writing a song for one of the characters in the story, just to see how it “feels” on us, to get an idea of the style of music, the vocabulary that fits this story. We want to know that our sensibility and style will do justice to the original work, and to be certain that we can be passionate about this project over the course of many years. So, we’re writing one song, to try it out before we commit to it.
Which brings me back to the Writer’s Block and, more important, how I deal with it.
1) Write.
Even though everything I put down on paper is awful, I force myself to just write it anyway, without judgment. I write stream-of-consciousness. I write words and then brainstorm for similar ways to phrase the same thing. I write boring narrative about what the character is doing. I write descriptions of what the character is seeing, witnessing, thinking, feeling. None of what I write is poetic. None of it feels like a lyric. None of it is any good. But in writing … I keep thinking… my mind stays open to new thoughts as yet undiscovered. I have confidence it will come, eventually.
2) Talk to my collaborator.
Spent an hour on the phone with Eric this afternoon. Talked about the story again. Talked about new things I’ve discovered on re-visiting the source material. Talked about the specific moments in the life of this particular character – where she was just before this song moment, what happened to her in those preceding moments. What is she doing at this moment of the song? What does she see? How does she feel about it?
Since it’s the first song we’ve written for this new musical, there is a feeling that I want to get ALL of the project into this one song! We talked about the character’s “wants,” her motivation, her back-story. How she and another character in the story relate to each other, in what ways are they similar and what ways are they different? And that is all good information to know and to have in our minds as we write, but I can’t – and shouldn’t --- put all of that into this song. This song is just one moment in the timeline of the story, and Eric reminded me that it can be a very simple idea, this one song.
Eric also asked me to describe a similar moment from my own life. Well, that was easy! I launched into a bit of a narrative, describing details of what I was seeing, thinking, and feeling when I went through a similar moment to what this character did. And Eric said, “You said it, Margee! You said something that could be the hook of the song!” He quoted me saying, “Take it all in…” He might be right. That might be the hook.
3) Take a shower, go for a swim, or wash dishes.
Something I’ve always remembered from the BMI Workshop – something Skip Kennon said – there is some scientific evidence or anecdotal evidence or whatever, that running water stimulates creative thinking. I don’t remember the exact nature of the scientific background, but this little nugget of wisdom from Skip has stayed with me on every writing project since. The summer I was actively writing the bulk of book and lyrics for Meet Your Mountain, I was sitting on the patio next to our pool, where the sound of the filter-generated splashing of the water was a constant. Other times when I’m feeling bereft of writing brilliance, I find that an inspiration will suddenly come to me while I’m rinsing the shampoo from my hair.
4) Take a nap.
Several times I have awakened from a deep sleep, realizing I have just dreamed a perfect lyric, or dreamed a beautiful scene for the show I’m working on. It has happened often enough that now when I’m feeling blocked, when I climb into bed, just before drifting off to sleep I will spend some time reading or thinking about the scene or lyric I’m trying to complete, as if giving my brain a homework assignment. I’ll read it through a few times, then think about what the goal is for the scene/song, what needs to be accomplished. And then I let myself fall asleep for the night. Whenever this technique succeeds and I awake at 2:00 in the morning with my new brilliant idea, I grab my cell phone, open up Gmail, and compose a letter to myself. It’s dark, I don’t have on my reading glasses, and can’t really see the miniscule letters on my cell phone’s keypad. But I thumb-type madly away, writing an email to myself with all the details as I just dreamed them. I click “send,” and fall back to sleep. In the morning, sure enough, I have forgotten almost all of my inspired dream. But that email in my inbox – for the most part it is gibberish – but there’s enough sense sprinkled within the gibberish for me to make out the details of my dream, and to remember the ideas generated in my sleep. This process doesn’t always work. But when it does, it’s very exciting, and it feels almost effortless.
So, there are my four approaches to overcoming Writer’s Block. I’ve progressed through #1 and #2, and now I have what may be a hook for my lyric. "Take It All In." I look forward to the day I can write the post wherein I share the completed lyric for you – and maybe even announce the project. But in the meantime… I gotta go take a shower.