Or, “How I Broke Out Of My Slump In 7 Easy Steps”.
Those of you who are faithful readers of my newsletter know that I’ve been mired in a songwriting slump for a number of months now. I won’t rehash the gory details – go read the archives if you’re really interested.
Step 1: start a bad song.
In this particular case, the song in question is called “The Band That Never Was”. If you haven’t heard it yet, well, it’s because it’s not my “A” game. The concept is a fine one, and I began it with some free writing while I was attending an open mike: write a song about a slacker band that never manages to get out of the founder’s basement. It’s a pretty good idea – I can’t bear to even start the ones based on bad ideas. But nonetheless, the first draft just bit the big one.
Step 2a: generate seven pages of crap lyrics. Step 2b: throw them all out.
Self-explanatory.
Step 3: find a nugget of a reasonable idea, and whip it thoroughly until it begs for mercy.
At this point, the song will be competent, and you will have spent a good two or three weeks improving it from “bad” to “competent”. Despair sets in.
Step 4: generate profound guilt about your lack of dedication.
A couple days after I finished this song, I bumped into Joel Ninesling, one of my songwriting heroes, at Toad in Porter Square, where we were listening to Rose Polenzani, another one of my songwriting heroes. “Yeah”, Joel says, “you just gotta keep at it. Every morning, I wake up and stare at the page, and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.” Every morning, I think. Cue the sackcloth and ashes.
Step 5: noodle.
On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I picked up my guitar and started playing a riff. It was a nice, steady, soul sort of riff, and I thought, okay, let’s write some lyrics, and promptly produced a page and a half of crap. But it’s a start.
Step 6: borrow liberally from spouse.
That day, at lunch, I was feeling under the weather, and She Who Must Be Taunted noted that I was grumpy and sneezy, and it occurred to us, for some bizarre reason, to add up how many other dwarves I was at the moment: Sleepy (definitely), Bashful (most of the time), Happy (definitely not), Dopey (hopefully not), Doc (well, it’s a Ph.D., but let’s count it). Naturally, of course, my wife pointed out that I was having a five-dwarf day. Which is a genius, genius idea for a song, which I finished two days later.
Step 7: bask in the accolades of thousands.
Still working on this step.