I'm working on another song right now. I can't tell you the title of it because it's a secret. No, I'm kidding. I can't tell you the title because I don't know it yet. I have three verses and bridge and a chorus but I don't really like the chorus. It's missing something. Cinnamon perhaps. Whatever it is, it feels very not finished. There is some amazing, profound line that is floating somewhere in the collective unconscious and I am casting out net after net to find it. That is line I'm looking for and that line will be the title. Until then the whole song is lost.
When I get like this I have a process. It's very scientific. Usually I print out the song on a fresh sheet of paper and scribble random stuff in the margins. Words that are close to what I mean that lead to other words that are even further away from what I mean but maybe one will hold my hand and bring me to the right words. Mostly I just end up with lots of printings of the song with scribbles. And I keep going back to the same phrases that are close but not quite. The runner ups. And I think that in some cool stream of consciousness way I'll get to the right words but the runner ups start to get in the way.
I don't even know why I do it this way. In the end, if I find the magic words that I'm looking for, I don't usually have a pen in my hand. It's while I'm walking, driving or washing dishes, something when I'm not concentrating. But how can I possibly find this if I don't even start looking?
What worries me most is that sometimes I never find the profound line. Instead after months of looking, I decide that maybe I'm being too precious with the whole thing and just go with the second best. I rationalize that maybe I'm being too hard on myself and the line I've got is okay. Maybe if I play the song out as is, it will relax something in my brain and let the real line float over to me. Songs with those lines have been recorded and are on my CDs and they smack me in the face every time I come up on them. It doesn't feel good. Certainly it doesn't feel as good as the times when I do find the line and the world shifts and birds sing and lights shine down from the heavens. So I wait a really long time before I give up.
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This is very funny to me. We have known each other for a long time, but we have never been "writers" around each other. Awkward preteens in goofy clothes, sure, but not writers. But your songwriting process sounds so very similar to my fiction-writing process. I write and write whatever comes into my head and when nothing else seems to be coming out or I need to take stock of where I am, I print it all out. I like to leave BIG margins, because then I scribble all over the margins, and if it's an important enough edit/addition, I scribble all over the printed part too, usually in red or green ink. It's just easier to read when I go back to the computer and try to type it.
And though I rarely agonize over the exact phrasing--novels have the freedom/curse to be verbose where a song or poem must be spare--there are often sections that I come back to over and over and over again, wondering what will make it feel just right.
Since I am nowhere yet published, I have the freedom to go in and change whatever I like. Someday though, there will hopefully come a moment, when I see my words in print and can no longer revoke them, and I'll slap my forehead, certain of what the words should have been. ;)
Good luck with the songs, the shows. I wish I could come watch.
xo Eglentyne
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