{"id":361,"date":"2010-03-17T15:27:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T23:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=361"},"modified":"2012-11-09T15:10:43","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T23:10:43","slug":"nothing-to-write-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/nothing-to-write-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing To Write About?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-9055632105156461\";\n\/* Half Banner for Blogs *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8550216682\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 234;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/-->\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/center><br \/>\nIn another article called <a href=\"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=159\">Songwriting Topics<\/a> I went through a myriad of things you can do to inspire yourself in terms of what to write about (what?\u00a0 you don&#8217;t have anything to write about? :-)), and most of them were the obvious such as using your own life experiences or those of others.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-img\" style=\"margin: 1em; display: block;\">\n<div>\n<dl class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 250px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/44493439@N00\/4440408138\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Cliffs of Moher \u2013 Edge of the World\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4019\/4440408138_bbf741c0d6_m.jpg\" alt=\"Cliffs of Moher \u2013 Edge of the World\" \/><\/a><\/dt>\n<dd class=\"wp-caption-dd zemanta-img-attribution\" style=\"font-size: 0.8em;\">Image by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/44493439@N00\/4440408138\/\">janusz l<\/a> via Flickr<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But what if you are bone dry in terms of ideas?\u00a0 Where else can you get them?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll focus on a few places on the web that might help you get some ideas.\u00a0 In fact, you might learn to get really creative about being creative!\u00a0 The web is an excellent way to get ideas if you know how to use it and what&#8217;s out there.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-9055632105156461\";\n\/* Half Banner for Blogs *\/\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8550216682\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 234;\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/-->\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Interestingly enough, as I&#8217;m writing this blog I&#8217;m looking at something called <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Zemanta\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\">Zemanta<\/a>.\u00a0 Zemanta is essentially a media and article\/information gallery that you can use as a plugin in Firefox or in a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"WordPress\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\">WordPress<\/a> blog like I have.\u00a0\u00a0 You can try it out on the demo page on their website.\u00a0 Type anything in the text box and Zemanta will come up with images, articles, links and tags relating to whatever you&#8217;ve typed.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a pretty clever little tool.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings me to another idea.\u00a0 Pictures can be really inspirational sometimes, especially photographs.\u00a0 If you go to a website like Photography.com, you can browse through hundreds of stock photos;\u00a0 pick a subject like flowers or landscapes and see what you can come up with.\u00a0 I often peruse a website called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.booooooom.com\/\">BOOOOOOOM!<\/a> which has <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Photography\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Photography\">photography<\/a>, but also art and sometimes even videos, all in blog form.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a very cool site to look through even if you&#8217;re not looking for something to write about :-).<\/p>\n<p>Okay, but what if you&#8217;re looking for musical inspiration?\u00a0 Aside from listening to other songs, where else can you get some musical ideas?<\/p>\n<p>A few months back I found a really neat little site called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamstudio.com\/Studio\/index.htm\">Jam Studio<\/a> where you can literally create a whole music bed right on the site.\u00a0 It leads you through entering some chords and picking some instruments, including drums, bass, guitar and piano and even a &#8220;feel&#8221; or genre like country or rock.\u00a0 Then voila!\u00a0 You can create a whole song in any key and come up with all kinds of ideas!\u00a0 Try it out.<\/p>\n<p>And last, but not least, I wrote an article for the Muse&#8217;s Muse awhile back where I featured an <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"National Public Radio\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\">NPR<\/a> series called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=89287187\">Project Song<\/a>&#8220;.\u00a0 The whole idea is that an artist or band is given a set of photos and words to choose from, and is given two days in a studio to come up with a song representing them.\u00a0 It is a very interesting premise and on the Project Song <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=89287187\">website<\/a> you can watch a video showing how <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Songwriter\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Songwriter\">songwriter<\/a> <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Nellie McKay\" rel=\"imdb\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm1736982\/\">Nellie McKay<\/a> came up with her song &#8220;Cavendish&#8221; using the tools at hand.<\/p>\n<p>You might do the same for yourself&#8230;take a random photo from one of the websites I recommended and go to a dictionary and pick out a word or two and see what you can come up with!<\/p>\n<p>In fact, I&#8217;m thinking of coming up with a songwriting challenge to do exactly that.\u00a0 Keep your eye on this blog in the coming weeks&#8230;!<\/p>\n<p><em>IJ<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" href=\"http:\/\/reblog.zemanta.com\/zemified\/edee11b3-75fb-43cc-9534-0a24541f0307\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/reblog_e.png?x-id=edee11b3-75fb-43cc-9534-0a24541f0307\" alt=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In another article called Songwriting Topics I went through a myriad of things you can do to inspire yourself in terms of what to write about (what?\u00a0 you don&#8217;t have anything to write about? :-)), and most of them were the obvious such as using your own life experiences or those of others. Image by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,5],"tags":[65,200,320,199,49,198,197],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-exercises","category-tips","tag-arts","tag-firefox","tag-music","tag-nellie-mckay","tag-songwriter","tag-wordpress","tag-zemanta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prwoq-5P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}