![\"A](\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Storybd.jpg\" "\\"A")
<\/a>I realize that I am very distracted by many things during the day whether it’s reading emails, checking on stocks, prepping for my students, teaching, making calls;\u00a0 and the list goes on.\u00a0 The majority of my songwriting “life”, I didn’t have the same distractions.\u00a0 I used to just sit in my bedroom on my bed and write.\u00a0 So I decided that in order to really give it the attention it needs, I was going to turn everything off for an hour a day including the tv, phones, computers, etc. and just sit with my guitar in front of a piece of paper.\u00a0 I’ve done this a few times now and have had mediocre results.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the last week or so I’ve had a great deal of trouble sleeping, so one night after an hour of lying there, my mind darting through a whole alphabet of ideas and events, worries and frustrations, I decided to focus on the lyrics of that song.\u00a0 And I realized that lying in the quiet and dark at 2am is a very good time to focus on lyrics;\u00a0 there is nothing to distract you and your mind can find all kinds of interesting words and phrases and ideas.\u00a0 So I finally got up and wrote a few of them down.\u00a0 I had to fumble in my purse in the dark to find my hookbook and a pen and then I ran to the bathroom where there’s a night light and I could see what I was writing.\u00a0 I bought the hookbook years ago, but it has mostly been used for writing down to do lists, phone numbers and other eroneous bits of information.\u00a0 This is the first time I used it for its original purpose.<\/p>\n
When I crawled back into bed, happy with myself for coming up with some ideas, I started to think about how songwriting has always been so important to me, not just because I enjoyed the process, but because it started out as a way for me to express and resolve or even just emote the events of my life.\u00a0 This is how it begins for many songwriters out there, often in their teens like I was, trying to make sense of everything.\u00a0 Over the years the songs were like little storyboards of my daily struggles and triumphs.\u00a0 Once I started thinking about myself as a potential commercial songwriter and artist, however, that changed a little.\u00a0 I began to have to think about my songs in terms of how others might perceive them and whether or not they had a universal meaning or message, rather than just self-centred meanderings.\u00a0 Some of the songs I wrote succeeded, I think, but eventually the idea of being a performing songwriter lost its sheen and in the last few years as I’ve mentioned, all of it has come to a standstill.<\/p>\n
When I lay there the other night after having triumphantly found some lyrics and a new “storyboard” to follow, it hit me that I have very much missed that feeling and that I want to go back to the way it was.\u00a0 Of course, so many things have happened since then and I know it won’t be the same.\u00a0 But I think I have to return to my old “bedroom writing” so that I can express what I want without worry about what anyone else will think.\u00a0 So chances are that whatever songs I come up with in future may never drift outside my bedroom door.\u00a0 And that’s okay.<\/p>\n
For me, songwriting has always been as natural as breathing.\u00a0 I need to, as I did when I was 12, inhale life and then exhale my expression of it.<\/p>\n