Writing

Success – What’s Standing In Your Way?

Posted on by IJ
A digital sound recorder
Image via Wikipedia

© I.Woloshen

“Success” is a relative word, and your idea of it can change as you inevitably do. For instance, in my teens and 20’s (ugh!) I measured success by my position, my income and the number of friends I had. Well, the part about friends hasn’t changed much 🙂 But everything else has!

These days I define my success much more simply…I ask myself, am I doing what I want and love to do? Most of the time, I’m happy to say, the answer is yes! But it took me a long time to get here…

I believe that the largest hurdles we have in front of us are the ones we put there ourselves. Never mind what the “others” say, what are the things you tell yourself? Have you ever listened to your own thoughts? I know, that sounds weird and new agey, but have you? What kinds of things do you tell yourself? Do you encourage yourself and keep a positive attitude, or do you tell yourself over and over “I’m a terrible writer, I can’t do this, I’m not going to make it”? Creative people, on the whole, tend to be extremely sensitive…it is that sensitive part of ourselves that gives us the insight to our own creative juices, but it can also be a burden. The downside to sensitivity is the old chip-on-the-shoulder syndrome when things aren’t going the way we’d like.

But knowing all of that, what can we do to get a little closer to our idea of success? Being songwriters, sometimes we lose our ability to come down to earth and establish some structure in our lives! But structure, organization, plans and work are all necessary ingredients! Here are a few steps you can take:

1. Identify – write out what your idea of success is! Sometimes we meander around the subject without really clearly identifying anything about it. What is success to you? You can give yourself a time line, if you like. “In five years I’d like to be…” Work your way backwards, all the way to what you can do today!

2. The Steps – what steps can you take to achieve your goals? Make two lists…one will be the more major steps (ie…I want to get a publishing deal, I want to record a CD…etc.), the other will be the little steps! I can tell you right now that the little steps will be the most important!! For instance, if you want a publishing deal, there are several things you need to do to make that happen. You need to identify the publishers who might be interested in your songs, you have to have a decent recording of your songs, you need to collect addresses, make a list of who you’ve sent to, etc., etc.

Perhaps your primary goal is to become a better writer. Well, that goal is never off my list! Again, you would benefit by sitting down and determining what it is that YOU NEED in order to begin achieving that. Do you need to improve your lyric skills? Do you need to be around other writers? A few visits to some open mics? Are a couple of piano lessons in order?

3. Be Prepared To Change – For heaven’s sake, if something isn’t working, let it go! It’s okay to move onto something else! Stubbornness and determination are admirable qualities, until they are just plain stupid!

4. Opportunity Meeting Preparedness – I’m sure you’ve heard that expression before. People who have achieved success weren’t just sitting around waiting for it to fall into their laps. Well, most of them anyway! They were able to recognize an opportunity when it hit them square in the face. You may think that is obvious…but you can never be sure exactly when it’s going to hit, or how. A little story, if I might: When I’m almost finished recording a song, I tend to make a DAT copy of it (digital audio tape) just so I can have it there to listen to for myself, and for whatever else I might need it for. A couple of months ago, my husband and I had a business meeting with an old friend in our home, not related to songwriting in anyway, just an investment opportunity. This friend brought his business partner with him, and we spent an hour or so discussing this new business. At the end of the talk, we started chit chatting about other things, and it so happened that this friend mentioned to his partner that I was a songwriter and had a studio downstairs. Lucky for me, I’d cleaned it that morning 🙂 So I invited them down to see the studio. I happened to have my DAT machine hooked up with the tape in it, and my friend wanted to hear the latest version of Catnip (a song he’d participated in recording). It JUST SO HAPPENED that his business partner was ALSO a songwriter and NOT ONLY THAT, but he had a line on a guy who was looking for material for an up and coming group, so I played him some of the songs…was that a coincidence? No, it was opportunity meeting preparedness 🙂 What comes of it doesn’t matter, but I was ready!

5. Critical Line – ever heard of this expression? It refers to the steps that have to be taken in order to achieve goals. Even at their jobs, most people spend a great deal of time doing the peripheral things that aren’t getting them any closer to getting the job done. Like sharpening pencils and tidying the desk, or getting distracted by something entirely un-job-related. Try to spend 1/2 an hour each day completely devoted to your critical line…doing something you need to do, even if it’s just a boring “little step”. Time is everything! So is discipline!

6. Discipline – is not one of my strong points. I consider myself a naturally lazy person, and have had to battle with myself most of my life to do what I need to do. This can be applied to just about anything in your life…but in order to succeed, you need discipline! Instead of throwing too much on yourself too quickly, take those “little steps”…see how important they are? But taking just one of those will make you feel better! And when you feel better, you’re likely to do more! It’s magic 🙂

7. More Irons in the Fire! – I know you’ve heard quite the opposite…that you can’t have too much on the go, but I’m here to tell you that when it comes to writing songs, the more your songs are “out there” the better it is for you! I don’t mean that you should be careless about it, BUT, if you’ve ever listened to some of the stories of how songwriters got their music heard, most of them had quite a long trail of opportunities. Someone just happened to hear a recording in the other room that someone’s cousin was playing that just happened to be sitting on the top of a pile…you know what I’m saying? Great songs aren’t just AUTOMATICALLY HEARD BY ALL THE “RIGHT” PEOPLE! It can take years for a great song to get the attention it deserves! So multiply your opportunities…let other people perform your song, play them at every chance, let people hear ’em!

8. Diversify – You’ve heard the saying “putting all of your eggs in one basket”. Having any kind of career in music means you have to diversify. The statistics are that less than 1% of songwriters make more than $5000 a year from their writing. That means that more than 99% of us have to have some other kind of income. I teach guitar, write music for television, write and perform…when some areas are not as profitable or emotionally satisfying, others are! As long as it is music-related, I’m happy. If it comes down to employment (and it inevitably does!), try to find work that is related somehow to your music, or at the very least, find work that allows you to BE a songwriter, go to open mics, or run off to the bathroom and record an idea when you have one 🙂 Then again, a job that is completely non-music related is sometimes perfectly satisfying! I’ve met writers who LOVE songwriting, but also love their jobs. Wouldn’t that be nice? 🙂

Okay, well there you have it…some ideas as to how you can achieve your idea of success. You know, half the time I write these articles as much for myself as I do for you 🙂

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Go With The Flow

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

You’d think that, being a songwriter, my interest in literature would venture more to the fiction arena. But ever since I discovered non-fiction (working in a public library for eight years helped), I’ve been hooked. I’ll read anything from spiritual to the so-called self-help books, with the aim of developing a greater understanding of myself and the world around me. I find great inspiration in many of the books I’m reading…lots of song ideas!

I’ve been reading a book lately called “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ” by Daniel Goleman. I highly recommend it as a source of understanding your own emotional brain, how it works, and how you can work with it. One of the more fascinating sections deals with the creative mind and learning…the chapter is entitled “The Master Aptitude”. It begins by discussing how paralyzing worry, anxiety and fear can be…how it affects our learning and sabotages our ability to function. Eventually, the author moves on to a discussion of “flow”.

This immediately piqued my curiosity…flow is described as that state which “represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning.” Athletes call it the “zone”, but it can be found in almost any type of situation, whether it’s a doctor performing surgery or a composer creating a piece of music. The traits of “flow” are intense concentration, where pretty much everything else around you is shut out of your consciousness, a feeling of bliss and a loss of the sense of “self”. This is how I often feel when I’m writing! It can last a few minutes or hours…depending on the task at hand. It’s a kind of “in between” state, whereby if there wasn’t enough stimulation you’d grow bored and if there was too much you would lose control…a very thin line. The feelings associated with it become the motivation…in other words, you work at getting a flow because of how it makes you feel .

That’s a perfect set up for this next question: Do you write because you like the flow, or do you write because you want to get rich and famous? The fact is, that in studies done around this phenomenon, those who are more likely to succeed are the ones who do it for the feeling it gives them! The ones who are motivated by outside success will give up sooner, or have a lower success rate.

We will find flow more easily in the things we feel we are “good at”. For you beginning songwriters out there who don’t feel you’re good at it yet…think about why you do it. I find that from all of the songwriters I have met so far, the ones who began writing as a source of self-fulfillment are more likely to stick to it. Inevitably, the writers who have been writing for a good length of time began from that frame of mind. On the whole, do you find joy in writing? If you do, you’re more likely to succeed! Simple as that.

Oh, yes…and how do you get into the flow? There are as many answers to that as there are those who experience it. The more you write, the more you will find your own way to it. Some find the flow only when they are inspired. Some are disciplined enough to write everyday…they likely will get into the flow more often. The only answer is to DO. Go for it!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Getting Down to Details

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

Many times when I’m writing, I’ll fill in a line with something just to put it there until I’m ready to start the crafting process. I’d like to take you through the process of taking a rather ordinary line or phrase, and souping it up. Of course, one line without the context of a song to work from limits the scope of what we might be able to do with it. When I begin the work on the lyrics, I like to have a thread that runs through the whole song lyrically and ties it together. So many decisions that I make lyrically depend on this thread that I’m trying to create. If you find that you have a line in a song that sounds pretty common and you want to make it more interesting, this might help you.

Let’s take a line like this:

“I got up off the chair and walked to the door”

There are two things we have to keep in mind when we change this, certainly if we want to say the same thing, we have to create a picture that shows us exactly this act. The other thing we have to keep in mind is the meter…that makes our choice of words and syllables limited. Let’s first look at the meter, which I will identify as this:

I got up off the chair, and walked to the door
ta da DA ta da DAAA, ta DA ta da DAAA

Looking at the first half of the line, now, I’ll try to pinpoint what makes it unemotional and uninteresting. Getting up off the chair describes an action, but does it say anything at all about me? For instance, even if I changed it to:

I jumped up off the chair

I’ve already implied something different…I could be anxious now, or excited, or frightened. The visual implies a very quick motion that could easily apply to any of these emotions. Maybe I also want to say more about the chair. Why? Pay attention to details! You’d be amazed at how much these little almost insignificant changes can affect the whole song. If you were watching a movie based on a story in the last century, it wouldn’t make much sense if one of the characters suddenly opened a bag of cheesies. That’s a detail. So let’s say more about the chair…it could be a couch. What does that matter? Well, a chair could be in any room…kitchen, livingroom, dining room, even bedroom. A couch implies a livingroom. Does that matter? Maybe not, but it gives a better picture of where I am, rather than a more vague one. So now we have:

I jumped up off the couch

Let’s take a look at the second half:

And walked to the door

Pretty uninteresting…an action but there’s nothing that really draws me into it. Let’s focus on one of the possible emotions we described above. Let’s try it from a fearful perspective…I jumped up off the couch, so how might I move towards the door? I might sneak or slip or…maybe I don’t even move at all, but I look at the door in some fearful way. But I still have to remain within the confines of the meter. Maybe I’d take a whole different approach like this:

I jumped up off the couch, eyes glued to the door

Now let’s compare it with the original:

I got up off the chair and walked to the door
I jumped up off the couch, eyes glued to the door

In the first line there is a person (me) a place (the chair/the door) and an action (walked). In the second line all of these things still exist in a similar context with one addition–EMOTION. Songwriting isn’t like writing a how-to manual…the key is, as someone wisely said “telling MY story in YOUR song”. Details.

If you sat down with this line for days or weeks or months, you could come up with many, many ways to make it more interesting. Always keep in mind the context of the song…always remember the details.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]