I managed to finish 15 songs in 30 days, but even that was only by scrambling through four songs tonight. Still, at least I got halfway to my goal.
And now it’s 9:30 PM on the last day of November, so I think I’ll call it a month. (Hey, I like that. Except maybe “I think I’ll call it a year.” I’ll write that one tomorrow.)
That’s all, folks!
Congratulations!
Do you think any of them might be things you might want to pick up and polish up later?
-J
Oh, definitely. Most of them, I’d say. There are even a few that I’m already psyched about typing up and printing out for Karsten to begin working with, but I’m still going to give it at least a few days so I can read them with some freshness as I type them up.
But yeah, most of them had something worthwhile about them, whether it was the hook or just a random line somewhere that came out saying exactly what I was trying to get across.
The best thing about this was that each of these songs was an exercise in the Bob Dylan school of writing. Dylan once said:
I love that quote, even though it’s a completely different approach to songwriting from what I’ve used my whole life. I mean, seriously: I’ve been writing songs since I was a child, and my approach has almost always been the same. Ideas come to me in groupings of lines and they usually come with some kind of melody, but once I put them down, it’s clear that those groupings are usually chorus material. And then I go back and fill in the verses, etc.
But ever since I discovered that Dylan quote, I think, well hey, who better to learn from? I’ve tried on that approach to writing a few times, but it’s never stuck. Which has struck me as a mixed blessing; I mean, there’s probably value to the comfort of doing something the way you’ve always done it, but there’s greater opportunity in learning from the experts. And anyway, I always love the results I get from writing that way.
So all through this month, I forced myself to write from that approach. And I’m thrilled to say I think I may have made it stick.
congrats – that’s pretty damn impressive!
Thanks!