Changing Place

Last week, I got a text message from a neighbor and friend asking if I'd like to keep her company on her porch. She was writing a research paper, so I grabbed my laptop and headed over to join her. Our neighborhood is full of brick rowhomes with fantastic covered porches, perfect for writing or enjoying wine and cheese. In fact, the porch is one of my favorite features in (or out) of the house.

Little did I know, this would kick off several similar gatherings, some on my porch, some on hers. For the first time in months, I was spending significant time editing my manuscript with what seemed like hardly any effort to sit down and get focused.

Sometimes, changing your venue can work wonders for your creative process. For months, I've focused on making my creative space somewhere I feel great about. Sometimes, getting out of that space and writing with a friend, at a coffee shop, or on the porch can yield just as much productivity and good work.

Singing New Songs

Recently I recorded another song phrase in Evernote with the intention of fleshing it out later.  I did this a few weeks ago with another song, actually wrote down the lyrics to the whole thing shortly after singing a single phrase.  I can feel an organic process developing here, and I like it.  I haven't mandated or structured this, I've just let it happen.  Part of me realized that making songs is sort of like my other writing: lots of rewrites, lots of revision, polishing pieces and making them into a whole later.

It's reassuring to know I can develop a process that feels good when I used to discourage myself so much -- thinking if something wasn't perfect I had to scrap it.  Refusing to believe in rough drafts for songs and poetry.

I've written about relaxing before, and how performers need to know how to relax their bodies to be at the top of their game.  Writers need to relax too, occasionally writing with the whole arm, always letting the words come out uncensored.  After all, tense writing seems an awful lot like strangling your sound with anxiety when your're trying to sing.

At any rate, in the near future I may try to get some of my song ideas off the page.  While wandering an antique store last Sunday I suddenly found myself playing a piano, which shocked me a little.  I didn't realize until I'd already picked out a line or two what I was really doing, what it meant -- small pieces of my life are coming back to me one by one.  If I just relax and forget about all that could be holding me back, things just happen.