This is where it starts. The blog the dialogue. This is where my head starts before I have to write something - or the process gets translated into a blog type dialogue in the first draft of where I write. Now, this is just for my academic writing - and lord knows I do a lot of that. I think I am a good blog writer. People have told me I am. So, lets start here and not jump ahead to trying to be all academic blah blah blah and save it for a later draft. I am declaring it now this is where I start this experiment. For the rest of this semester this is what I am doing. I am starting here in my blog, writing in a colloquial style in my first draft and then well peeling away the zest of my writing orange, peel by peel with a dull knife. Until it gets sharp and this method gets so ingrained it is what it is. And that is what it should be.
Vague enough? Sure... Ive been thinking a lot about writing lately only because I am so frustrated with it. Sure people put those thoughts there but that is besides the point - if people don't put thoughts in your brain what the HELL are you supposed to think about. So, get over it. I have been writing papers, and songs and everything. I am especially stuck with writing a song. Its a sad song, really sad. Its about love, and love you can't give, but there is love right in front of you. Its kind of like, All is Full of Love, the song I covered on my last album - but unrequited not realizing that love is well all around you. Anyway, I have constructed the song with some of my favorite phrases from other songs, and some of my own favorite phrases from other songs ive written in the past. Ooooooo the last time I was song writing was 2004, youngin... And the words don't work. This is more like a puzzle. I have chords i have some what of a stagnant melody, but the words don't work maybe they arn't supposed to work? Yet I keep on picking at the ice.
There is something I have noticed in college. I have learned how to do math okay. I am not an A student in math but I am to the point where I think I understand what I am doing and I am getting decent grades on things. In college I have made myself learn math with the help of the logic I learned while learning music theory. I came to the point somewhere in my second semester of freshman year that I said: "Music theory is just like math in that way I hate it... But, I love music so much I will get over it and just learn it." And I pretty much aced all three music theory classes I have taken... I should do the same for writing, eating those vegetables cause they are good for you.
The same goes for writing. Maybe because I am 2 classes away from 26 credits of writing courses - enough to be a large chunk of my music and writing major - that I am finally wondering what the hell have I learned. And at that point I must remind myself it is a HELL oF A LOT. I still have problems putting together a smooth sentence because I like to put big words with different meanings in. I still make comma mistakes, who doesn't? I am a writer - I fumble mumble around with prose like they are legos. I don't think musicology students my age, in undergrad, realize how incredibly important it is to be a good writer. Thats what you must do as a musicologist. Some probably come natural, the rest of us just go at draft after draft.
So there are my words for now. I have now sufficiently warmed up to write a paper.
