Co-writer Characteristic #4 of 10: Patience

Patience is kind of boring. I want to write a song in the morning, email it to my publisher in the afternoon and hear the song on the radio by evening. That, of course, isn't how it works. "Hurry up and wait" is the saying on Music Row.

To a farmer, a watched seed never grows. It's not our job as songwriters to mull over every single detail pertaining to where our song ends up after it leaves the pencil and hits the pad. There are just too many factors that go into the journey of a song to easily understand how to make a tangible difference in how well a song does.

My friend Cliff Goldmacher says it well in his recent post. Read it on BMI's website here.

Keep writing,

Ben

------ Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

The First Time Around

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" asked legendary NCAA men's basketball coach John Wooden. 

When creating, our tendency is to want to call a song or painting finished before it may actually be a complete piece of art.

"We'll fix it in mixing," says the hurried producer in the studio.

"We'll Photoshop that right out," says the impatient photographer.

"All great achievements require time," says Maya Angelou.

In my limited experience, things never quite get fixed like we hope they will. 

I continually come back to tension between quantity and quality. My human productive side says to finish the song so I can start a new one. My creative soul says be patient. The ironic thing is that sometimes the best songs don't take very long to write, but only naturally flow out of a patient perspective. Of course, all of this is only possible if we are cautious of our expectations. With the best of intentions, we can miss out on the heart of creating art: enjoyment.

Keep writing (patiently),

Ben

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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

A Week on the Links of Utopia

The truth about pursuing a craft like songwriting or a game like golf is that inevitably there will be days that you feel like you come up short. But our identity as creators is not in the quality of our most recent song (whether good or bad) or how long it’s been since we’ve even finished one. We use the energy of our artistic potential to pursue the craft rather than an individual song. As a result, we can enjoy the process without becoming victims of the foul advice of our own “shoulder devils.”

That’s what I liked about reading Dr. David L. Cook’s book (not a cookbook), Golf’s Sacred Journey – Seven Days at the Links of Utopia. It’s written in novel form, and is currently slated to come out as a feature film in 2011 (starring Robert Duvall and Lucas Black). I highly recommend this book to anyone who:

a) loves golf,
b) loves Texas, or
c) struggles with finding their identity in significant and fulfilling places (all of us).

The book emphasizes the importance of stripping away interference in our lives so that we can learn how to trust and rely on our instinct. There’s so much noise in the world around us that we often don’t take any time to thoroughly reflect on life. Gandhi is quoted as saying, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Very true.

As in songwriting, Cook emphasizes the importance of a golfer swinging with rhythm, freedom, balance and patience. We create the best art when we are drawing from our most natural place. The goal of this book is to help the reader break out of the box of fears and doubts that restrict us from being who and what God creates us to be. And there is nothing more exciting than signing off on a song that truly feels like it came from a natural place of integrity. Those are the successful songs, whether or not they ever hit the Billboard charts.

Keep writing,

Ben