I thought many of you might share an interest in a back-and-forth I recently had with one of our inspirational music composers.  We’ve probably all experienced this perplexing problem at one time or another in our creative endeavors.  The following contains excerpts of our dialogue.

Composer: I have been seriously stalling about doing some more composing.  Fear of the blank page, I guess.  I know you know what that’s all about… I’m not prolific at the best of times, but I need to start and get those first bars done…

Yours Truly: The basis of all this is that you have the music in you. There’s no question in my mind that this is true.  If you can write (the songs I’ve heard of yours), you can go as far as your dreams.  You have a great skill and talent and could easily have a terrific audience for your music.  I think that “fear of the blank page” really means that you’re starting wrong.  It means that you’re trying to start on the wrong beat, so to speak.  I’ve seen it in so many composers and writers.  I experienced it myself years ago until I figured it out.

Now, I never have the problem.  A blank page simply means no concept. “What will I write about today?  I have a blank page.”  It’s amazing how many songwriters start writing without a title and rather start with the first line of the song.  I spent years writing like that and came out the other side with little to show for it.  Oh, I got lucky a few times and in my wanderings, I came up with a good song occasionally, but most of that stuff sits in the unfinished trunk somewhere.

Start a song with a title.  The title is the concept and we have to work from that standpoint — just like a novelist works with an outline.  I go through life and collect titles.  I have a book of them.  I listen to people’s arguments on the street and get great titles out of emotional original moments out of them. I read the NY Times book review section each Sunday afternoon and find titles and concept in book titles.  I stop and evaluate my own life’s problems and try to synthesize them down to song titles and concepts.  This way I write what I truly know about and have experienced first hand.  The Bible, for us Inspirational writers, is full of a lifetime of great songs alone!

When in need of a concept, write a Psalm.  There are a hundred and fifty of them waiting to be illuminated by you.  I have more ideas than I could ever write for the rest of my life.  I have a huge list of concepts that I want to investigate.  If lyrics aren’t your thing, find a lyricist to work with.  Also the world is full of great PD material to create songs from.

I also feel as though whatever comes out in those first stabs is a tired rehash of everything I’ve done before and I have a morbid aversion to that, for some reason.

Yeah, you may be a bit tired of your own work, but I’m not.  I want more of you.  Michael MacDonald put together a few simple chords back in the 70s and wrote a great pop song called What A Fool Believes that became the Grammy winning song of the year and sold millions of records.  For about 5 years both Michael and other writers took that little dinky but hooky chord progression and wrote it to death and created hundreds of other great songs from that infectious start.  Nobody ever accused Michael of repeating himself.  We were glad he did.  We’re glad that Bach sounds like Bach and that Stravinsky sounds like Stravinsky.  It’s not plagiarism when you rip-off yourself; it’s called a theme or sometimes a style.  We want you to sound like yourself.  That’s why we listen to and buy your music.

The first time I heard your song, I went a little nuts inside.  You have discovered something here that needs to be developed and explored further, not left behind as “tired rehash”.  You owe it to yourself and to the world of music to do much more of it.  And if it becomes one of your life themes, so be it.  I think you would be making a conceptual mistake here to leave behind the discoveries made in this song.  It’s not finished; it’s just started!

I haven’t had writer’s block in over 20 years because I start from concept.  If I don’t know what to write, I take my hands off the keyboard and go back to the development or refinement of the concept.  Writing music is not a chance thing where we let the fingers fall where they may on the keys and see what comes out.  Great music comes from great intention.  Great intention comes from a terrific concept and a crafted way of exploring and developing that concept.

Writer’s block is just a misconception of the process — or perhaps a non-conception in the process.

You are a gifted writer and musician.  You should be cranking stuff out daily, weekly, monthly.  Not all of it will be great, but you have enough skill and daring that all of it can be good and some of it great.  Isn’t that all we can ask for?  No composer ever wrote great all the time.  Even Mozart wrote some pretty banal stuff.

So write.  Break through this “Fear of blank page” that you speak of.  It’s just holding you back from your greatness.  You don’t have to be great all the time.  NOBODY EXPECTS IT OF YOU, SO DON’T EXPECT IT OF YOURSELF.  Just be a good human.  Make some mistakes.  I’ve always said that my greatest creativity comes out of my mistakes.  If you don’t make any mistakes you refuse your greatness or put another way, you limit the opportunity for greatness.

You should be writing every day — even if it’s just 4 bars.  Overcome your obstacles and surmount your fears with a clearer approach to your work.  If the inspiration is not there, then the preparation is weak.  So prepare better.

I’ve always liked the idea that if you can’t come to a decision on something, it’s simply that you don’t know enough.  Decisions should make themselves if you’re properly educated on the ramifications of the matter at hand.

The same goes with any creative endeavor.  If you don’t know what to write about, don’t try to start writing.  Rather, sit back and think things over, toss it all around in your mind some more, re-think the characters, the plot, the drama, the push and pull, the development of story.  Stay in the imagination for a few more moments, minutes or hours if necessary until you’re full of energy on the subject at hand and ready to pop.  Only then should you apply the pencil to the paper or your fingers to the keys.

Try this and there will be no blank page to fear.  That’s a promise.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.