Writing like a musician
Musicians know what's up.
No. 108: Writing like a musician
When Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” came on over my headphones the other day, why did I begin to think of writing?
This happens with a lot with music.
If a song strikes me as new and authentic and just plain excellent, I wonder how the musician made something so beautiful and what I might learn from that process when it comes to my writing.
i.e. How can I approach writing a story like musicians approach writing a song?
The specifics are blurry. I haven’t talked to any of these world-famous aficionados. But also, I don’t know that I need to. Because we work in different mediums, the nitty-gritty most likely won’t apply, but on a higher level, both musician and writer are attempting the same impossible task: to create something beautiful. And music, unlike writing, seems to have more freedom built-in to the process.
At least, that’s how it looks from the outside.
Writers tend get hung up. Musicians seem to just go for it. Some of this must be due to that miraculous thing called the “jam sesh,” when a group people get together with their instruments to see what might happen — if anything.
That, already, is a golden nugget for writers.
What if instead of calculating, we just jammed?
Too often the heady writer comes to the page with an agenda. This is probably because writing is so specific, direct, and, at first glance, unambiguous that we desperately want to get the words right. If we don’t, the reader might miss our meaning, obvious consequence of which is the swift and merciless collapse of humanity.
This can’t be helping anything.
Working in a sonic space rather than the confines of the English language, the musician seems to rely far less on getting things “right” than getting them to come alive a.k.a. evoke a feeling, any feeling. Once they pick up the thread, they follow it wherever it leads, never imposing their will — or at least not too strongly.
Am I wrong, or don’t writers often bring a God complex to the page that couldn’t be further from the attitude of the free-wheeling musician?
In a way, it’s valid. We are the rulers of whatever literary universes we create. But in more ways, it’s bogus. We are people writing about other people, and the God complex from this POV is probably detrimental. If we believe ourselves to be All Knowing then we must control every little aspect of the story we are trying to write, every step of the process, every plot and subplot.
Is that really necessary?
Musicians seem to understand they are not God but are, instead, more like his children — put another way, his instruments (had to). They play their music, have no fear, and experiment until God (or the Muse, or whatever you want to call it) enters the room. They go fishing and come up with fish while writers sit around trying to create them.
My experience playing music has proven this to be true. Picking up the guitar — or pretty much any instrument — and making something happen feels much easier than sitting down with a blank page and writing a half-decent story.
Why?
Expectations, I think.
When I grab the guitar, I don’t know where I’m going and don’t care. And with a fun, loose, and experimental attitude, I always end up somewhere good, strumming until I break strings, singing loudly to my one-dog audience.
When I sit down to write a story, on the other hand, I have too many notions of where to go, big ideas that deal with humanity, kindness, love, fear, yada yada yada.
These are, of course, important things. But they simply can’t be forced. The more I can muzzle that wanna-be God in my head, the better off I am, perhaps. The more I can jam, following threads that feel interesting and fun, the more likely I am to stumble upon something truly worthwhile, the same way musicians do.
This concept is something George Saunders, that great short story writer, has often evangelized, fondly sharing Donald Barthelme quotes like, “The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.”
He struck a similar note in a recent post,
What if the idea was to make, well . . . something, in prose, but we don’t know what it is. Something whose purpose is to compel and surprise and delight the reader and ourselves in the process, that may, in fact, say something about life and our feelings about life – but almost incidentally; something that, until we’d written the piece, we didn’t know, something that is not easily reducible?
What if the purpose of the piece is exploratory, not expositional?
(Is it just a coincidence that Saunders is good friends with Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer and guitarist for Wilco?)
The thing is, I’ve had these exploratory ideas knocking around in my head for a while now, and I still struggle. This is stuff that’s easy to talk about but takes practice and discipline to achieve, like anything.
What I know is, setting aside high-minded quotes and philosophies, thinking about writing as similar to strumming my guitar is an idea incredibly simple to grasp and one that could take me, and you, to fantastically beautiful and new places.
All that needs to be done is to go joyfully exploring, using the keyboard the same way I use my six-string on a slow afternoon.
No calculating. No planning. No overarching theme.
Just music. ♦
Weekly Three
HEAR: Björk - I Miss You (Dobie Rub Part One-Sunshine Mix)
READ: Sasha Frere-Jones on how the experience of music — and of being in a space — can change depending on the quality of the speakers you’re using.
VIEW: Anthony Kiedis and John Frusciante perform an acoustic version of “Under The Bridge” while floating down an Amsterdam canal.
An interesting view. However, music is limited to a few notes, it is the placement of the note, the octave and speed. English has well over 500,000 words, not to mention a carefully crafted period or comma!
I often think how amazing it is that musicians can come up with wonderful and sometimes purely terrible music that is different to what has been written before.
The combination of words or notes is a skill. I suspect more music compositions get thrown away than we could count. The same for the writer.
For some music analogy writing tricks, have you checked out these Palahniuk musings: https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/try-this-write-like-a-broken-record
And
https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/under-the-influence-of-music