Composition Part 2: So, Why No Book Then?

“Everyone has at least one good book in them.”

So, why haven't I written one, then? Well, I've started lots. Novels, academic books, books about soundtracks, books about Doctor Who... The list goes on.

The big question is, why haven't I finished a book?

Well, I'll get to that. But, first, a bit of a preamble.

The book I would currently like to write is a book about music composition.

"Why", I hear you ask, "Would anyone want to write a book about music composition? There are already thousands of books on music composition out there!"

But, are there?

Think about the music composition books you've read over the years. Are they really texts on music composition, or are they actually just manuals on harmony, notation and musical forms?

Now, back to writing books. When I was "determined" to be an author, I read an awful lot of creative writing books. These books weren't about grammar and spelling, but were concerned with evoking emotions in your reader, taking your reader on a journey, analepses (flash-backs), prolepses (flash-forwards), etc. Fundamentally, teaching the use of language as a tool, rather than teaching the rule of language.

This was the difference.

When I was still a composition lecturer in university, I would often tell my students that I had learnt more about composition from creative writing books than from books on so-called music composition.

If I may be allowed to paraphrase one of those lessons:

"The way to not write the great American novel is to try and write the great American novel."

Wow! What a lesson. Don't try to write anything good. In fact, deliberately write something that isn't good! Try it, and find out just how liberating that is, and watch the creativity flow.

At the time, I put this into practice and began writing a tawdry vampire novel, abandoning the pretentious philosophical novel I was attempting to write* at the time. Ok, I didn't finish that novel, either, but I got the furthest into writing a novel than I ever had before. Really far into it.

However, it was as soon as I applied this lesson to my music composition that things really began to take off for me.

Before applying this lesson, I found composition incredibly difficult**, but as soon as I gave myself permission to compose something that wasn't a masterpiece of the 21st century, or, in fact, permission to write something that wasn't even good, my productivity shot through the roof. And, you know what? The music I wrote wasn't half bad, and, I'm certain, it's no worse than it would have been had I tried to write a masterpiece of the 21st century. And, the great advantage of this process is that those pieces actually got finished, and I'm not still staring at a blank piece of manuscript paper with Opus 1 written at the top.

So, what's the point of this wandering stream of consciousness?

Well, the point is, if I try to write the great, missing composition book, it's really not going to get done, is it?

However, if I jot down in this blog my meandering anecdotes of things I learnt - who knows? - eventually, there might be something in the jumble that could be edited into a useful text.

Let's see.

“Everyone has at least one good book in them.”

* For "attempting to write" please subsitute, "avoiding writing".

** It still is difficult, but nowhere near as cripplingly difficult as it was before.

Composition Part 1: Everyone's Got One Good Book in Them

“Everyone has at least one good book in them, lad.”

That was something I would hear my grandad say quite often.

My grandad, known throughout his life as either Jock, Jack or John, was a voracious reader and autodidact who had a tremendous influence on me throughout my whole life (you can read a little more about our relationship here). I was devastated after his death, and even now, more than ten years after his passing, I still think about him every day.

I’m often amazed by how Grandad’s influence and values still shape my life. Sure, some of his words of wisdom have dated less well than others, but, somehow, I find myself repeating them.

“Never trust a man who hasn’t polished his shoes.”

Ok, now that one, on the surface, seems a little old fashioned and doesn’t seem to reflect the modern trend for training shoes and sportswear. However, what he meant by that phrase was that any idiot could buy a nice suit (assuming they could afford it) and pop it on whenever they needed to impress, but polishing one’s shoes takes time, attention to detail and pride in the little things. When I think of it like that, suddenly it becomes relevant again. Don’t place your trust in people who don’t pay attention to the details and who don’t take pride in what they are doing.

I’m not quite so sure I’ve worked out, “Never trust a man with a tiny knot in his tie”, just yet.

“Everyone has at least one good book in them.”

Grandad said this all the time and, I think, part of his belief in this idea was rooted in his passion for reading and writing and the idea that one day he would write his own book.

Grandad was a very funny man, and he an amazing ability to infuse anything he wrote with that humour. Whenever he and Nan would go on holiday, often to his motherland of Scotland, he would send me postcards. The backs of these postcards would be crammed with his spidery writing, telling tall tales of Nan hitting Nessie with her handbag, or fairy folk getting up to all sorts of mischief.

As a young man in his 20s, just after World War II, Grandad spent four years in a TB sanitarium in Scotland, after having contracted the disease in the Royal Navy escorting convoys across the Atlantic. My dad tells me that, during that time, Grandad would write him long letters with stick figures illustrating his shaggy dog stories in the margins.

After Grandad retired, Nan used to tell us about him scurrying off to his back office, where he spent hours secretively locked away. Whenever asked about what he was doing in there, he would respond with the familiar shrug of the shoulders and characteristic, “Och!”

We all knew he was writing a book up there.

A few years before he passed away, Grandad had a serious heart attack and was never quite the same. He was just as lovely as he’d always been, and, in fact, had become more openly affectionate, but he had lost a little of the childlike vibrancy that he had had before.

One day, rather than ask him what he had been doing in the office all those years, I asked him straight out, 

“How’re the memoirs going, Grandad?”

“I burnt them.”

I couldn’t believe it. He had burned his memoirs. All those stories, all those memories, burned.

“Grandad, Why?”

“It was just a pipe dream, lad.”

Just a pipe dream. I found this devastatingly sad. At some point, this wonderful man that I admired had decided that it was just a crazy dream for someone like him to write a book.

“Everyone has at least one good book in them.”

Maybe, one day, this will be the first page in mine.