When teaching composition in the university, a common "problem" students would want to discuss with me was their writer's block.
Why shouldn't they? We all suffer from writer's block from time to time, don't we?
Or, do we?
What is writer's block? Think, for a second, how you might describe it. What kind of phrases might you use?
"The ideas just won't come."
"Nothing I write is any good."
"I don't feel inspired."
"I need to find my muse."
"I'm not in the mood."
Feel free to add your own in the comments below.
But do any of these things really stop, or "block", you from composing?
What if I said I would pay you $1000 to compose something for me by tomorrow afternoon, whether it was good or bad? Or, if I said your life depended on you composing something by tomorrow? You'd compose something, right?
Right.
So, there's not really a "block" here, is there? Nothing concrete is stopping you from composing something.
I remember reading in a book on creative writing that the particular author used to do workshops with aspiring writers, and he would often be approached by students claiming to have writer's block. His response would be that he has a particular spelling for writer's block, and that was L.A.Z.Y.
Seems harsh, but, deep down, writer's block is really just a resistance to writing, or the resistance to the effort that writing requires. However, let's be generous and give the blocked composer the benefit of the doubt and assume he isn't just being lazy. Where is this resistance coming from?
To paraphrase another author, "The best way to NOT write the great American novel is to try and write the great American novel."
What creates the resistance for most artists is the fear that what they create just won't be any good. If you start off from the idea that the next thing you compose is going to be a masterpiece, then you are going to meet resistance. Not only that, you risk casting aside perfectly good musical ideas purely for their crime of being unfit to form the basis of a symphony worthy of Rachmaninoff.
Just remember, Beethoven wasn't worried about coming up with the greatest melody of his time when he came up with DA DA DA DAAAAA!
Just get to your desk. Don't worry about the quality of your composition; get the music down, and deal with the quality control later. If the music is poor, then all you need to do is never let anyone hear it. Let's face it, most of the time, we composers are begging performers to play our music, so you shouldn't have any trouble hiding your deformed musical offspring in an attic somewhere.
If this fails, try giving yourself permission to write the worst peace of music ever. At least, you will be breaking the resistance of composition, and - who knows? - it may not actually turn out to be all that terrible.
