Composition Part 3: Writer's Block

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.

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.