Tag: writer’s block

Starting is difficult.
Do I start at the beginning?
Do I start in the middle?
Do I start at the end?

Let’s start: on July 1, 2007, I launched a podcast project called 60×365 for which I composed and posted a new one-minute composition every day for a year. In an interview with NewMusicBox at the conclusion of the project, I shared some early reflections about its impact on my creative practice:

One thing that excited me right away was knowing that this project would force me to compose a lot more. Making a new piece every day is a huge commitment. Like many of my colleagues, I was having trouble finding time everyday to sit down to compose at all. I had hit a mental block on a couple of projects and felt like I was stuck in a rut. 60×365 presented a way to try out some new ideas while developing some discipline and routine in my creative life.

Now, ten years later, my practice has further evolved. The experience gained from 60×365 continues to guide my work.

Imagine a blank sheet or a blank screen or the silence waiting for sounds.
Now imagine a composition that is nearly done, needing just one more idea.
Which is more difficult?

I think about productivity quite a lot, looking for ways to be more organized, more efficient, more motivated. I’ve read about and experimented with different systems (Getting Things Done, Personal Kanban). I’ve tried different apps (Remember the Milk, Trello, Habitica). Sometimes the systems and strategies work for me, and sometimes they don’t. Often they work for a while, then gradually fall away and the search for a new tool, a new hack, a new methodology begins. It’s easy to get lost in this search, using it as an excuse to put off the actual work. One must be careful with this search. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of contradictions and caveats:

• Goals can motivate you, share them with others to make them stronger.
• Goals can motivate you, but they are more effective if you keep them to yourself.
• Goals can motivate you, and maybe you should share them, maybe you shouldn’t.
• Goals are limiting. Don’t make goals.

Over time I have assembled a mashup of tools and systems that help me to stay organized and keep track of various projects and deadlines. Knowing what work needs to be done does not automatically motivate me to start working, however. A tidy to-do list does not help me confront the reality that the music I imagine composing is very different from the music I sketch at the start of a session.

So I keep searching and I begin to understand that what I’m really searching for doesn’t exist. I want to discover the magic combination of planning actions and productivity apps that result in an effortless efficiency in the face of creative projects. While certain combinations do make it easier to organize and track projects, no combination changes the reality that good music takes hard work.

Do I compose better first thing in the morning?
Do I compose better late at night?
Do I compose better when I have one long session?
Do I compose better when I split it up into multiple shorter sessions?
The unhelpful answer to all of these questions is “sometimes.”

There are two principles that I’ve developed to guide my practice. The60×365 project helped me identify these, and hard work since then has cemented them as foundational elements of my working routine. They are not focused on motivation or inspiration. They are not organizing principles subject to the whims of a given day. They are:

1) Start with anything and work from there.
2) Throw out anything that isn’t working, without prejudice.

The first principle emphasizes composing over thinking about composing. Thinking about the work is not the same as engaging with the work. The decision about how to start can get in the way. Starting with anything is better than not starting. I know how to work, and am not afraid to do the work once I’m in it.

The second principle supports the first. Being ready to throw out something that doesn’t work means that there is no wrong place to start. Every moment spent composing is a chance to learn more about composing. The more we learn, the better we become.

Allow me to illustrate with two anecdotes.

We face the challenges of starting all the time. We face it in all parts of our lives. Even something as trivial as doing the laundry has the challenge of a start.
A pile of clothes in the basket waits to be washed.
A pile of clothes in the dryer waits to be folded.
An idea waits for your sounds.
Half-finished sounds wait for one more idea.

The biggest challenge of 60×365 was finding an idea for each day. Without an idea I was unsure how to start composing. Many days I had to use the basic constraints of the project (a one-minute electronic composition, due today) as enough to get started, and trust the skills developed over years of practice to create the finished composition. October 1, 2007 was one of those days.

There are many different ways to start. That day I started by going to the Freesound Project and downloading their “random sound of the day.” It was a hi-hat loop by John Scott. With no real plan, I loaded it into my DAW and poked at it in different ways until an idea began to emerge. After a number of experiments, I could see what the music wanted to be. At that point, I took a break to make an evening cup of tea. (This is part of my process, letting the subconscious mind take over for a little while.) When I returned, I knew what to do and worked to pull the whole piece together.

I’ve found this to be true again and again: get past the difficulty of starting by simply starting. How to do that looks different every time, so there’s no secret trick to it. Sometimes starting looks like the situation I just described: make a random choice and develop the music from there. Sometimes it looks like starting with something easy, or with something challenging. Different projects, different moments, require different solutions. The only consistency is that starting is the transition from merely thinking about composing to actually composing.

There’s no time to wait for inspiration.
There’s no such thing as a problem that solves itself.
There’s no substitute for putting in the work.

Image by David Morneau

A little context is required for this next anecdote. In early 2016, I began to collaborate with composer Melissa Grey. We quickly discovered that we work very well together, in part because we approach the craft and discipline of composing in very similar ways, which includes our separate discovery and embrace of these principles. Our collaborative working method takes many forms, from improvising to drawing large maps by hand to composing side-by-side at one computer. This particular story of working with Melissa is about the creative freedom that comes from a willingness to discard ideas that aren’t working.

Recently, we were preparing for a major performance that would combine some of our existing music with new compositions. We had created a map and structural plan for the show and were working to fill in the details. On this particular day we had tasked ourselves with composing a short remix. We knew the constraints of the task: use the tracks of the source composition, sketch it in a single day to remain on schedule. There had been a brief conversation the day before about one possible idea. Because it was my turn to drive the laptop, I setup a new session and made a quick loop of a recorded voice as an approximation of our idea.

After listening, to it Melissa remarked that it sounded mediocre and derivative, which it did. We began to revise and adjust, looking for the way forward. Before frustration could take hold, Melissa looked at the clock and said, “Let’s give it another hour, then we’ll start fresh with a different approach.” That was a freeing moment for us. The pressure of dealing with this particular loop was taken away by the decision to set a time limit and then discard if it still didn’t work.

An hour later, we realized that we had eliminated the original loop almost entirely. The music before us was very different from the original idea. Several hours later, we had shaped and refined and polished the sketch into its unexpected and charming form. The willingness to discard the original idea freed us to follow the music as it developed.

In this case, there was no need to explicitly discard anything. The absolute willingness to start over allowed us to explore and experiment. There was no pressure to get the idea right at the beginning. We gave ourselves the luxury of discovering the right idea as we worked. This was a powerful moment.

Image by David Morneau

In economics, sunk cost is a cost already incurred that cannot be recovered. “So far, I’ve spent eight hours composing from the initial concept.”
The sunk cost fallacy is making a decision that too heavily weights the sunk cost against future benefit. “Even though the initial concept is not working the way I’d imagined, I can’t start over without losing those eight hours.”
Instead, consider: “I’ve gained eight hours of experience composing, and I can start over right now with the benefits of this experience to aid me.”

Here at the end, the goal is to compose, which is very different from thinking about composing or planning to compose or making a to-do list of all the bits that need to be composed. Start from anywhere, so long as you start. Be ready to throw everything away and start again. How you practice these principles will depend on who you are, and it will vary from day to day and from project to project.

60×365 helped me discover and articulate these principles. Collaborating allows me to continue refining them. Working well teaches me to work well. There is no shortcut around that reality. Embrace it: work hard and good work will follow.

Somewhere in the homestretch of writing a new composition, I inevitably become convinced that the entire piece is garbage. By now, when I start a new piece, I know that this Day of Utter Suckitude is coming; it happens no matter how much I’m loving the piece, or how smoothly the writing has gone thus far. I become convinced—temporarily, falsely—that not only is there nothing redeemable about this awful piece, but that composing itself is meaningless, I’ve committed myself to a worthless career, and I’m a bad composer. I become briefly convinced that perhaps I should seek out another job, one where at least I’d be getting free health insurance.

I know exactly how ridiculous this all sounds written out, but that doesn’t help me reason it away in the moment. This feeling usually lasts 24 hours, or at most a couple of days. Each time, it feels like I’ll never escape

The Day of Utter Suckitude is different from the small, nagging instinct that a section of music would be better if I re-wrote it. That voice can be trusted. You can recognize the Day of Utter Suckitude because it encompasses an entire piece, finds nothing good about any of your work, and sends you into an anxious tailspin. Sometimes the Day of Utter Suckitude manifests so suddenly it gives you composing whiplash; you’ll wonder how a piece that seemed brilliant a week ago has become something you’re now certain you should destroy as quickly as possible.

During the Day(s) of Utter Suckitude, someone you know will ask how your writing is going. Because you have chosen this career—you got yourself into this mess—you may not respond truthfully. You’ll want to say: “Terribly! It’s going terribly. The piece sucks, and I’m pretty sure that everything I do is devoid of meaning.” You’ll want to say: “I’m pretty sure this piece is my last commission ever, because who would ask me to write anything else after hearing this garbage?” You’ll wonder if this is the curse that comes with having your dream career: that for a few days during the creation of each new piece, you’ll loathe everything about your work. You don’t feel as if you can confess any of this to another person, however, unless you’re talking to another composer who is also a very good friend, so you grit your teeth in response. You say something like, “It’s… going. It’s fine.”

Even writing this essay, I can feel it coming; tomorrow, when I re-read the current draft, I will decide that it, too, is the worst thing I’ve ever written. I know that later, by draft four, I’ll have moved past that feeling; I’ll have revised a great deal, and it’ll feel like it belongs to me again. This particular brand of panic always passes, and the piece pulls through every time. When I’m done, it may not be my favorite thing I’ve ever written, but I’ll have fallen back in love with it.

Sometimes when I’m stuck in the worst part of my composing process, I think about the start of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride. You enter a dark room and a door slides shut behind you. As the room lowers—it’s secretly an elevator—a narrator explains that the room has no windows or doors, which “offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out!” Of course, he says, “there’s always my way.” You look up to discover that the ghostly narrator has hanged himself from the ceiling rafters—dark for a children’s ride, no?—but then a hidden side door opens, and you’re free to move onto the actual ride itself.

This is the goal when we’re stuck: to find a way out. Even if I’ve convinced myself that I write bad music and no matter how much I temporarily loathe whatever I’m working on, that hidden door always opens. You don’t need extreme measures, either. You give yourself a moment and then search for a solution, and that door you couldn’t see at first, a way back into the piece, a way to move forward, appears every time.

Each Day of Utter Suckitude is like anxiety: it mimics the feelings of actual physical pain and actual disaster, but it isn’t any of these. It can’t be solved, at least not immediately, by pushing yourself harder. Like anxiety, it may not have a permanent antidote and there may be no quick-fix solution. The only way out is, usually, to acknowledge the feeling, to greet it like an old acquaintance you don’t particularly like—“Hello, good to see you, but now I have to excuse myself”—and then to step away.

Step away from the desk
Photo by Taduuda

Right now, I’m in the thick of this with a piece I’m writing. I have the sensation that what I’m working on is not very good, is in fact maybe the worst thing I’ve ever written. I know that after I’ve fleshed it out and revised the orchestration, after I’ve edited it multiple times, I’ll have changed my mind. The first rehearsal I attend will be like greeting an old friend I actually like: I’ll see all of its flaws, sure, but I’ll also love it in a way that can’t be erased.

But here, right now, I hate this piece with all of my being, and as usual, that makes me wonder if perhaps I’m very bad at writing music. I have to remind myself that this is the process. In my non-composing life, too, I experience anxiety, but I’ve learned to remind myself that I am in anxiety when it happens. It is temporary; it will pass. Here, writing this piece, I am not the process; I am in the process, I am passing through it, and it is passing through me.

Instead of letting “bad” days derail the composing process altogether, I’m learning to recognize when to push through and when to be gentle with myself and let the piece rest. Whether I push myself to keep composing or decide to take a break, my process is not disrupted. One bad day won’t derail the process; it is the process, and a single bad day or even a bad week of composing doesn’t ultimately have any bearing on how good a finished piece will be.

Embracing a routine where you hate your own work seems a little ridiculous. You may want a book on getting rid of the doubt entirely, a list of “10 Ways to Be Productive” that leaves no room for days where you loathe what you’re writing. You may reason that if you just optimize your time, determine an ideal morning schedule, and make a really effective to-do list, you should be able to skip over the stage where it feels like everything you write is wrong.

But composing, or any artistic pursuit, is a practice. In this kind of practice, as any musician knows, there is a stage where you’re confronted with your own inadequacy, followed by a stage where you meet your own faults without resistance. That’s the sweet spot, and that’s where you begin to improve. In the practice of composing, that brief, late-game feeling that everything we’ve written is garbage might have a purpose after all. It can lead us to finish the piece strong, to shore up its weak spots and make our way confidently to the double bar.

So much of our instinct when we’re stuck is to want to push through, to work through the doubt as fast as possible, to try to outrun it. But once you’ve learned your process, you’ll know what’s coming. You’ll know when to push through and when to give a piece 12 to 24 hours to marinate on its own before you return to it. I can’t drag you out of the really bad days with good advice. I can only tell you to trust your process, even—especially—when the process feels like doubt, like failure. This, too, is part of the process, but you know what comes next. You know what follows feels like falling back in love. You know that if you wait here just a moment longer, you’ll always find a way out.