Tag Archives: creativity

Saturday with the Spark

My 5 Tenets of Beaded Jewelry Design

1 Comment

beadedjewelrydesign
I consider myself still an amateur beader in many ways, but I like the process of coming up with new designs for the simple, delicate necklaces I favor. I might not be able to weave thousands of tiny beads together into a wearable maze of color, but I can at least string some pearly and sparkly beads on a wire! 😀

I’ve noticed, though, that I tend to use a certain set of rules when it comes to creating beaded patterns, though–and those rules sparked the idea for this post! Read on to discover how I design my pieces!

Tenet #1: Use smaller beads at the ends of the piece and larger beads in the middle of the piece.

This technique, called “size graduation,” is one of my favorites, especially for necklace design. You start out with small beads at either end of the necklace, and then use larger and larger beads till you get to the center of the piece. This draws the eye to the center of the piece, and also helps the wearer know where the necklace is supposed to be centered!

Tenet #2: Make patterns of interlocking symmetry.

I usually do lots of small patterns to make up my necklaces and bracelets. For instance, on either end of the necklace, there’s usually a couple of little symmetrical patterns; then, closer to the center of the necklace, there is a larger symmetrical pattern that surrounds the centerpiece (usually one to three large beads). All together, this necklace pattern looks like a wearable palindrome, both sides mirroring each other.


Pattern: tiny pink pearl–clear seed bead–tiny white pearl–clear seed bead–tiny pink pearl. This would be great at the ends of a necklace.


Pattern: clear seed bead–tiny pink pearl–small white pearl–tiny pink pearl–small tan/gold pearl–tiny pink pearl–small white pearl–tiny pink pearl–clear seed bead. This longer pattern would be great for building up toward the center of a necklace.

Working with small units of patterns like these seems to create a much better-looking product than some of the non-symmetrical designs I’ve attempted over the years. Somehow, I never finish the non-symmetrical designs–I don’t even get around to stringing them. The symmetrical ones, however, always end up finished. 🙂

Tenet #3: Use colors that play well with each other.

In most of my pieces, I sprinkle in a good bit of neutral and metallic colors, like white, clear, gold, tan, black, silver, or gray–and then I use one or two stronger colors that stand out. Old favorite combos like pink and gold or blue and silver also work well for me. Sometimes I’ll use all beads of the same color but in various finishes to achieve a neat effect (sparkly purple, for instance, looks very different from pearlescent purple).

I do occasionally like to weave in a few distinctive beads, but that’s usually saved for the centerpiece of a necklace, using patterns of more “ordinary” neutral beads around it to visually support it.

Tenet #4: Different light textures are welcome.

What I mean by “light textures” is how the light bounces off each bead (as mentioned briefly above). Sparkly beads sharply reflect light, while pearlescent beads softly glow, and metallic beads shimmer. By putting the three different textures together, you get a neat effect on the eye–the eye constantly moves around the necklace, taking in the different sparkles, shimmers, and glows.

My favorite necklace, by far, is one that I made using light teal sparkly beads (Pacific opals) and white pearls, with clear and silver seed beads as accents. It always gets delighted comments when I wear it, and I think it’s because of the different light textures (plus the pretty color combination).

Tenet #5: Don’t go too big.

I like to use smaller beads because it lends a delicate, fairy-like look to my jewelry designs. In small sizes, any sparkly beads are pretty rather than flashy, keeping the overall effect clean and modest. It also doesn’t draw attention away from the outfit as a whole, but enhances and plays up the good parts of the ensemble. (Given that I’m pretty clumsy, I don’t like to wear any jewelry that I could potentially get tangled up in or injure myself on, so that’s probably another reason I go for short, simple jewelry. :D)

Summary

Small, balanced designs with colors and textures that play harmoniously with each other represent the five rules I go by when making beaded jewelry. But what do you think? What are your favorite ways to design? Tell me in the comments!

Saturday with the Spark

Glassics: Saturday with the Spark

1 Comment

This is a complete topic review of all the posts in the category Saturday with the Spark. Looks like I need to do more drawing/art-related posts, as well as general creativity and crafting posts! But don’t worry, I’ll get to it all. 🙂

Music/Songwriting

Sight-Reading Fail
Seeing and Feeling Music
Perfect Pitch
Melodies from Dreams
Joining My Voice with Others
There’s a Reason the Piano is Called a Percussion Instrument
Phases of Songcraft
Confront the Giant in Song
Studying the Songcraft of Others

Poetry/Writing

Novel Therapy
Poems: Kernels of Art
Writing as a Pressure Valve
A Twist in the Web: Complex Subplots in Simple Storylines
Awake in the Middle of the Night? Write!
The Enemy of Creativity: Self-Censorship
Coming Up with “Novel” Ideas
Journals in Verse: My Personal Poetry
The Impromptu Writers’ Club
Connotation: The Search for the Right Synonym

Drawing/Art

Happy Little (Sketched) Tree
Little Doodles of Life

Crafts

Getting All Beaded Up

General Creativity

A Fickle Playmate: My Muse

Thursday in the Zone

The Slow, Agonizing Death of AE Missions

1 Comment

deathofaemissions
Author’s Note: Though this post references the currently slumbering MMO City of Heroes, it’s an important historical post because it reminds us players of what we need to be careful of if/when the game returns. I’d like to see true Architect Entertainment missions enjoy a renaissance along with the game itself!

Architect Entertainment missions (also known as AE missions) enjoyed a great popularity when issue 14 of City of Heroes/Villains was released back in 2009. For the first time, City of Heroes players could write their own missions and have other players play them, instead of doing runs of the same in-game content over and over again. The week i14 released, you couldn’t even walk your character by the Architect Entertainment buildings without lagging, because there were so many heroes crammed inside waiting to take part in the new facet of gameplay.

But in 2011, just two scant years after the AE system was introduced, the AE building stood mostly deserted. If you came in to play a player-created arc, you likely had the run of the whole place to yourself. New players didn’t even know what the building was for, because nobody much played there anymore.

As a CoH player who dabbled in creating her own arcs (and as a player with an arc-crazy boyfriend), I’ve wondered why this creative outlet lost its charm, when it had been such a hopping, popular place to be for months on end after its addition. But, with a little digging, I believe I discovered at least some of the reasons why the AE mission system’s novelty wore off:

“XP Farm” missions were outlawed.

When the AE building was first unveiled, crafty and clever gamers were quick to jump on the bandwagon of making missions–but these players were making missions that focused solely on gaining XP, throwing storylines and character creation completely out the window. Some missions were created around enemies that wouldn’t fight back, so they were easy kills; others were made of thousands of copies of the same purple Elite Boss enemy, so the XP was maximized and the sheer challenge level was lifted. These and other types of missions like these were called “farms,” because you could easily gain XP from them.

Needless to say, the game developers were not happy with this–suddenly, people were leveling their characters so fast that it wasn’t even about enjoying the gameplay anymore, but about having the most level 50 characters! Thus, the devs began to put in place several “safeguards” against farm creation in the Architect Mission editor (for instance, you couldn’t pick enemy groups that don’t fight back), which lowered the power levels of these “farm” missions severely. (Not to say that all farm missions were gone–they just became less XP-crazy than before.)

More interesting in-game content was added.

The AE building predated several of the most important game updates: the Going Rogue expansion, Alignment Missions, and the Incarnate system. All 3 of these innovations drew attention away from the AE system.

Going Rogue

The Going Rogue expansion box allowed for two totally new character alignments (Vigilante and Rogue), as well as the ability to cross Heroes over to City of Villains, and vice versa. Not only that, but there was a whole new area of the game to explore, a group of three islands known collectively as Praetoria (a level 1 to 20 city).

Alignment Missions

Players suddenly got the chance to change their status from “Hero” to “Villain” (or vice versa) with what were called “Tip” missions, or spur-of-the-moment missions you could run in any zone you happened to be in. “Tip” missions aided a player’s ability to either reinforce their character’s current alignment or to start the process of changing alignment.

For instance, I had a Villain character that I wanted to change over to Hero, so I ran 10 Heroic Tip missions, then a Morality Mission that allowed me to change my alignment to Rogue. From there, I was able to run 10 more Heroic Tip missions and another Morality Mission that allowed me to finally change over to Hero. The Tip missions were fairly easy to complete and didn’t require returning to a contact, so they were much faster and easier processes, while still being good ways to gain XP, especially with a team.

The Incarnate System

Lastly, with the game update called issue 20, the game developers released the Incarnate in-game content, made specifically for level 50 characters. Pre-issue 20, City of Heroes mirrored real life in a way–your character got to level 50 (was done leveling up), and they didn’t really get to do anything more of importance except make you double money every time you defeat a bad guy. It was like a middle-aged person having worked 30 strong years only to retire, sit at home, and do nothing.

With the addition of Incarnate content, there was suddenly something to strive for on your level 50 toons. Not only were there new challenges to unlock (like the super-challenging Incarnate Trials), but a whole new system of upgrading your character’s performance, called the Incarnate slot, was unveiled. Now you could potentially choose to upgrade all your characters’ powers at once with one Enhancement, to boost Damage, Accuracy, Endurance Cost, or Recharge Time. In short, there was a reason to play your level 50 characters again, those characters that you worked so hard on. Thus, less attention was paid to AE missions.

There was very little special reward for playing AE missions, outside of getting AE Tickets and a few badges.

AE Tickets could purchase in-game Invention Salvage, Enhancement Recipes, Inspirations…and very little else. It wasn’t exactly the most enticing prize ever. Not to mention that the CoH developers began to dislike the system itself because of all the farm missions, which meant they withdrew much of their official support. While the AE system was still an occasional showcase for creative talent, it wasn’t attractive to most players, who were not willing to put that much effort into creating their own game content.

The “rating” and “searching” system for player-created missions was idiotic at best.
Picture this: when you finished playing an AE mission, you had the option to rate it and type in a comment, which was then sent as a private message to the author of the mission. But since most people don’t like giving 5-star (top) ratings to just any mission, they often just gave a mission 4 stars.

Doesn’t sound too bad, right? But in fact, when you rated a player-created mission 4 stars, you doomed that player to never having their mission played again. Basically, if a mission didn’t show up on the first 3 pages of the Architect Editor’s simplistic search function, nobody saw it, and so nobody would play it unless you talked it up on the CoH forums or to other players directly. There is a reason players referred to this phenomenon as “Four-Star Hell”–when your mission dropped to a 4-star rating, you could just about trust that your hard work wasn’t going to be seen by other players. (Trust me. I made a mission that got rated 4 stars, and it got maybe 5 plays over a 16 month period–and it only got that because my boyfriend suggested it to a team I was playing on.)

There was really no way to type in a “type” of mission and search for it–you either had to know the mission arc’s ID number/title, or you needed to know the author name. Again, nobody was willing to put in that kind of effort for a game, so the same old missions on pages 1-3 of the AE Machine got played over and over again.

What Could Be Done Differently This Time Around?

  1. Giving some kind of more tangible reward, such as a special costume choice, extra influence, a cool power, etc., for mission creators; maybe even extending that to players who do certain numbers of AE missions.
  2. Making it possible to search missions by keyword, custom character names, enemy groups used, etc–in essence, making the search engine more diversified.
  3. Supporting mission creators by picking a mission with very few plays and hyping it every week or every month–just knowing that someone else actually cares about player-created missions is a huge boost for shy creators like me who don’t like to holler and shout about their creations.

These are just my ideas–what do y’all think?

Saturday with the Spark

Novel Therapy

1 Comment

noveltherapy
I never thought I’d be a novelist, ever. And yet here I am, producing original characters and inventing extended plotlines!

Why I Never Considered Noveling: Impatience

I was supremely impatient as a child and teenager; my brain balked at the idea of writing about a character or set of characters for a long time. Not to mention that I was notoriously horrible at picking names for my characters, anyway. Something in me at that age rebelled against the whole process, even though I enjoyed telling stories and I enjoyed the art of writing creatively. But I stayed within the world of writing largely short fanfiction, because I felt as though I had to keep my characters contained in a pre-approved box to make them workable. Writing a completely self-produced novel, or even longer fiction at all, I reasoned, would feel more like work or a school assignment than a pastime.

I continued with this self-philosophy well into graduate school, because I struggled to write enough pages for my professors’ long paper assignments. While I enjoyed creative writing, I decidedly did not like long academic writing. Sometimes I felt that I’d said enough about my perspective on a piece of literature in just 4 paragraphs, and I didn’t need to beleaguer the point; yet, my assignment said that the paper must be 10 pages long. That goal, of a set number of pages I had to produce, was locked around my neck time and again, like a yoke. “See,” I told myself, “this is why I don’t bother with writing a novel. I won’t like the process, and it’ll be too long and too hard for me to focus on and be happy with.”

The Sharp Mindset Shift

I had not counted, however, on my teaching career disintegrating into flaming ashes under my feet. I had to utterly quit the teaching degree program and return home, not because of any family emergency, but because I had begun to suffer severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. If I had thought writing a novel would feel like a prison, teaching had felt like a lightless dungeon.

So, while I sat at home recovering, I began to poke around with a story I had crafted about two years before for an online role-play. I had written a bit of backstory for the character (about 30 pages), but after my teaching classes got started, I hadn’t returned to it (though I had wanted to). I had all but forgotten about it…and then, there it was, sitting in a writing folder on my computer. Now, I had nothing else to distract me from it, so I turned to this little slice of backstory…and I began to write again.

Hope from Within My Own Pages

As the character’s backstory spun from my fingers into the keyboard, I began to take heart from the sparkles of hope appearing within the story. The heartbreak of my teaching career was still a fresh wound in my back, in my side, but in this story, which was so open, bright, and sweet, there was light to be found. My own story, one I never thought would ever be, was beginning to pull me from the mire.

As 2009 ended, I had a story of about 50,000 words; now it’s well over 100,000 words and still going. I’m writing on my own terms–not by a schedule, and not holding myself to a word count or a page count, and I think that’s what helps me keep on writing. It’s something of my own design, something I can find solace in. (Plus, if I make it feel too much like work, that feeling will come out in my writing and make the novel very hard to read!)

Your Writing Can Be Therapy for You, Too!

I’ve found that the act of creating (whether it’s writing, music, or another art form) is soothing and joyful, returning me to a better state of mind. If you find yourself in need of a “reset button” for your mind, try writing; you might just surprise yourself with what you create. Who knows, you might have your own novel buried in your head waiting to be discovered!

Saturday with the Spark

Seeing and Feeling Music

11 Comments

seeingandfeelingmusic
For almost all of my life that I can remember, music has not only been an auditory experience, but a visual and tactile experience, too. As a child, I thought everyone saw swirls of varying colors when they heard music, or felt the hairs all over their bodies raise up like a standing ovation when a particularly beautiful chord was struck. To my utter surprise, when I tried to describe this to other people, they had no idea what I was talking about…and a good deal of them probably thought I was a bit off my rocker.

The Reason for the Swirling Colors of Sound: Synesthesia

It was not until I joined Facebook in late 2005 and saw a group called “We See Sound, Taste Shapes, and Smell Colors” that I finally found out what was at the core of my strange and wonderful experiences when listening to music. Synesthesia is a very interesting brain condition in which synapses in two or three different senses “leak” into each other; when one sense is stimulated, it triggers a response in the other sense. For me, every time I hear music or sound, the stimulated synapses in my temporal lobes (located just above my ears) “leak” into my visual cortex (at the back of my head), producing a veil of colors across my vision in response to the sound. (I have begun to wonder if the temporal lobes also leak somewhat into my sense of touch as well, since I experience tingling and hair-lifting in response to exceptionally beautiful music.)

Being a sound-color synesthete (and possibly a sound-touch synesthete as well) means that my experience of the world around me is very different from other people’s experiences. Every sound generates a color; the honking of a particularly grating car horn registers as a vomit-green flash at the corners of my vision, for instance. My boyfriend’s voice is the color of the eastern sky at sunset, a lovely, muted medium blue. And every musical key has a color associated with it, seen in the diagram I made for the synesthesia Facebook group below:

My First Experience of Synesthesia

One of my first and most startling episodes with sound-color synesthesia happened when I was a little girl (probably about 3 or 4 years old), playing with my Barbies in the living room while my father played a piece called “Music Box Dancer” by Frank Mills (see following video):

I had requested this piece because I was then infatuated with becoming a ballerina, and I made one of my Barbies dance along with the song as Dad played the merry little tune in C major. As you see in my diagram of musical colors above, C is a warm golden-yellow, the color of late summer afternoons in the South, and I luxuriated in this familiar, kid-friendly key.

When the song came to an end, Dad started it over again, except this time, he transposed it up a half-step, to C-sharp major. As the first notes were struck, I dropped my Barbie doll to the floor, my hands, arms, and scalp tingling–the explosion of deep midnight-violet in my mind was absolutely breathtaking! C major had made the notes feel like the kicks and strokes of a swimmer in a warm and languid pool, but C-sharp major transformed them into tinkling silver crystals, sparkling against a background like that of a clear moonlit night. I could hear the difference because of my perfect pitch (which I did not know I had yet), and I could actually see the difference between the keys in my mind, too. (This began my deep love and appreciation for the key of C-sharp, whether major or minor–it is my favorite key to hear music in.)

Every time after that, when Dad sat down and played “Music Box Dancer,” usually in C major, I would come up and say, “Play it up, Daddy, play it up”–I wanted to hear it in C-sharp major again. He understood what I was asking for after the first couple of times I requested this, and this, he related years later, was when he first started to wonder if I had perfect pitch. (My experience of synesthesia and perfect pitch are so intertwined that I nearly have to talk about them in context with each other; I have written more about how chords appear as multiple colors blended together in my mind in this blog post.)

Synesthesia in Everyday Life

I’ve had similar experiences with music and sound all throughout my life, and it’s an everyday joy for me. Singing in choral festivals and concerts, with all those varying voices joined in harmonies, creates the sense of a hovering structure in mid-air, silvery-gold and delicate like a thinning soap bubble; the chords we create feel as if they reverberate along my nerves, and every hair applauds. Even the sound of a plane engine flying overhead, the Doppler effect making the pitch go down as it recedes from me, generates a swirl of black and deep green in my peripheral vision. I can say it’s truly fun to be a synesthete–it certainly makes the world much more interesting!

Saturday with the Spark

Poems: Kernels of Art

1 Comment

poemskernelsofart
I absolutely love the flexibility of poems; they’re like jars of emotion, containing poignant reveries, painful wounds, and powerful joys. But beyond this humble art form’s ability to adapt to any emotional range, it can also inspire the other forms of art (both performance and exhibition) to their highest expressions. Surprisingly, poetry can touch all other forms of art in the following ways:

What Poems Can Do

  • They can become songs by simply attaching a fitting melody and chord progression to the words
  • They can spark photography, paintings, or drawings; the imagery in a poem can lead a visual artist to create what he or she has “seen” in her mind from the poet’s words
  • They can imply a dance rhythm with word choice and stressed beats; a simple recitation can be done as a rhythm piece alongside interpretive movement
  • They can create a theatrical scene in the reader’s mind; the pathos in a poem can be expressed again through dialogue, or if the poem is itself a dialogue or monologue, it can be directly translated to the stage
  • They can inspire a longer work of fiction or non-fiction; a simple ten-line poem can create a character strong enough to warrant more writing about

I love this about poetry–it creates a sort of network between art forms. It’s fluid, malleable, and yet strong enough to support just about anything you put into it, which makes it both approachable for newbies and versatile for experienced creators.

So, have you ever tried your hand at poetry? If you haven’t, now is a great time to try!

Saturday with the Spark

Journals in Verse: My Personal Poetry

1 Comment

journalsinverse
I’ve been writing poetry since I was a very little girl. Some of my earliest verses were composed on a summer vacation when I was about 7 years old, studying the motion of the waves against the beach as doubtless so many other poets before me had done. I was inspired by the fluid rocking motion of the water, and how it left the beach looking swept and clean, so I jotted down a little poem about it.

What I Used to Think Poetry was About

Poetry indeed served as a welcome diversion from other subjects like math and science, but I didn’t do a whole lot of it during elementary school. From what I learned in school, you simply had to write poetry in a very specific way for it to be considered “art.” I toyed with the idea of becoming a poet when I was older, but I certainly didn’t have the patience to sit there and rhyme ending words, or to make each line be the same length with the same beats as its predecessors. It seemed like a lot of work–and it ended up sounding a lot less inspired and beautiful–when I tried it, at least.

Poetry: Not Merely Meter and Rhyme

But the hangups I had about “appropriate” poetry style all but evaporated in middle school. I began to need a way to talk about the despair and anger I was feeling, without writing too directly about it and getting angry all over again. So I just wrote, breaking my poetry’s lines wherever it felt “right” to break them, choosing words only for their biggest emotional impact.

This poetry, in a real sense, became my journal entries. As I worked with fitting my emotions into a small space of verse, my feelings and problems became concentrated and yet refined. Other people could relate to what I had written, but it didn’t hurt me quite so bad to read it as it had hurt while I was writing it all out. It was quite like getting a splinter out of my finger and showing the sliver of wood to other people–it was painful poetry, but it was good because it was so raw.

I wrote this type of self-discovering poetry all throughout high school and well into college, and even some into graduate school. Much of that poetry probably shouldn’t really be shown to anybody now, since my style has evolved as I have grown up (not to mention my mindset). But the art form served its purpose–each poem helped me stay in control of my emotions, storing them in a paper jar, like storing fruit by canning it. And, I can reopen the jars at any time and re-experience my life at that moment.

Poetry as An Old Faithful Friend

As my life has become brighter, especially with the advent of my current relationship and my continued work on my novel and my music, I find myself less likely to lean on poetry’s shoulder, writing mainly life-observing poems rather than inward-looking poems (though I can still wring the tears out of a piece of paper if I’m in a mood to do so!). I use poetry now as an occasional journal entry, a way to immortalize a moment rather than a way to work out a problem. But I know that I can always write out my problem in verse; just like a faithful old journal, the art form of the poem waits for me to write.

How to Start Writing Poetry for Yourself

Though I’m sure the poetry purists out there are probably recoiling in horror from this post, I still recommend approaching poetry as an art form you can USE rather than as an art form you have to produce “just so.” If you let others’ guidelines for writing poetry become rigid rules, you can actually stifle your own creativity before it ever has a real chance.

That’s why I’m not suggesting any specific rules or regulations. Rhyme if you want to, make it rhythmical if you want to, but feel free to explore the edges of the art form, too; discover the line where speech becomes poetry, where words become art. Write what you really feel and think, and worry about refining it later, if it even needs refining. The world may not need another perfectly measured and rhymed work of art–but it does need your thoughts.

Saturday with the Spark

Happy Little (Sketched) Tree

3 Comments

happylittlesketchedtree
With apologies to Bob Ross for the title of this post, this week I thought I’d showcase a recent sketch of mine that I scanned into the computer:


Number #2 pencil on computer printer paper. Awright.

The tree is mostly composed of simple leaf and branch shapes (similar to a crape myrtle tree). Not the most original thing in the world, perhaps, but this picture works for me on several levels:

  1. It’s mine–I didn’t have to borrow artwork from someone else like usual
  2. I didn’t have to worry about every leaf and twig being in EXACTLY the right place, because it looks better as an imperfect form anyway
  3. The sketch ended up pretty much how I wanted it, for just about the first time in my life

P.S.: Why This Isn’t a Color Picture

This picture isn’t colored in, because usually when I start trying to color my pictures by hand, I end up with something that looks worse than kindergarten. Crayons are too heavy and waxy, colored pencils are too light (takes too long to build up enough color), and markers are too permanent. (And we just won’t talk about the tragedy of my painting skills here. XD) Not to mention that “staying in the lines” is just about impossible for me and my impatient hands.

I did try to color this picture using Photoshop’s Paint Bucket too, but I found it much too hard to color in with a laptop mouse! I couldn’t stand the thought of having to click a hundred thousand times so precisely to fill in all those little leaves, so I quit after a few pointless minutes of accidentally filling the whole canvas with green. Sad.

Pencil + Paper = Fun

My difficulties with coloring is why I enjoy the impromptu ease of a simple pencil sketch. You don’t have to have any special tools–just about any kind of paper except notebook paper and any kind of pencil will do. You can also do this sketch anywhere; out in the wilderness, at your desk while avoiding homework, in bed watching TV. I also really love the ability to do subtle shading with a pencil, which is easier to control than a charcoal stick (for me). Plus, if when I screw up, there’s a handy little eraser.

This is my first pencil sketch in a long time, and I’m hoping it won’t be my last! Let me know what you think about this first attempt after a long, LONG time of staying away from visual art!

Saturday with the Spark

Confront the Giant in Song

2 Comments

confrontthegiant
As a piano/vocal songwriter from the age of 12, I’ve written songs about the things I see in life that make me happy or catch my interest. But more often, my songs are about things that bother me; expressing my sadness or frustration in song has been one of the key ways I vented. I am definitely not alone in that, either, since many songwriters use music to talk about important social and political issues. Writing music about problems–confronting our problematic “giants” within the context of a melody–seems to be human nature.

Why Write Songs About Problems? Because It Helps

Songs are a great way to work out problems, as I found out at an early age.  I could sing and bang the piano keys about my problems more readily than I could even talk to somebody about what was going on.  Through music, I could put it more eloquently…and I found out through performances that other people identified with what I was singing about, even if it was sad.

Within a song, somehow, it seems easier to deliver a message that people will readily listen to. Even if the message is controversial, it seems less so when wrapped in melody and rhyme. And often, such a song can be the instigator of positive change, as it raises awareness about the problem–one such song is Jesus, Friend of Sinners by Casting Crowns, available through the video below:

The “Problem Song” Writing Process

In the act of writing a song about a problem, it forces me to condense my message and really “get to the bottom” of what I’m trying to talk about.  It makes me dig around in my conscious and subconscious mind–why does this problem bug me so much? Once I start trying to explain my point of view as if speaking to someone else, I finally find the little nugget of truth hiding underneath the layers of my own thoughts, and that truth becomes the basis of my song.  Then I write about how I see that truth, how that truth affects me, and the song begins to emerge.

Self-discovery and expression collide and combine once I finally sit down to the keyboard (either to type or to play).  As I write the words, sometimes I find myself adding the melody with it; as I hum the melody, sometimes I find myself adding the words where they best fit.  Either way, I am changing the word choice and rhythms to flow better together.  This is a highly instinctive process of addition, deletion, and rapid editing until I find the “right” way the song is supposed to work, how it’s supposed to deliver its message.

Once I feel that the song is done “right,” I perform it for myself, in many rehearsals.  Generally, the way I know that a song is good enough is if it either raises the hairs on my arms, or it makes me cry. (Yay for built-in quality control!)

Performance

The most challenging part of the whole “problem song” process, for me, is the first performance of the song for anybody.  I am challenged to deliver my message as if I am a keynote speaker, and in a way, I am.  I need to keep their interest, sing clearly, and express the nugget of truth with emotion and description, to help someone else understand how much this means to me.  My song should go out to the audience and travel straight from their ears to their hearts, giving them the message in a way that makes them think without being hostile to the idea in my music.

How Can You Confront Your Own Giants with a Song?

I find that writing a bullet list, outline, or even just random notes about things that concern you is a great starting point toward writing your own songs (or poems, if you aren’t musically inclined).  Amid the detritus that you will inevitably produce (as everyone does), there will likely be a phrase or sentence you write that will point you in the direction of your own nugget of truth.

From there, try to dig into it, to completely explain that nugget of truth as you see it.  Your own poem or song will emerge from your pen or your keyboard–and you just might be surprised at what you’ve come up with!

Saturday with the Spark

Awake in the Middle of the Night? Write!

1 Comment

awakeinthemiddle
Insomnia. It’s a frustrating feeling to be so tired and not be able to sleep–or to be so bored that you can’t even bear trying to close your eyes. Couple that with the feeling that you’re the only person awake or alive in the whole world, and insomnia can be very lonely, too, even with the electronic companions of computer and TV.

Generally, we’re usually awake in the middle of the night because of worries or something weighing heavily on our minds, unless it’s a physical symptom of an underlying condition. For me, my mind tends to start whirling as soon as I try to find a comfortable position on the bed–I suddenly recall all the minutiae of my day, at a breakneck pace. Very, very aggravating.

A New Approach: Using Insomniac Time as Writing Time

Instead of taking a pill or just tossing and turning for several hours, I’ve taken to writing during sleepless nights. Sometimes the coolest and most beautiful stuff comes out of my brain when I’m absolutely worn out from the day. Maybe it’s just because I’m too tired to self-censor anymore, but I write more freely and creatively, somehow. I also seem to be able to express more emotion and capture scenes better.

How can you harness this same wakeful time to get down some of your best ideas (or most random thoughts)? Try these tips that have helped me:

Use whatever medium you like to write out your thoughts.

I prefer to type because I type so much faster than handwriting, and my brain is usually going a zillion miles an hour. (Handwriting infuriates me now because it’s SO SLOW!) Some people, however, enjoy the sense of pen on paper–it slows their thoughts down enough so that they can capture what they’re really worried about or really thinking about. You may even want to arrange words graphically, like a collage (either digitally or actually writing out the words in artistic form on paper). Choose whatever method is most comfortable for you.

Start out writing formlessly.

You don’t have to write perfectly. Just write your thoughts without worries about punctuation, idea continuity, or grammatical sense. Some people have suggested that when you find yourself stuck, you should write a nonsense word over and over (like “potatobug”), just to keep yourself writing. I, however, don’t subscribe to the idea that you have to keep writing the whole time, writing nonsense words if you can’t think of anything else. (I produce enough nonsense that I don’t need ready-made nonsense to write down. LOL)

If writing nonsense words similarly annoys you, try focusing your writing on a particular topic, like why you’re mad about that guy cutting you off in traffic today (and why you’re still thinking about it in the middle of the night, etc.).

When you’ve run out of things to say about one topic, switch to something else.

This is not only a way to keep writing, but a great way to get at issues that are bugging you or that you’ve had on your mind for a while. One night, while doing this writing activity, I randomly discovered that I was still upset about what a friend had written on my Facebook wall months before. She had said something pretty innocuous, but I took it the wrong way and stewed about it long after I should have given it up. I set about resolving it the next day, and it was all good in the end. If I hadn’t written about it, who knows how long I would have hidden that grudge from myself?

Keep writing till you’re too tired or don’t have anything left to say.

Whichever of these comes first, follow the impulse and put aside computer or pen for the night. I usually get tired before I’m done writing, but some nights I get on such a roll I can’t stop! Those nights, I finish up my idea and collapse into bed, feeling like I’ve run a mental marathon. 😀

IMPORTANT! Keep That Writing!!

Now, once you finish writing, don’t throw your paper/digital file away–keep it and look at it again in the morning. you might have a winner of an idea hiding in there! (This actually happened to me; I wrote something down, looked at it in the morning, and thought “You know, that’d be a great poem.” Thus, a new poem was born out of utter randomness.)

Summary:

Being awake in the middle of the night doesn’t have to be a lonely, unproductive time. Writing about what you’re feeling, even if you think you’re not a good writer, even if you don’t like to write a lot, can really help you sweep your brain clear of mental clutter so that you can sleep. And who knows, you might find an awesome creative idea along the way. You never know what you’ll find hiding between your synapses!