Songwriting Without Boundaries (2 page)

The first 14-day challenge, Object Writing, asks you to respond to three prompts each day, of 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 90 seconds. It will help you be more vivid and specific in your writing, and the timed writing will help your speed and efficiency.

The second challenge is on metaphor. It asks you to use your newfound skill at sense-bound writing in a step-by-step process for finding metaphors. By the time you finish, you should be a pro. This challenge also contains timed writing to help you chop away the underbrush in your writing faster.

Then challenge 3 asks you to extend metaphors, learn to explore them deeply, and see them from reversed directions: both “a pack of hungry wolves is a hurricane,” and also “a hurricane is a pack of hungry wolves.” You’ll write a 5 or 10 minute response to each prompt, mostly four pieces each day.

The final challenge asks you to do it all in rhythm and rhyme. Again, because the writing is timed, it forces you to go deep, quick. It teaches you to think ahead rhythmically and manipulate rhyme more fluidly.

If you do all these challenges, I suggest you take a short time between them to let the swelling subside a bit. I also strongly suggest that you find a friend or friends to do the challenges, someone to share your work with. That way, you’re responsible to someone and they’re responsible to you. You’ll both have an audience and a cheerleader. It’s pretty neat.

What I love about this book is what made it so much fun to write. Every prompt in the book has two sample responses from other writers. I asked a bunch of writers to jump into the challenges, and also set up an international Object Writing contest, using the prompts in the first challenge. I even had a few writing parties at my house.

Writers across the globe did these challenges and submitted their responses for possible inclusion in this book. As the responses came in, I got more and more excited. What fine examples they were! Fun to read. Instructive. On target. It was a joy to see so much creative, imaginative work. But winnowing so much amazing writing down to only two examples per prompt was torture.

I think you’ll benefit from their examples as much as I did.

In my commentaries I’ve tried to focus your attention on some specific issue raised by a prompt or an example, but when other interesting issues or techniques come up, I respond to them, too. Your reading should be fun and instructive, at least I hope it is.

But the writing, that’s what you’re here for. The work. The practice. The writing.

CHALLENGE #1

OBJECT WRITING

Don’t tell me the moon is shining;

show me the glint of light on broken glass.

—ANTON CHEKHOV

Turn down the lights, Turn down the bed

Turn down these voices inside my head.

“I Can’t Make You Love Me”
—REID/SHAMBLIN

Where do these words take you? Do they make you see something? What kind of bed? Single? Double? What color is the bedspread? The pillows? Where is the light coming from? A table lamp? Above the headboard?

When a lyric stimulates and provokes your senses, you draw the images from your own experiences. You fill Mike Reid’s and Alan Shamblin’s words with
your
stuff. They involve you, so the song becomes
about you
. That’s the power of sense-bound writing. It pulls the listener into the song by using his own memories as the song’s material.

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day

When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May

“My Girl”
—SMOKEY ROBINSON

Sense-bound writing turns observers into participants. It is one of the most powerful tools a writer has.

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay …

“Dover Beach”
—MATTHEW ARNOLD

The best way I know to exercise the sense-bound writing muscle is to use a technique called “object writing.” Object writing is timed, sense-bound writing usually done first thing in the morning.

You pick an object—a real object, like a paper clip, a coffee cup, a Corvette—and treat it as a diving board to launch you inward to the vaults of your seven senses:

Sight   Sound   Taste   Touch   Smell   Body   Motion

Although you’re familiar with five of your senses, you could probably stand a few exercises to sharpen them, especially the four you don’t normally tap into when you write. If I asked you to describe the room you’re in, your answer would be primarily, if not completely, visual. Even if it is only visual, remember that visual has at least three aspects—color, shape, and texture. Try isolating each and noticing, for example, only shapes. Look for similar shapes. Then look for texture “rhymes.” How many colors does the tree really have?

Try spending a little time alone with each sense. How big does the room sound? (If it were twice as big? Half as big?) How would the table taste if you licked it? (No, it’s not silly. You just lick more selectively because Mom warned you all about germs.) How would the rug feel if you rubbed your bare back on it? How does the kitchen table smell? Remember this, it is important: The more senses you incorporate into your writing, the better it breathes and dances. Take your time and practice.

The two additional senses need greater explanation.

1. Organic sense
   (body) is your awareness of inner bodily functions, for example, heartbeat, pulse, muscle tension, stomachaches, cramps, breathing. Athletes are most keenly focused on this sense, but you use it constantly, especially in responsive situations. I’ve been sitting here writing too long. I need a back rub.
   
2. Kinesthetic sense
   (motion) is, roughly, your sense of relation to the world around you. When you get seasick or drunk, the world around you blurs—like blurred vision. When the train you’re on is standing still and the one next to it moves, your kinesthetic sense goes crazy. Children spin, roll down hills, or ride on tilt-a-whirls to stimulate this sense. Dancers and divers develop it most fully—they look onto a stage or down to the water and see spatial possibilities for their bodies. It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.
   

TIMED WRITING

It’s important that you time your object writing. Make it a manageable task, one that you feel good about doing every day. And do it first thing in the morning.

Guarantee yourself only the time allotted for each prompt. Set a timer, and stop the second it goes off. I mean the
second,
as you’ll see from some of the examples in this challenge. Be sure you always stop right at the buzzer. Don’t finish the sentence. Don’t even finish the word you’re in the middle of. You’re much more likely to sit down to a clearly limited commitment than if you get on a roll some morning and let yourself write for thirty minutes. Then, guess what you’ll say the next morning:

1. “Ugh, I don’t have the energy to do it this morning (remembering how much energy you spent yesterday), and besides,
   
2. I’ve already written enough for the next two days. I’ll start again Thursday.”
   

Breaking the timed commitment is how most people stop morning writing altogether. Any good coach will tell you that more is gained practicing a short time each day than doing it all at once. Living with it day by day keeps writing on your mind and in your muscles.

Two beings inhabit your body: you, who stumbles groggily to the coffeepot to start another day, and the writer in you, who could remain blissfully asleep and unaware for days, months, even years as you go about your business. If your writer is anything like mine,
lazy
, or even
slug
, is too kind a word. Always wake up your writer early so you can spend the day together. It’s amazing the fun the two of you can have watching the world go by. Your writer will be active beside you, sniffing and tasting, snooping for metaphors. It’s like writing all day without moving your fingers.

Soon, during your timed writing, something like this will happen: Your writing will start to roll, diving, plunging, heading directly for the soft pink and blue glow below when, beep! The timer goes off. Just stop. Wherever you are. Stop. Writus interruptus. All day your frustrated writer will grumble, “Boy, what I might have said if you hadn’t stopped me.” Guaranteed, when you sit down the next morning, you will dive deeper faster. You’ll reach the bottom in three minutes flat. Next time, one minute. Finally, instantly. That is your goal: immediate access—speed and depth. So much information and experience tumbles by every minute of your life, the faster you can explore each bit, the faster you can sample the next. But, of course, speed doesn’t count without depth. The ten-minute absolute limit is the key to building both. And it guarantees a manageable task. Look:

OBJECT:
Elevator
TIME LIMIT:
10 minutes

CATHY BRETTELL:
Breath sucks back into my throat—stomach ball jellies to my toes like an anchor hoisted over a ship—dull brass dragging thick fingers of midnight, current’s chain unspools—like roller skates gliding freely—wind sassing back against stubborn waves, black fallen angels bow and thrash in the darkness—thunder twists between sweaty muscled clouds—silver daggers spear the sky horizon, lashing down at the warm sleeping distant halls—sandy upper lip catching foam of a root beer float—eyes widen—thirst deepens, a throat of parched earth guzzles a torpedo stream of charcoal water—stars mirror in the salty crystals—reeds bristle against oncoming Northern winds—smooth moonlit feathers hug against one bony leg for support—a white beam sweeps the coastal blanket—lighthouse calling a lone love—darkness capes around her tall slender body—urchins clinging, bottle bristles against her feet—sunrise begins to touch her—threads of melon flesh across cradled lids—shades of light lift the dreamy nightmare up—rolling it back into heaven’s closet—soft crystal knob pulls shut … (time!)

SENSE-BOUND FREE ASSOCIATION

Think of object writing as sense-bound free association. As you can see from “Elevator,” “Breath sucks back into my throat—stomach ball jellies to my toes like an anchor hoisted over ship” took Cathy from an elevator ride to an ocean storm, no permission asked.

There’s no reason to stay loyal to the subject that sets you on your path. Your senses are driving the bus—you can go wherever they take you. The object you begin with might only be your starting point. Full right turns or leaps to other places are not only allowed but encouraged.

If you try to stay focused on the object you start with for the whole time, you may get bored with object writing after a few weeks. Let your hot morning shower with its rolling steam take you to thick clouds hanging overhead to the taste of rain to stomping through a puddle, splashing water up so it sprays like fireworks, to the boom in your chest and the smell of gunpowder and the taste of cotton candy.

Always stay with your senses, all seven of them. All within ten minutes. Don’t worry about story lines or “how it really happened.” No rhyme or rhythm. Not even full sentences. No one needs to understand where you are or how you got there. Save more focused writing for when you need to be focused.

Of course, instead of association, you certainly can stay within the framework of a story or event if you like, but let your senses drive the bus. As you remember the events, remember with your senses. How did the park smell? Were children giggling over by the duck pond? Italian sausages with steaming onions? Let us experience it too by engaging our senses: Stimulate us to see, smell, taste, hear, to really experience the story for ourselves.

Object writing is great fun. It prepares you for any creative writing you want to do: lyrics, poetry, short stories, novels. Great writing is full of sense-bound writing. There’s a reason why the movie rarely seems as good as the book. The book created
your
movie, not someone else’s.

GROUP WRITING

The fourteen-day challenges in this book work great in a group setting. You can expand your experience by asking friends to join you, either at your favorite coffee shop, someone’s home, or even online. It’s fascinating to hear other writers dive and roll off the same prompt. Get some people together, set a timer, and start with the object, person, time, or place—depending on the challenge of the day. When time is up, each person reads. Each of you will have something unique to offer. In a good group, the level of writing gets very high (or deep) very quickly.