Pretzel Logic Music

You know the feeling. Staring at a blank page, digital or otherwise. Might be an empty lyric sheet, might be the empty grid of your DAW. Whatever it looks like to you, it feels the same. Nothing comes out of you or worse, everything sounds trite and average. Bad feeling for sure.

We have all been there and whenever it happens it feels awful and you’re afraid it’s going to last forever. Anxiety feeds anxiety, more frustration, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Too dramatic? Maybe but that’s what it feels like to many of us.

Well, here’s something to ponder: I think that often creative block happens because we blur two distinct phases of creation: writing and editing.
It’s easy to see. you write a few bars of music and instead of letting it be, you become judge and juror and critic.

In other words, we don’t give our own creation a chance to exist before pulling the plug on it. We say it sucks. We say it doesn’t vibe. We say it doesn’t have “it” whatever “it” is. It comes from putting pressure on ourselves and maybe also from a place of caring for excellence

Let me share with you a good piece of advice I picked up along the way:
“Write like a child, edit like a grownup”.
When you are a child you know nothing of the world and its expectations, you just create in a perfect, joyful flow.
Nothing is trite, nothing is unrealistic.

So. Doesn’t matter what you write on a session. Keep EVERYTHING! Especially if you’re not feeling it. Let it exist for a couple days. Leave it there, come back to it without the pressure of expectation. It might be a diamond in the rough. Just need to work on it.

When you’re ready to come back to it, edit mercilessly. If there is beauty, keep it. If there is potential, acknowledge it. It can be only a small part of it. Keep it. If it still sucks, well… shut it down obviously. It’s all part of the bigger picture.

Edit, edit, and edit some more. No one is watching, no one is listening, you can live with even the most childish, least cool, awful piece of art that came out of your subconscious. It’s still part of you and maybe one day you’ll love it because that’s how it works.

Quick recap:
Write like a child and edit like a grownup, because nobody gets editor’s block.

This entry appeared as a thread on http://www.twitter.com/@taichi_method