How do you write?

[Josh]

You're welcome.

Yeah, I listen to a ton of music in languages I don't understand. Lyrics are, honestly, the least important part of the song to me. I can sing along and have no idea what the words are. I've been listening to the Ramones for 20 years or so, but I never figured out most of the words until we were doing the cover band thing. It was just a collection of syllables. This doesn't work for non-musicians most of time. People who hear "the words and the beat". What the fuck does that even mean?

I forgot to mention it. I can't write things with a pencil. I don't have time to erase shit when the words are coming, and crossing things out with a pencil isn't finite enough. I have pages and pages in my books that look like the NSA censored them. I also can't seem to stay on the lines, and shit goes all over the place. I'd scan some pages for you jerks, but then you get to see what I write.

I don't print my lyrics on purpose. Fuck that shit.

poetry in music

Jenny F'n Lewis.

Why bother with so much language when you have all these instruments to help tell the story?

Because non-musicians don't hear that shit, even if they think they do.

[Hubbitron]

On topic this

[Calliander]

What I take is; do you enjoy music in a language you can't understand? If so, why? Because art can reach out to you regardless of the obvious. This is why I hate country music. With every fiber of my being.

Lyrics specifically never really mattered to me. I always thought it was about the movement.

I find there are those that don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut, and those who scrutinize a song for its every word.

I enjoy plenty of music in other languages, you're definitely right. It's odd, though - some music I don't give a damn about the words but with some artists you can tell they put a lot of time into their meaning and I guess I pick up on that. When it comes to useless music like Taylor Swift it isn't so much the words as the enjoyment of the subject matter by stupid people, which I realize is asinine.

Then there's rap. I am incredibly critical of the words in rap. The words are infinitely more important than the beat to me: both the meaning and the delivery of them. A shitty beat can certainly ruin a song with well-chosen and delivered words, though. So there's that. But a good beat doesn't make a good rap song - see Kanye. I'm interested in your take on that.

[Toupee]

Interesting thread!

In general it depends on what's being written down.

Digitally I have moved towards whatever is the most accessible and fastest. Right now that means I do both quick notes and fuller articles (blog posts, newsletter articles, etc) in Google Keep. Previously I've used Evernote, and of course Word and Notepad, but I've moved away from those to try more of a "mind dump" messy first draft system, and then polishing it later (and stylizing the text) in InDesign or Wordpress or whatever backend I need to be in to publish the final result. If it's not getting published it stays in my google keep. I dunno though. Evernote could win me back if they made their web app less clunky or released a Linux client. It's an evolving thing.

In the past I have had good success with actually producing stuff with typewriters too. When I was little I used to type detective serials with one. Sometimes it seems when backspace is a pain in the ass, it's better to just keep on writing. I do have an electronic one now which is really cool and works fine, and I like using it for the novelty and when other people are around and we want a physical sheet of paper. But its so fucking loud I don't really use it that often when I'm alone.

And I do still love writing notes by hand, but I've gotten really disorganized about it. When I was in film school I used to carry around a little pocket notebook and keep it in my inside jacket pocket to pull out with ease. I should really do that again. With handwriting it's easy for me to use the page spatially, write in different "fonts", and so on... it sometimes captures how I was feeling when I wrote something.

[Josh]

Sometimes it seems when backspace is a pain in the ass, it's better to just keep on writing.

With handwriting it's easy for me to use the page spatially, write in different "fonts", and so on... it sometimes captures how I was feeling when I wrote something.

Nailed it, especially the 2nd statement. I can tell if I was feeling it by how hard the pen was being pressed into the paper. I'll use slightly weaker lines if they made me feel something when I was writing them.

[Toupee]

I also just uploaded a screenshot of my google keep for fun.

and, what the hay, some handwriting.

[Josh]

Then there's rap. I am incredibly critical of the words in rap. The words are infinitely more important than the beat to me: both the meaning and the delivery of them. A shitty beat can certainly ruin a song with well-chosen and delivered words, though. So there's that.

With hip hop the words are important, but I rarely catch all of them. It's the cadence, and the voice that stand out to me. Once I've heard something a few times (or a few hundred) I'll start to pick out the words.

But a good beat doesn't make a good rap song - see Kanye.

No one talks shit on Kanye during my watch. No one.

In before No One.

[dog$]

I find that having the pressure to put something up on a daily basis helps give enough motivation for me to actually just sit down and write. My method isn't as much of writing small incomplete statements only to overwrite them later, but to try to put something down to start which is a fully complete thought and go from there. The usual obstacle is getting that first thought down. It's something like pushing a boulder over a ledge, where it takes a lot of effort to get it to move but quickly gains momentum once in motion.

For my main story that I'm working on, I haven't quite yet hit the point of necessitating spreadsheets but I do maintain two separate documents for purposes of organizing the content; one is used to store and arrange the daily work that I put up and the other has metadata and web links that I want to have stored and noted. Some incomplete fragments and tangents can be found in both places. I never have flashes of inspiration frequently or strongly enough that I ever felt the need to carry blank material around with me in case I need to immediately write something down, and at this point I'd sooner send a mail or text to myself if that situation would arise.

On the subject of lyrics in music, I need to specifically focus on the words of a song for me to know what they are, and I much more frequently have no idea what the words are and mentally substitute what it sounds like it could be if I reflect upon it. If a song were to be considered by its individual parts, I'd probably rank lyrics as among the least importance.

[Error]

I ride a commuter train for roughly 2.5 hours a day to get to my job and back, and I decided that was far too much wasted time. So I bought a 100 page notebook and started writing a story. Over the course of a summer I filled that and moved up to a 200 page notebook. I finished that and looked at the two books, and decided it was going to be a bitch to transcribe my terrible hand writing. I left them sitting for a while and then came back and transcribed them, and yes it was a bitch. And then I went out and bought a Chromebook. It's not ideal, I'm finding out that editing on the Chromebook is a bad idea, and Google Docs isn't really designed for aspiring authors (as you have to scroll to the bottom of your document every time you open it to edit it), but for just sitting on the train and typing what comes to mind its awesome.

As for what I'm writing, I created a small story in the 100 page notebook, used that as the basis for the 200 page notebook, and now I've finished typing out the bare skeleton of the story. I need to go back, put some flesh on its bones and fix some of the inconsistencies I knew I was entering into the story as I was going.

[Calliander]

I need to go back, put some flesh on its bones and fix some of the inconsistencies I knew I was entering into the story as I was going.

I have something I'm working on outside of the one I'm trying to get published (still in the same future history) where the main character is an investigator for the government and he's on the Autism Spectrum, though high-functioning. It's told from his point of view and among the many quirks he presents are all kinds of glaring inconsistencies in how he remembers things or interprets them. This is because he spends a good part of the story just soaked in scotch, and when he finally is forced to be sober it gives him the clarity he needs. I based it on a buddy of mine who, sadly, died from an overdose.

The funny thing is, intentionally being inconsistent is as difficult as remaining consistent. It does, however, make plot twists easier.