I Hate Mornings

The Internet is all about writing. Writing that inspires and excites, writing that informs and educates, writing in tags that make the web work, writing in 140 characters. Whatever you do in real life, it’s going to be represented on the web in writing. Yes, images and videos are important too, but they’re the cheese slice and gherkin on the Internet burger.

Coming and Crying

Today I woke up to find an email from Meaghan in my inbox. It wasn’t just to me – it was an update to all the supporters of Coming and Crying, one of the most amazing webby/creative projects around.

Meaghan works at Tumblr and I met her on the Man (hat on) tour, when I played the Tumblr office in New York. She and Melissa, both writers, have put together a book of short stories about sex. They have funded it through Kickstarter and have been documenting the whole process in blogs, on Twitter and in emails. They have had live events like the intimate readings and the latest listening session, where authors and supporters gathered to listen to studio recordings of the stories.

The update email is only for supporters (we paid for the inbox love ;), so I won’t reprint it all (there are plenty of public updates too), but here are a couple of excerpts to give you a taste:

I’m not gonna lie to you guys, because you are my safe space: writing a story that is in a BOOK with your name on it, while managing the production of a book, while working fulltime and trying to find a place to live is A RECIPE FOR CRYING TO YOUR MOTHER.

Having the book back meant one very specific, wonderful thing, and that is that while I was moving (I strongly advise anyone who is considering making a book and moving into an apartment at the same time to RECONSIDER), Melissa printed the whole thing out in a fancy Kinko’s way that costs more than an actual book. Which means that for the past 10 days or so I have been walking around town, hugging an actual physical object to my body, flipping through it, reading little pieces of it, and realizing just how goddamn good this thing we all decided to fucking go for really is.

When I first read about the C&C project on Meaghan’s blog, I signed up and handed over my money almost immediately. I hadn’t read the stories yet. Many of them hadn’t been written. They hadn’t started to make the actual book. They didn’t even know how. None of this mattered. I wanted it to succeed, and I wanted to be a part of it. And I wasn’t the only one. They raised about $5,000 in three days, completely smashing their Kickstarter target. The total donations are now $17,243.

Writing

The success of the venture rests on Meaghan’s writing. Coming and Crying is very cool, but the idea isn’t unique. There are loads of worthwhile and interesting art projects going on around the Internet, and Kickstarter is packed full of ideas. Meaghan’s Tumblr blog was popular way before she starting working for Tumblr (back when she was Jonathan Coulton‘s Scarface) because it’s such a satisfying read. She comes across as honest, funny and likeable (which she is). When she writes an email to the mailing list of supporters they are inspired and excited.

We managed a tiny version of this with the Little Fish Paper Club last week. We made something personal and handmade and sent it out in handwritten envelopes to 100 people. It was beautifully designed by Bekim Mala and it arrived in the post like a present, but at its core was a piece of writing by Juju that was inspiring and exciting. When the Fishy Paper Squares arrived on Monday people were posting thank you messages and pictures on Facebook and Twitter, and thirty more people signed up for the next edition.

Juju’s story was based around the song Am I Crazy?, but that’s not what made it work. People want to connect with Juju. They can do it through the music, but on the web it’s through writing that the connections are really made. The constant conversations on Twitter and Facebook, the blog posts, the emails, the comments. It doesn’t always have to be about the music.

Band newsletters

I unsubscribed from most band newsletters ages ago because they tend to be SERIOUSLY DULL. Now I mostly just get updates from the bands I play with. But I had a dig through the email archive for some examples of good and bad writing and came up with a few. I’ve vaguely anonymised the quotes. Let’s see if any of them are as inspiring as Meaghan’s C&C email:

Keen for something completely different?

XXX and I have collaborated on a new album, Odd Frost, downloadable at this link…

And if you’re around XXX on XXX, we’ll be launching at XXX with a performance bash. Please see the ‘Nightvisions’ section of the theatre’s newsletter below.

Thanks much for your time and consideration!

Hmm… How about this?:

Goodevening everyone, i do hope that this finds you all keeping warm and well.

I am very happy to say that we will be mastering our second album in the very near future after which we will reveal plans for its release…. exciting times indeed… and there is more good news as well in the form of a very talented keyboard player who will be joining us for our show this sunday evening. So do try and make it down to the XXX for the XXX. It promises to be great evening.

I don’t mean to be mean. I’m just as bad sometimes. But you get the idea, right? Not very inspiring.

Musicians, get writing!

If you’re a musician, you need to write for the Internet all the time. Not only blogs, Myspace updates and Facebook messages, but also meta information for MP3s, Bandcamp track descriptions, Twitter biographies, interviews and endless ‘about the band’ copy. So aspire to make it great. Not just interesting, but inspiring and exciting. Don’t make people sit through any more ‘Hi, it’s me. I played a gig. Buy my album.’ emails. Brighten up their day with some great writing. And it’s not compulsory, but ending a sentence in uppercase can often make it AWESOME. ;)

I’ve found myself writing a lot lately, both songs for the 50/90 Challenge and prose for the blog. My prose writing and songwriting skills are improving, and it’s mostly because I spend a lot of time actually writing. But I also study songwriting with berkleemusic.com and read about writing whenever I can. As any teacher will tell you, learning and practice produce results.

A few years ago I read an essay by George Orwell called Politics and the English Language (1946). It is an inspiring piece of writing that I read two or three times then forgot about. Earlier this week productivity guru Merlin Mann mentioned it on 43folders.com. I abandoned everything else I was doing, printed it out, made a cup of tea and read it again at the kitchen table. It still makes me feel excited about language, writing and communication. And a lot of Orwell’s advice on writing prose applies just as much to songwriting.

The message of the essay is that modern English “is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” I’m going to give you a few quotes from the essay, and my thoughts on how they can help us write natural, conversational lyrics.

Imagery and precision

Orwell quotes five examples of bad writing, about which he says:

…quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

Listen to pop song lyrics: “Staleness of imagery” is standard. A lot of pop songs, especially more dance-based tracks, have no discernible meaning. That’s probably not such a disaster. If a song is written to be danced to, let’s judge it by its danceability. But how about singer/songwriter pop? James Blunt’s songs get by on a pathetic crumb of meaning, and are built on clichés.

“Lack of precision” is also a common pitfall. There is nothing more forgettable than a song that talks about “a girl” you met in “a bar” who was “crazy” but “beautiful”. Be precise with your lyrics! Try to write a story that’s actually interesting. Don’t be the guy who bores you in the pub telling stories with no details. Write about “Cynthia Glossop” who you met “queuing for parsnips at the organic market” and who was “disturbingly edgy” but had “something fascinating and unique about the curl of her upper lip”. You know the drill. Write visual descriptions that make the listener imagine the situation.

Simple words, simple phrases

George is on a roll by this point, and lists a number of linguistic felonies. The crime he calls “operators or verbal false limbs” is particularly juicy:

a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb … the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds … The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation.

For us songwriters, this can be taken as a reminder (I almost wrote “a timely reminder” then without thinking about it. How very relevant. ;o) to simplify our verbs, to use the active voice, and to embrace gerunds (ing words). We can hopefully feel proud never to have used the not un- formation in a song. Although I might give it a go. “You are a not undesirable lady” has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?

Think for yourself: avoid ready-made phrases

The essay goes on to warn against “pretentious diction” and “meaningless words”, both worth avoiding in a song, before telling us that:

[M]odern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

Written to describe the state of political speeches and wartime journalism, this quote also highlights a common problem in songwriting. How often do you use a phrase in your lyrics without thinking deeply about what it means? Or use an adjective with a noun because it sounds familiar? It’s easy to build Lego lyrics out of ready-made blocks, but it isn’t good. It doesn’t connect with the listener. And given the choice, it’s probably sound advice not to anaesthetise anyone’s brain.

The rules

And so we come to George Orwell’s Rules Of Songwriting (my title, not his ;o):

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Writing well is always good for the mind. As George said, “If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly”. I think the moral of this blog post is that sharpening our prose writing skills will help us become better communicators and therefore better songwriters.

If you have time, the original essay is absolutely worth reading. Do you know any other great writing about writing? Let me know in the comments.