A Little More

It wasn’t long after I started taking guitar lessons from Mitch, a young musician and producer, that we wound up recording songs I’d written in his home studio. This was a kind of dream come true for me, as I had been producing them myself with rudimentary tools and zero know-how about the finer points of what makes a song sound its best. Now, if I wanted, say, a mandolin in the bridge, Mitch just plucked the instrument off his wall and played it bing-bang in one take. He could also make sure my vocals were on key and that my piano was in time with the drums.

Mitch has an excellent ear, and he often notices small problems in a song that I don’t. After we’ve laid down all the tracks, after we’ve added whatever strings or horns or glockenspiels we think it needs, he’ll go through it slowly, adjusting levels, adding reverb or echo, tweaking and tweaking until the whole thing sounds just right. He was doing this the other day with a tune I’d written recently. It was a pretty simple song at its core, but we’d layered in this and that and it had filled out nicely. Mitch was noodling away while I sat by, when he turned to me and said, “It’s done, really. I just want to keep working on it.”

Oh, how I understood. There are plenty of times when I’m writing a song or story where I feel stuck with the thing. I have half of it, but I can’t find the rest, as if I’ve followed my GPS to a dark dead-end. At some point, however, I breakthrough and I see the other side. Once I’ve followed what I’ve found all the way to the end, once I fully grasp what it is, I get to go back and play with what I’ve already written, knitting all the pieces together, making sure they are a part of the whole. It’s great fun, that part. It’s a bit like a victory lap, as I already love what I’ve got but am looking for any way I can to love it a little more.

Eventually, I have to accept it’s done, and that I can squeeze no more delicious juice from it. Now, I have to look for something brand new. Sometimes, I have an idea in my mind’s pocket and I’m ready to pull it out and have good look, but just as often I don’t. Now, I just have the blank page. Though it’s sometimes daunting, I think that empty space is not actually so different from a piece I’ve written and am refining. Creativity remains a search for the new thing, which might not be so different from the last thing, but just new enough that it helps you love life a little more.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com