Song lyrics and a sleepover

writing in phases

Hello!

On Saturday, Adam and I went to the Del Water Gap concert with friends. It was at one of our favorite venues in the city, and the four of us went to dinner and stopped at a little bar and walked on to the venue. It was dark and the night was chilly but not cold - a perfect fall night. After the concert, we stopped for cookies and then our friends spent the night at our house! Who doesn’t love an adult sleepover? <3

Earlier that day, Adam and I sat and listened to the album with the lyrics pulled up. I LOVE doing this so much. As a kid, I bought CDs and listened to them in my room with the little cover book thing pulled out and stared at every word to every song until I knew the whole thing by heart. I don’t do this very often anymore - sit and focus on nothing but the music and the words. It was nice to spend time with it.

While listening to the songs, I said I bet he started off writing them as poems and turned them into songs. I don’t know how to write a song and obviously don’t know this man or his process, but the lyrics read like poems, or the beginning of poems. And I liked it. A unique image followed by a feeling. A grand statement of emotion. Little choppy lines that poke at something specific, like being 20-something and bad with an iPhone!

Reading along with the lyrics was fun! And I've been trying very hard to have more fun with all forms of art lately! To read books just for enjoyment! To put lots of color all over our apartment! Adam and I tried to draw the other day! I was terrible at it, but it was fun! He wants to do more crafts and I'm going to try really hard to have fun with them and not get mad if what I'm trying to make doesn't come out perfectly! We'll see! Anyway, we had fun looking at the lyrics. I felt like a kid again! I think there’s something to say about the way we engaged with art as kids - when we had all the time in the world and loved what we loved with so much ferociousness.

At the concert, the singer said he started to write songs because he had a lot of feelings and a lot of crushes on girls and was too shy to say any of those things out loud. Adam and I turned to each other and made “awhhh!” noises over the sound of the crowd. That's another thing I love - those moments at concerts where you have to yell in each other's ears to hear each other but the loudness is still a private conversation.  

Crushes are probably why I started writing too, at least to some degree. That felt like what we were supposed to do. I remember sitting with friends and making a list of all the boys we liked as early as first grade. Then crushes happened in rapid-fire escalation. Crushes and boys chasing us on the playground turned to boyfriends and so on. I remember being in high school and having this glamorized idea of being so in love that one day I would get my heart broken and FEEL all those things people wrote movies and songs about and then it could be ME writing those things. I thought it would be so powerful! I could talk about it all in such a unique way! I just needed to be in love first! I'm sure there's a TON of really bad poetry about sad little feelings in the boxes of old notebooks still at my mom's house. But I still write love poems, so maybe not that much has changed over the years.

This is the first week in a while where poetry felt a bit easier again. I jotted down lines here and there over the week, and they seemed to piece together at some point. This process has felt strained for a bit, so it felt good to not have to force something together, for the words to come and go and feel like they fit themselves right into a type of formation. That's progress! To get back to the fun of it all!

To let the words come to me and feel playful about the whole thing! To not stress too much about making them perfect! I did this with poetry, at least.

I also had a workshop for a 20-page section of my novel this week. I was nervous because I've done some pretty intense edits on the book since the last time I showed any of it to this group, and I was pretty sure the edits made the book stronger, but it's easy to second guess myself (and second guess Adam, who gets stuck reading the same pages over and over more often than I'd like to admit!) The workshop went well. A few places of confusion were pointed out. Some of the character's motivations could be strengthened. But no one brought up any major problems!

About halfway through, one of the people in it stopped and said, "this feels more like a book club than a workshop!" and I don't know if I've ever felt more relieved!! My book is so still far from being done, but it's something! It's a book! And people have read pieces of it! And it's a cohesive story! And the plotline is moving forward! People said very nice things about it, and I felt like a proud parent. I'm writing a novel! They analyzed my story and characters as if they were already a real novel out in the world! It was very cool.

Then I struggled to move forward with the novel all week. I finally sat down a few days ago and pushed out some words. I changed the way I was going about edits. It's feeling a bit better. But for a minute there I wondered if I would ever get past the 1/3 mark on this second draft - if I had a pretty decent beginning of a novel and would never be able to finish it. Then the words kept going.

The ebbs and flows of writing are difficult for me to deal with because part of me wants to believe in it - there will be periods of great writing! there will be periods of nothing! - but the other part knows there is a fine line between letting the slumps pass and being passive, never getting the work done. I got more words on the page today - that was good. I'm going to get more down tomorrow! I'm going to keep moving! I want to finish the second draft of this book by the end of the year - I'm putting this here for my own accountability! The book is going to exist, fully!

Writing is weird. And it's hard to find a balance between all the aspects sometimes. But I feel like I keep getting better at moving through it. The novel is coming along! I've written so many poems! Some weeks are better for one of these things than they are for the other! But either way, both are moving forward! Life is moving forward! I also saw so many friends this week! And cleaned the apartment! And put together a huge bag of clothes to donate! And cooked a lot of food! And ate a goat cheese and tomato pastry! And walked like a million miles around the city! So many things!

Sometimes I get caught up in the everydayness of life and forget that I used to be a girl who wanted a boyfriend who loved her and wanted a cute apartment full of books and plants and pretty pictures and shelves full of mementos from trips I took with the boy I loved and I wanted to be able to make soup and let it simmer while I showered and come out and eat it before I got dressed and have somebody find me like that and come eat soup with me. Adam's pretty good at reminding me that at some point I became that girl, so I wrote a poem about it! It's not finished! I don't know if I like it! It might be the start of two poems pushed together that need to be pulled apart and expanded on! I can't decide! The title is just a line I liked the sound of! I don't know! Everything is temporary! For now, a draft:

SAY MY SKIN IS SOFT TO THE TOCUH 

You find me eating soup in my underwear
and all I have to say is there's more
on the stove, if you want to grab a bowl
and you puff out your eyes in dramatics and
I stand and fuss with the toppings as you scoop
because I've been into parsley lately
after something on the internet that I can't find
again said it was good for your bloodstream
or something like that, and you laugh again
and grab at my waist with a cold hand
and say my skin is soft to the touch
and I roll my eyes and you say: stop. Listen.
You say I listen to too many sad songs
and you'd like me to stop but I can't
find another way to freeze time in small slots
so we go for a walk as the sun sets.
Everything I do becomes a pace 
and I don't know if all motion is real motion
as rhythmic moves wear the street down.
There is another dead bird today and I stare
at the feathers for too long and you tug my hand
but there is always something else in moments
of ugly, a nod to a better or brighter thing.