Writing Better Lyrics Read online

  That's how most people stop morning writing altogether. Any good coach will tell you that more is gained practicing a short time each day than doing it all at once. Living with it day by day keeps writing on your mind and in your muscles.

  Soon, something like this will happen: At minute six, you'll really get on a roll, diving, plunging, heading directly for the soft pink and blue glow below when beep! The timer goes off. Just stop. Wherever you are. Stop. Writus interruptus. All day, your frustrated writer will grumble, “Boy, what I might have said if you hadn't stopped me.” Guaranteed, when you sit down the next morning, you will dive deeper faster. The bottom in three minutes flat. Next time, one minute. Finally, instantly. That is your goal: immediate access — speed and depth. So much information and experience tumbles by every minute of your life, the faster you can explore each bit, the faster you can sample the next. But, of course, speed doesn't count without depth. The tenminute absolute limit is the key to building both. And it guarantees a manageable task.

  Object writing prepares you for whatever other writing you do. It is not a substitute.

  Loyalty

  Forget it. There's no reason to stay loyal to the object that sets you on your path. Your senses are driving the bus — you can go wherever they take you. The object you begin with might only be your starting point. Full right turns or leaps to other places are not only allowed, but encouraged. Think of it as sense-bound free association. If you try to stay focused on the object you start with for the whole time, you may get bored with object writing after a few weeks. Let your hot morning shower with its rolling steam take you to thick clouds hanging overhead, to the taste of rain, to stomping through a puddle, splashing water up so it sprays like fireworks, to the boom in your chest and the smell of gunpowder and the taste of cotton candy.

  Anywhere you go is okay. Try bouncing off of each sense-image to wherever else it might take you, using each new sense-image as a sort of pivot to the next, a kind of sensual free association. Always with your senses, all seven of them. All within ten minutes. Don't worry about story lines or “how it really happened.” No rhyme or rhythm. Not even full sentences. No one needs to understand where you are or how you got there. Save more focused writing for your songs.

  Of course, instead of association, you certainly can stay within the framework of a story or event if you like, like “Back Porch” above, but let your senses drive the bus. As you remember the events, remember with your senses. How did the park smell? Were children giggling over by the duck pond? Italian sausages with steaming onions? Let us experience it too by engaging our senses; stimulate us to see, smell, taste, hear, etc., to really experience the story for ourselves.

  Even more important, your listeners will each fill your sense-bound words with their own sense memories:

  I remember stomping through puddles on Duluth Avenue in St. Paul when I was seven. I had a yellow slicker that smelled like my rubber boots, and my boot buckles jingled when I walked.

  Where were you? Not on Duluth Avenue, I'll bet.

  In this way, sense-bound language involves you; my words are filled with your experiences.

  So practicing using sense-bound writing is a good thing. It's a powerful tool for involving your listeners in your song. It will often generate song ideas or interesting lines.

  Object writing is about showing, not telling. It is an exercise, like a morning workout, that you use to stay in shape. And it happens to be really fun and challenging. It's not only worth the effort, it's a pleasure to do. You should stay with it, religiously, for at least six weeks. The record so far is Polk Shelton of Austin, Texas, who did his object writing every morning for five years straight. His writing skyrocketed.

  Ten minutes every day for at least six weeks. You won't believe what happens.

  EXERCISE 2

  Set a timer for ten minutes and try writing your own piece. Remember to stay inside your senses.

  Ready?

  Use the word “puddle” as a jumping-off point.

  Go.

  Good. Now let's look at some other ways you can use object writing to generate ideas.

  GROUP WRITING

  Object writing is great for a group. It's fascinating to hear other writers dive and roll off the same object. Get some people together, set a timer, then point to someone: “Pick an object.” “Popsicle.” Boom, you're all off. When time is up, each person reads. In larger groups (five to ten), shorten the time to five minutes so that, during readings, no one gets impatient. Do two or three at a sitting. Each one will be better because you feed off each other — each of you has something unique to offer. In a good group, the level of writing gets very high (or deep) very quickly. With smaller groups, write eight to ten minutes each time (never longer). Remember to pick real objects. Butter. Canary. The smell of split pea soup. Hanging ivy. Hot coffee.

  Here is an example of group object writing, done by our online group using the same word we used for your exercise: “puddle”.

  Yellow slickers and blue galoshes, each puddle like it's own hemisphere reflecting the blue sky and white clouds above, beached earthworms on wet asphalt, the whisper of tires through water, the spray rising up and fanning outwards like a peacock's feathers as the car rushes by, scent of lilac dazes the air, the blossoms heavy with raindrops droop and sag like an old woman's breasts, the slow metronome drip of water from the gutter onto the beaded hood of my car, tasting bitter spring on my lips, the oaky smell, the trunks of trees reaching like the walls of a cathedral up to the sky, the lace umbrella of leaves, patchwork squares of sunlight on the ferns below, a lizard skitters up the bark, its neck ballooning from green to translucent pink — Susan Cattaneo

  Puddle on the ground where the water will not drain between the sidewalk and the asphalt just a geometric stain, a water world, an escapee from the underworld of the storm drain where all is subsumed in a soup beneath the cast-iron teeth stamped with names like Chicago or Pittsburgh or St. Louis rusty and heavy and smelling of rotting leaves and piggy banks and cool damp cement. Sounds of underground torrents or secret creeks or gentle plunking like stalactites forming, depending on how much rain came down. But this little triangular puddle will never make it to the ocean, will never join the great descent to the Mississippi. Puddle of mosquito sex and gasoline rainbow and pollen scum brown and yellow, a tiny pond in the evolutionary gene pool, the very shallow end, it will be gone tomorrow. Evaporation, the Great Destroyer, will sneak in like a nurse with arsenic, unnoticed until it is too late. For you, not the muddy rolling wonder of Mark Twain, but the sky and the slow rising steam and clouds you are going to heaven, little puddle. — Gillian Welch

  Puddle staring up at the sky like a tinfoil hubcap. Raindrops plock plock across its cheek like the slap of typewriter palms against wet copier paper … each raindrop forming instantaneous mountains of pinprick-sized acne that disappear like hooded wack-a-moles. I try and leap across the puddle but my heel catches an edge. A black rubber first base that belly flop splashes my pant cuff with muddy shrapnel. I curse, another dry cleaning bill. I could have walked around, taken the longer easy way, but my puddle leap seemed like a road less traveled. My socks, soaked up to my calf, plastic wrap cling to my legs, almost buckling under the weight of the extra water. I can feel one sagging now, both teetering like the World Trade Center towers, collapsing into my shoe like the soggy black foreskin of a snapping turtle. — Shane Adams

  I can see the reflections of the pines above in the sandy water. Scattered around the pavement like a minefield, I hop over each one in my new canvas shoes. A sweet smell of apple blossoms drifts through the neighborhood, and I hear Mr. Clemens revving up his lawn mower for the first mow of the season. My coarse nylon overcoat blocks the chill of the morning, but as I hop puddles, I feel the skin on my neck and back cool with sweat collecting under my cotton T-shirt. My gum has turned metallic — Mom says I always chew it too long. I don't mind. My jaw needs something to do now that the neighbor girl moved away and I don
't have anyone to play with. The mailbox at the end of the drive gets closer every year as I inch upward, and it surprises me how quickly I'm able to pry open the rusty hinge and retrieve the mail. The mail truck always leaves tire grooves in the gravel that pools with muddy spring rain. I feel my rubber soles sink and suction to the natural concrete, and a shiver springs through my fingers as I consider the gravity of the situation. Carefully, I lift the weight onto my other foot and douse the bottoms in an overflowing pothole. Mom won't like too much that I've smudged my new shoes when I wasn't even supposed to be wearing them. I glance back down the main road and catch the glint of sunlight off a car just round the bend. A wheezing grind and then a steady hum, seems he's gotten that old mower going again. — Andrea Stolpe

  Puddle collected tears as the old man stares at his shoes and fidgets with his shoe laces to look busy. He feels the strain on his back and neck, years lay heavy on him. He listens to the whispers of the car wheels misting through the rainy streets and he cries. It took him eighty years to be able to cry, and now he does it all the time. His sleeve has almost become a handkerchief and that old dog has become his therapist. They go everywhere together, the dog hates puddles, he sidesteps them, jumps over them, and sometimes bypasses his manhood by tiptoeing through them like a ballerina walking around land mines. He looks up and blinks hard to push away any evidence of crying and cups his tired hands over his knees and uses them to push himself up off that stranger's door step. He lights up a cigar, he never smokes it, he just likes the way it feels out of the corner of his mouth and he wobbles down the street pushing off of trees because he won't submit to a cane. He sees Lois in her garden and all of a subtle peering out between those wrinkle eyes of his is a fifteen-year-old schoolboy too shy to look up all the way. He tosses out a hello like he's flicking the ashes off his cigar letting the words float down, hoping she can hear his true intention. He loves to see her, she is a breeze to him, a sunny spot in a dark room when the sun is moving east. — Scarlet Keys

  Tiny geysers, old faithful, as raindrops kerplunk into the puddle, a movie minefield exploding just behind the zigzagging runner, helmet raked to one side, pistols blazing, laughing off machine-gun chatter all around zinging as harmlessly as the dummy explosions. Taut film score conducting my breaths in staccato and shallow to match soldier's rampaging pulse and marching-band heartbeat. My boots smelled of rubber and clanked, steel buckles fashionably open, showing their teeth. Yellow slicker, hood up, rubbing against my cheek, the spatter of raindrops against the plastic whispering to me “Stomp down!” A God in this puddlewonderful world, I stomp a saucer of water, splattering my sister next to me. Giggling, she stomps back. Tiny microbes spill into the air, driven by thundering forces beyond their comprehension, unable. — Pat Pattison

  There. Your first group writing experience.

  Ready for one more?

  EXERCISE 3

  Set your timer for another ten minutes and write your own response before reading ahead. Ready?

  “Pepper.”

  Go!

  Now read these examples:

  Coarse black pepper darkening the salmon filet, tamari and lemon and bake for ten minutes, still rare, wet with the sea to slide easily down my throat, singing its flavor all the way. Deep green water, diving, feeling the pull in the pit of his stomach — a leaning toward the far waters of home, shallow riverbed of his birth, eagles littering the treetops for miles awaiting the feast. Surging up the falls, against the current, leaping and shaking, rainbows of water droplets spilling of his polished skin, the bodies of his companions already torn open, flayed, fallen to bear, fox, and eagle. The dust of home, the smell of the big ditch behind Grandma's house and I exhale, shoulders relaxed, head clearing. The smell of home waters, the sound of grasshoppers winging from cornstalk to cornstalk, the smell of Carnation Instant Milk in the kitchen. — Pat Pattison

  Peppers shiny and red, oily and waxy little Christmas tree lights on all the pepper plants. So hot out here there is steam rising from the dark beds like fog off blacktop, but this heat is a perfume, chocolate brown soft soil smell everywhere, dead leaves wet and warm, new leaves light and crisp and lemony. Smell sweat and damp leather work gloves muddy canvas sneakers smell the peppers in the heavy air sharp tangy don't rub your eyes if you've been picking cause that shiny oil gets on your fingers and goes right into your skin. Smooth firm little teardrops plunking into my cardboard box as it gets hotter and closer and the buzzing little bugs zit round my ears. Moving irrigation pipe with the big men with the soft worn work boots the color of clay, the color of toast. Then later the dirt under my nails down in the cuticles down in the fingerprint and it won't come out. To have really beautiful hands, like the debs in the who's who columns holding crystal flutes like tender shoots, means to do nothing with them. The girls with the pretty fingers do nothing. I have been digging in the dirt all day making things grow and my hands look. — Gillian Welch

  Volcanic ash settles like freckles on the mangled yellow-white face of my breakfast eggs. Lounging strips of bacon are displaced equal signs or orphaned brown slats of a fallen horse pasture fence. I lift a pancake triangle to my mouth and bite into the xylophone tines of the fork and notice that my breakfast looks like chess pieces in jail through the tines of my fork … misdemeanor toast, felony jelly, and a crime scene of half-full OJ glasses. Even though I'm sitting in the same spot as always, my belly seems closer to the table than I remember, like the table is trying to lean into me like a wooden elbow nudging me on its way out of an elevator. The egg pepper is brisk on my tongue and my nose crinkles in a mock pepper sneeze. My face becoming an accordion that implodes through a creosote chimney of crackly nose boogers that won't blow out. — Shane Adams

  Green waxy curves, so small it could be eaten whole. I'll never take a dare like that again. Inside, the seeds are white, and tiny, like little alien capsules ready to burst in my mouth and launch the war of the worlds. Outside the skin is better than government-grade protection, lead-lined or vacuum-sealed so that nothing disturbs the sleeping chaos within. My teeth etch the thin skin as I bite down, and for a moment I think, what's the big deal? It takes a moment for the chemical to seep through my gums, drift osmosis-like beyond the cell walls of my veins, and enter my bloodstream. I feel the hairs in my nose spring to life, as if every molecule and pore connecting them to the bare skin of my nostrils is suddenly inflamed. Moments later, my brain is sending SOS signals to every nerve north of my bellybutton, scolding them like a bad child for disobeying direct orders from my better judgment. I become a cartoon, stream engine-sized whistles pulsing from my ears, smoke billowing from the drums, eyes bulging with regret. My fingers bring in backup as they reach for a glass, a beer, water, anything to rip the sizzle from the skin of my tongue. That's the last time I try to impress a boy without high heels and a tube of ruby red lipstick. — Andrea Stolpe

  Pepper, black flakes snowing down, black speckles of ash, parachuter's landing on reluctant lettuce leaves. The salad is naked except for the oil and vinegar drowning it until it no longer tastes of lettuce but something more tolerable. She squeezes the lemon into her iced tea like a sailor with scurvy and mixes it in with her spoon imagining cake batter and a wooden spatula. “The diet, the diet, I must remember the diet,” as she scoots and adjusts her newly acquired cellulite in the plasticcovered diner chair. She is embracing her new way of living, gently unfolding her napkin and draping it across her hopeful thighs. She smells a hamburger with fries and eyes it like a junkyard dog walking past a cookout. She is interrupted by the tall thin waitress as she sets down her grapefruit and once again focuses in on her goal. I can live without sugar she prays. — Scarlet Keys

  Black seeds sprinkled on scrambled eggs, the bacon curling and spitting in the pan, smokes curls out of the toaster slot, the bread's white skin is branded from the toaster's red coils, fresh-squeezed orange juice, her hands are glazed with juice as shell pink nails bite into the rind and push down on the juicer, pulp floating like blo
ated rice, Christmas music frays the air, children squeal with excitement as they claw at the brightly wrapped presents, breathing in the scent of bacon and pine needles, the sound of tearing paper and laughter, toys in impossibly big boxes, imprisoned in hard cardboard with skin-like plastic and too many opaque twist-ties, children fidget and hop with anticipation as the grown-up tries to wrestle the toy from the cardboard's sandpaper. — Susan Cattaneo

  Object Writing Parties

  The best way to do group object writing is face to face. Gillian Welch had a group in Nashville that met for two and a half years, every Sunday afternoon from one to four. They'd warm up with a five-minute exercise and read their results to each other. The best writing of the round would set the bar for the next round. Then another five-minute warm-up. Read. Everyone dives a little deeper. Then ten minutes. Read. One more ten. Read. Then a ninety-second piece (suggested by Kami Lyle — I call it a Kami-kazi: you really approach it in a different way). Read. Then another five minutes to decompress from diving so deep. Read. And a break for munchies and conversation. After the break, they go back for one more ten minutes, then one for ninety seconds, and then one for five minutes before ending their weekly “object writing party.” Welch says that object writing was one of the most important keys to her success — and she's had seven Grammy nominations, with three wins.

  Cyber Writing

  You can also try writing with a group over the Internet. Someone in the group is responsible for sending the morning word to the others, and, as each member completes the assignment, they send it to the group using “reply all.” There's also an object writing site, objectwriting.com, where you can post and read what others have done with the daily word.