Song Writing for a Novice
First Attempt at Lyric Writing
Having decided to take up playing the guitar songwriting seemed like a logical progression. This was also because the writing and producing a song was one of the challenges. To date I have many ‘false starts’.
In hind sight it was possibly too early in my musical career to have attended a song writing workshop however no experience is ever wasted. So some of the ideas & exercises have been useful when it came to writing a song.
Unlike writing a story there are different structures to consider & pitfalls to try & avoid. I tried to resist the temptation to make every line rhyme but it was really difficult. In fact a lot harder than I had initially realised.
Finding Inspiration
Finding a suitable topic to start was initially quite tough too. The old adage ‘write what you know’ didn’t quite seem to work in the same way as in story writing. Still seems that getting angry about things is a way in & it wasn’t until I retired I really had a huge introduction to the whole ‘mansplaining’ experience. I think over the years I had been exposed to a low grade form of it & managed to shrug it off. Not so when I became a member of the ‘old women’ at large in society.
Some how this seemed to unlock a opportunity for ‘men of a certain age’ to feel entitled to offer me the benefit of their wisdom.
Becoming a ‘woman of a certain age’ provided inspiration for the first song. Not sure if this chimes with other women but I felt so angry I had to express this in some way.
Unfortunately I had great difficulty in writing music to accompany them. So the song sits in anticipation that my playing skills catch up.
Use the link below to view the lyrics of my first song :
