What shuts you down in composing, and what
supports your expression?
I find I work best when alone and its
quiet.
I feel the need to compose when I'm highly
stressed, but the quality is probably better
after I've played awhile, warmed up and relaxed.
Whats your pattern?

There's a balance you can find... how to put it briefly... you can't force yourself, ever, it has to flow naturally, always, and you have to do the sorts of things in your life that will spark inspiration all the time, you can't sit idly by, you need to lead an active (sometimes even overly) life, that, if it doesn't have drama (not always healthy), it should at least have lots of surprises, spontaneity, and excitement of some kind.

So what I'm trying to say is that, if you can find this balance, which is tough, you won't ever have writer's block, as hard as it is to believe.

Well, we are certainly a diverse bunch. I don't particularly like surprises, spontaneity or excitement in life, and my creative impulse thrives on routine. Whether this implies I have more imagination or less is a debate I hesitate to enter here.

Nothing much "shuts me down" these days. Huxley's reducing valve is always open and I have no particular difficulty in "seeing the universe in a grain of sand". I used to think I needed a lot of conditions to create but I was wrong.

I don't really have writer's block. The only time I have writer's block is when I don't take time to compose. I get busy with everyday life and let too much time go by without writing anything even years. The "block" comes from just ignoring that interest of my life sometimes. I'd be composing probably 100% of the time and drown myself in it to the point of ignoring everything else but everyday life seems to get in the way. For me it becomes an all or nothing approach. I guess I need to find a balance.

I need to work more on making up musical ideas in my head while I'm doing my everyday stuff. Then just writing it down a little at a time.

"Writer's Block" is a myth. (I'm commenting more as a writer than a composer here, as I am the former, but amn't really the latter. ) What it chalks up to is poor planning. If you sit down and plan the work, really think it through, you'll never experience writer's block. Such "blocks" only occur under one absolute condition: You don't know where you want the "expression" (score/piece/poem/novel/story/etc etc) to go and actively prevent yourself from continuing until you find the outlet that "belongs". Naturally, if you don't continue and see where any one thought leads, you'll never get anywhere, and this is what is considered "writer's block".


Of course there are times when you can't think of exactly how you want to word something, or exactly how you want to phrase something, but these momentary troubles are singular events to work through, not monumental collapses in the progressive process.

writer's block? NOPE.

I have the opposite, I think. Too many ideas. This makes for quite a daunting backlog of unfinished pieces. Better yet, as my husband tells me, a lot of my music has two or three or more "pieces" all in ONE piece of music...



Jeanne W

*laughs* I know EXACTLY what you're talking about!