I had to title this chapter *something* but what I chose is a bit of a misnomer. After the last couple of bleak entries I wanted to lighten things up with a topic that was important to me, and this morning I was thinking how songwriting is like storytelling.

That's nothing new. The same things I was taught in journalism school match up with my experience as a commercial writer and that also matches up with the lessons my music tutor drilled into my head. Your goal isn't really crafting words or melodies, it's triggering an emotional response in the one experiencing your art, and while the mediums differ, the methods are much the same.

I think songwriters are more often taught to bring elements of creative writing into their music - I don't mean the lyrics, I mean the ebb and flow, building that ethereal energy with cadence and consonance. There's even a practice in classical music called the Doctrine of Affections that describes the process of pulling specific emotions out of people. Music has subjects, verbs, phrases, and plotlines... though they use different words to describe them (sometimes).

If you're into music, that concept isn't unfamiliar, but I think storytellers--commercial writers in particular--are missing the beat. There are life lessons in music that can be applied to this craft which can tap into primal human instincts, forging a deeper connection with the reader.

This is one of the reasons I talk a lot about pacing, but that's too simple a concept. What I really mean is the complex interplay between word choice and length, the duration of paragraphs, topical focus from scene to scene, and chapters with singular purpose, leading one to another with deliberate highs and lows like a psychological dance where your partner is everyone within the sound of your voice.

Sadly, I fall flat most of the time but knowing my goals helps me aim higher.

I think this is also why writers have playlists. It doesn't always translate well to the page because they're not directly applying what they receive, but the idea is there, and you can siphon off some of the energy from music to inform your narrative posture, the language you intentionally, but subconsciously, lean into.

One of the reasons I've been posting songs to my feed is because I'm listening and playing a lot more lately, a practice I abandoned for a few years while dealing with life's curveballs. It's been amazingly cathartic, and because of it I've returned, little by little, to the person I am on the inside. Music has helped me reconstruct my inner narrative, the role I choose to play while I'm bound to this earth. 

I've struggled with that my whole life, living like a blank sheet that's gradually filled with other peoples' words, erased when I left my princess phase in Ireland, erased again during my hobo years when I lived out of a van, and again when I became a beatnik writing YA in coffee shops, until the paper grew gray and thin and new words were either too faint to read or tore through the page. Under it all, however, there's been a feminine firecracker with a penchant for pseudo-punk, streetwear, oversized, gunky sweaters, and hot chocolate made with cream and laced with whiskey. I'm slowly finding her again, and as narcissistic as is sounds, I'm falling in love with her in all the right ways, and stories and music have had a lot to do with that. 

Because of that, or maybe in spite of it, I've also experienced a renewal of faith, but that's another story.

In the long run I don't regret living through other peoples' eyes because it's made me more empathetic, and as an admitted borderline sociopath, having that empathy is critical to functioning in society, critical also in making you care about my characters. 

Yeah, it means I put on masks from time to time, but the idea that all masks are bad is born from toxic me-first attitudes. You wear masks for the same reason you don't slurp spaghetti on a first date, or have sex in public, or why you politely excuse yourself to another room to fart. When someone asks you how you're doing, they don't want to hear a litany of your problems and it's not their job to weather your burdens, so you smile and say "fine" and the world keeps turning without unnecessary drama. The point is that they're masks, not plastic surgery, and they don't leave scars on the person underneath.

Where was I?

Oh, right. Music and stories. I do believe we miss opportunities because we don't think about them in the right way, like understanding the intrinsic nature of art. You don't fix it by thinking outside the box, you have to realize that there are no boxes. Life is interconnected, a tapestry of need and desire, of beauty and horror, pain and pleasure, not experienced in extremes of light and dark but in blended tones.

Welp, my mind isn't letting me off the train of recondite melodrama (yes, that's arrogant, deal with it) so I should probably call this entry done before I charge down a new rabbit hole.