I’m halfway through my 100 Tiny Songs project. I like calling it a project rather than a challenge because ‘project’ feels like I’m more involved in it. I mean, I’m the one who came up with this idea and so far I think I’m the only person who’s done a project like this with these parameters (maybe I should google that though).
Number One: INSPIRATION FINDS YOU WORKING INSPIRATION FINDS YOU WORKING
Y’all hate to hear it — I know I did. Before this project I didn’t really write songs if I hadn’t something floating in my head beforehand. And I would sometimes go a month without writing a new song because I wasn’t “ready” for it yet. I literally had this belief right up until I started this Tiny Songs project!! If I had written a song only on the days I felt inspired before sitting down to write, I think I’d genuinely have about 5. Out of the 50 I’ve written so far. Inspiration really does find you when you go out looking for it.
Number Two: GROWTH IS A SPIRAL
You follow the trajectory of a spiral, it loops back on itself constantly whilst always progressing outward at the same time. That’s what this project is like. I’d go through phases of writing a few bad songs and then get back to some I liked, and then go back to writing bad ones and then go to writing good ones again… that feels cyclical. But what is happening all the while, is that I’m growing as a writer and an artist. Outward growth! Even if it feels like a closed loop.
Number Three: SOCIAL MEDIA IS A SKETCHBOOK
Instagram is so transient, as is Twitter, heck — even Youtube, I could argue. We put something up there and within a day or two, it’s on to the next thing. So why would we use social media to only showcase the best stuff we have? Social media is the funnel to that better content which can happily live somewhere else (maybe on Bandcamp, Spotify, Patreon, a website). But just like how this blog is a work in progress, where ideas get planted and grow at different rates, social media is the same. It’s just a garden of stuff where things are growing at different rates. It’s a workspace. It’s a rough draft area. It’s a sketchbook! And we all love looking inside people’s sketchbooks. When the time comes, we can collect what we’ve shared and thought about via social media channels, and can refine those ideas into something big, beautiful and more permanent.
So those are my thoughts so far, after songwriting for 50 days. It’ll be interesting to see if any new insights come out over the next 50. Until then, I’ll be here writing about time-wasting and other stuff.