Thursday, March 30, 2006

Unwritten

I have been thinking about posting this for at least 3 days, but this week has flown by. Let me begin by saying that I don't watch a lot of music videos that often. I do have 900+ channels at home, but I don't find myself sitting down and watching them like I did in the 80's. I did get sucked back into 1985 on Sunday. All I did for several hours was watch music videos. And not on an ipod either. On my television. There's this song that I hear a lot on the radio by Natasha Bedingfield called Unwritten. I tend to like songs for their lyrics before I like them for the melody--I guess both are necessary for a good song. Anyhow, aside from some of the cliches in the lyrics of this song, I really love it. And I happened to catch the video on the VH1 countdown. One of the lyrics reads: "Live your life with arms wide open--Today is where your book begins--The rest is still unwritten." While I like the idea of this it got me thinking actually about really doing my own writing. Not metaphorically speaking. I really do find myself hesitating to tackle things with my writing that I know I can, but being a perfectionist, I've gotten into a rut of being afraid to put things on paper unless they land on the page perfectly. While my brain knows this idea is ridiculous, I think at the same time, in some small way I actually fear the revision. Which, once I have the blue print of my story--the hard part truly is over. I've actually forgotten that for me, revision is fun. Making it better. But I'm trying like mad to figure out why on this subconscious level, I'm avoiding it.

And I've pondered and thought about my writing and only recently did I sit down to actually work on something that's been in my head for almost 1 year. I can hardly believe I let it linger there for so long. Now that it's out there, I'm so relieved. I can do something with it--craft it, mold it into something good. Something, dare I say--publishable???

So folks, all this thought-provoking stuff was brought upon by lyrics to a catchy song. I wonder how many of us are really influenced on a conscious or even subconscious level by other artforms when it comes to doing what we do best (whatever that may be). I'm just curious. More than anything, the title of Bedingfield's song is almost taunting me--giving me proper grief for keeping the good stuff rolling around in my head-unwritten.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

other forms of creative endeavor (music, especially) have always informed and inspired my writing, most of it unconsciously.

the fear of anything less than perfection has scuttled many writers (i know a few). good that you're getting past that -- but "revision is fun"? no fun for me.