A Quote by Martina McBride

I have been fighting writing songs for a long time. People keep telling me I should write, and other writers have offered to write with me, and to be honest, it's not something I've ever really had a passion for - plus I wasn't sure I had the talent to do it!
Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.
I realised that I had always been writing things that other people wanted me to write and not what I really wanted to write, so I felt like I was losing my way.
I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.
I've been writing for a long time, and I've loved comic books for a long time - forever - but I had to learn how to write in a different way to write sequential art for a graphic novel. It's been an interesting transition.
I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.
I've always been making stuff. I had a very free upbringing, and very encouraging parents. I just found that it was a really cool thing, to write songs. And then, I think it was probably about when I was about 19 years old, people started telling me I should try to do this, get the music out.
I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.
I write songs when I need to. That's how I write songs: when there's something that's bugging me. If something's troubling me, and I don't really know how to articulate it to people directly - my friends, my family, or my girlfriend - then I'll write a song about it because I know I can articulate it that way.
When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'
Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all.
You write in songs what you're too scared to write in real life, and then you sing the songs to loads of people instead of telling it to the person you should be telling it to... Songs are a great way of dealing with those issues but kind of a coward's way as well.
As a youngster when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing. Every single one of my songs is about something very personal to me and I could tell anyone what it's about, each song. Like a diary, basically.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.
For so long, we had to write to pay a bill, we had to write in many instances where maybe you weren't even inspired to write because it was your job. That's how passion, creativity, and love gets killed.
A lot of times I had some problems, but I always had the passion and the personal motivation to keep going, to keep working hard, keep fighting for the things that really motivates me. That's all.
I don't write about sex because it's not really my subject. I love it when other people write about it, but it's not my subject, and I don't want anyone I've had sex with to write about it. Plus, you're in front of an audience, and they picture wherever you're writing about. I'm 52; no one in the audience wants to picture that.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!