A Quote by Ian Anderson
Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It's a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.
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For me, the hardest part is getting up and writing, that's the hard part. I always felt like I could teach someone to direct if I really had to. I feel like it's a skill that's passable, but writing... writing is the worst. That's what I'm doing right now, it's just the hardest thing that you'll ever do.
We all just meet up and someone's house or the studio and we'll just jam and we'll lock into something that sounds cool. I'll go home with tracks of cool parts and work on words. Everyone in the band has a job to do and everyone knows their job and we all do it really well. So, when we're writing, we can just look at one another and say, 'OK, go write this part'. It's not just one person writing or producing everything - everyone's working to product what we have.
Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.
I would rather not write if I'm depressed, or am going through a breakup, or I've had some disappointment, or I'm having a family issue. You don't want to just put out an open wound. Sometimes that just isn't even really good writing. Good writing should be good writing and storytelling and not just therapy or someone's personal journal.
I started a writing class, not in service of writing a script or writing anything specific. I've just really been enjoying that, and oddly the group, not by design, but it just happened to be all women, and there were three women who gave birth this fall while we were all in class, and there's just something really great about getting to know these women through their stories and what they're writing about.
Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.
I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.
I would wake up really early and go into the hotel bathroom, put a towel over the toilet, and put my laptop there. I'd put my headphones on and just write. And so now when I do writing sessions, and I am stuck on a part, or I can't figure out a chorus, I'm just like, 'Give me a second,' and I'll go to that bathroom.
There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.
I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go.
My writing process isn't a very organized thing. The actual writing part is a tiny part of my life. I often write in public. I bring my laptop or write freehand in notebooks. Then, I'll read through them while I exercise or walk the dog. The very last thing I do is the sitting alone at the computer part.
I carry around, like, a little journal with me and just write all the time. Not necessarily, like, actually sitting down and writing lyrics - just freeform writing, whatever's going on in my mind. I write a lot on airplanes, actually, because it's completely isolating.
I feel like part of getting better at writing is knowing where to find that inspiration. Right after something happens to me, the first thing I'll do is go write when those feelings are really, really fresh.
At the time, I was in L.A., just auditioning and hoping to land a part, dramatic or comedic. I started to feel really stagnant, waiting for a part. I was also taking classes at UCB and Groundlings, and at the higher levels, they focus on writing. It was such a relief to be able to write. During those programs, I wrote a one-woman show called Me, Myself, and Iran, and it ended up getting to Tina Fey. She recommended me to audition for SNL, so I got my first of two auditions through her.
I saved letters from my boss. There are things in there that are directly transcribed. I was so glad I did that. Sometimes when I was writing the book I wondered if some little writer hobbit part of my brain was back there puppeteering that action. But it really never, on any conscious level, occurred to me that I would write about it. I will say, I thought probably some day there would be an ancillary character in some novel - not in the one I was currently writing - that would be a dominatrix or something.
When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.
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