One question that is a constancy in my life is how exactly as a writer do I arrive at a final product? Is it a labor intensive process that takes hours, maybe even days of scrutinous editing? Do I labor over every single word that I use? Do I carefully lay out everything ahead of time so that I can have a roadmap for where I want to go?
The simple answer to all of those questions is not really. Truth be told I hate that sort of meticulous planning. I understand the value of it and practice the discipline in my schooling, but in writing it causes me tremendous anxiety. There’s something wholly unnerving about speculating what you might say as opposed to actually saying it. Planning a conclusion before you’ve even begun seems counterintuitive. The writing process should be an exploration and there’s nothing exploratory about creating a cap.
What I choose to do when I review a song or an album or a concert is let the work rattle around in my brain for as long as possible. I’ll lay on my bed or lean back in a chair and let the repeat function of iTunes take control. If an interesting thought or piece of analysis pops into my brain, I don’t scramble to write it down; that would interrupt the listening process. Instead I file it away in the metal cabinets of my mind and hope I can find it when I am finished. If I don’t, the thought clearly wasn’t that groundbreaking.
Only once my head feels like it’s going to pop do I let my thoughts about a piece spill onto the blank pages of Blogspot or WordPress. This method feels far more natural. If I am not capturing my immediate opinions of a work, I’m getting as close as I can to the source. Endless revisions rob you of that spontaneity. Sure I still review a piece of mine for spelling or grammatical errors, but I hesitate to change much of what I have to say. An editor may see this as nothing more than stubbornness, I’d argue it’s an invaluable part of the process.
Off the Record 