Chasing Wattpad

Sit down and write something

When I was in high school I played in the marching band. Sometime during my Junior year we formed a "Jazz" band so we could stay busy when it wasn't football or orchestra season. There was maybe 20 of us who practiced after school. We practiced all the contemporary stuff of the time like Chuck Mangione and Maynard Ferguson.  It was cool music that we chose to play instead of the old dusty music we were forced to play. Those were some of the best times I had in band.

Anyone who has ever heard jazz knows that the music is never all on the music sheets. There is a lot of improvising involved. Sure you get to play melodies, but it is inevitable that you reach a point in the music where you strike out on your own and just make it up as you go along. You can't teach that. There are no rules for it. You just have to do it.

That idea is the idea of writing.  You can't teach it. There are no rules for being able to do it. You just do it. Anyone who thinks they can't just doesn't get the essence of writing.

One day we were all trying to get this one song right and all of a sudden the band director pointed and me and said, "I want you to take the solo". I could play sheet music well, but I had never tried an improvised jazz solo. So the music starts and everything is fine and I am racking my brain trying to figure out what I am going to play when the music stops. It's going to be just me and some background bass guitar and drums. When the moment came I just froze. Nothing happened. The director stopped me and said, "What happened?" I told him I had nothing. He said, "Okay, let's do this again Robert. When the moment comes for your solo if you still have nothing I want you to play our school fight song. Just play it. It's going to sound stupid, but just play it until I tell you to stop." The other guys laughed. It was definitely going to sound stupid. I didn't want to do this.

So the band started up and the moment came and went and I had nothing. So as the band played a jazzy background tune I played the damn fight song. God, it sounded ugly. I felt stupid and I stopped but the director yelled "Keep  going! I'll tell you when to stop!" All of the guys were laughing. But as I played I looked at the 3 other band directors in the room. They weren't laughing. They were just looking at me waiting. No, not waiting, but expecting something.

I was on my third time through the fight song when something happened. All of a sudden I wasn't playing the fight song, not really. It sounded a bit like the fight song, but it wasn't. Then before I knew it, it wasn't the fight song at all. It was something else. It was this cool jazzy tune that blended perfectly with the background music.

Nobody was laughing anymore. Then the band directors picked up their instruments and joined in with me. They each played something different. But every piece sounded great because we all understood what the background music was trying to tell us.

Writing is the same thing. The idea is only an idea in the background trying to show you a direction. Once you really understand that direction the writing is easy.

From then on it was always easy. I realized I didn't have to know ahead of time what I was going to play in order to play it. All the notes were in me and all I had to do was find their place as I played them. In order to do that I had to put them out there without thinking too much about it.

Writing is the same thing. Sit down and write. It's only going to sound stupid for a little bit. It won't be like that for long. It will be perfect before you know it. Just sit down and write.