I finished one of the new songs this morning. This is the third in a new series of songs. The second still needs another section and some of the lyrics are too cumbersome for their lines of melody. It's always a process of fine tuning, both melody and lyric, over days or weeks. I started writing songs when I was eleven. My father had an old classical guitar with nylon strings. I killed my little fingers learning to play it. My goal was always to write songs like the Seventies songwriters I grew up on. It was always what I wanted to be.
So, it's gratifying to be writing songs again. For the first three quarters of my life, I worked on them consistently and all the time. Then, for a number of years, I woke up every morning and attempted to write fiction, trying to get my story to move forward in a blind effort. It was never as natural a process. It took three years to complete each I've written since The Original 1982 was published in 2013. I have three completed manuscripts. The first was unable to find a publisher and the second two, not even an agent. I may write another some time, or I may not.
Songwriting is a joy in comparison. It's crossword puzzle, diary, imagination rolled into one. The melodies feel like magic when they come and all the parts fit together. The little Gibson that my nephew returned to me is inspiring and I listen to a lot of music and read constantly. I'm being inspired by all of it, I'm sure, along with my life and the state of the world.