A good Songwriter can teach all writers a lot!

I have cause to travel up and down the California coast on a regular basis - a five hour journey through vineyards and far reaching hills on either side of the 101 freeway that is surprisingly rural in all directions. While my husband drives, our two German shepherds sleep in the back. I stare out the window where my imagination climbs every verdant incline and taps out a cadence along every golden path. I pretend I’m a part of all I survey, that I belong to the vista in a way that is so personal it colors my emotions with nostalgia as I sail through a moving parallel reality.
Sooner or later, I put in my earphones and scroll through my musical playlist, which turns the trip into an audio/visual experience, but I noticed just yesterday that once I do, the songwriter takes over completely.
I am in awe of good songwriters and here’s why: they can give me an entire experience in under five minutes. With finely crafted brevity, they establish a premise, set a scene, and evoke an emotion that my entire being accepts without question. For an instant, the lines become blurred between the songwriter’s range of experience and my own. Good songwriters write in a way that is so accurate and truthful, it makes the human experience uncomplicated by virtue of the fact they encapsulate it so simply. They don’t need to be wordy or superfluous, they get right to the point and call things by name with well-appointed clarity. They are urgent in their cards on the table concision, and this teaches me all I need to know about writing in general. I’ve been shown from songwriters that writing is about the right words in the right place without the distraction of bells and whistles. When I write, I keep this in mind as a principle and it gives me guidelines that are naturally resonant, which helps me stick to my point and say what I have to say.

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