Creative tides

[catsittingstill]

Last night I wrote my third song in a week.

Ordinarily I am not this productive.  I think it has something to do with March 6th having been, so to speak, some kind of major astrological conjunction of books.  _Discount Armageddon_, _Fair Game_ and _Crucible of Gold_, Naomi Novik's latest, all came out at once, and furthermore it looks like Robin Hobb's next Dragon Haven book is out also.

I am about 90% through _Crucible of Gold_ and enjoying it muchly and I don't know if DA and FG set me up for some kind of habit or what, but I now have a song about CoG.

Except it's kind of spoilery (not badly so, but it's about a societal attitude that comes as something of a surprise and has a bearing on the plot) and I'm not sure what to do with it; the book's been out for only five days, and I don't want to spoil it for everyone who hasn't got to it yet.

Anyway that got me thinking.  I've had times in my life when I wrote two songs a week most weeks and other times when I wrote maybe four songs a year.  Do you have similar variations?  Does pouring creativity into one aspect of your life seem to make you more, or less, creative in other aspects?

Comments

[philkmills]

I need to get "Crucible of Gold". I became hooked on the Naomi Novik books almost accidentally last year and have turned into something of a pusher. ( In case of interest, I have a "His Majesty's Dragon" song from last fall, including a warts-and-all demo that I recorded the day I wrote it: http://fiftyninety.fawmers.org/songs/11476 )

I think creativity in different aspects of my life are correlated but with only a little cause and effect. If I'm not feeling good about other things I'm doing, I can't escape into music the way some people seem able to do but, if I'm feeling good about my songwriting, that may affect other activities positively. I tend to create when I'm "up" and the form (music, photography, programming...) is somewhat arbitrary

My main discovery about my own songwriting over the past couple of years is that I don't really need a minimum of a month to put something together...though that's how I was when I started in filk. I'm a sprinter, however; a bunch of songs in a few weeks and repeat after a four-month break is likelier than one per week for a year.

[catsittingstill]

I keep meaning to listen to this and I keep getting sidetracked because I check LJ on old weak computer that can't handle music, and don't check LJ when using the new strong computer for mixing and recording.

But I do *mean* to listen and have been looking forward to it.

I can escape into music as a form of procrastination wonderfully. Escaping into music if I'm feeling depressed and low-energy is much harder.

Discovering you can write songs faster than you thought is a wonderful feeling, isn't it? Heck, I remember discovering I could write songs, back when I learned to play guitar, and being totally enamored with it, because I had wanted to for years.

[mdlbear]

Well, I'm not nearly that productive; I think my max was five songs in one year. But it definitely varies widely.

[catsittingstill]

Yeah, but they're quality songs.

I fill in among the quality with fluff :-)

But seriously, people write what they write and all kinds of factors (time, energy, mood, inspiration) play into that. Which is probably why the number of songs per time period varies so widely.

One of my most productive music times was when I was writing my dissertation and close to melting down from the stress. But my other most productive time was working a pretty boring job. It's weird.