Blogpost: Jazz & Writing Craft
Jazz music. Jazz lilts out of my phone’s speaker, partly muffled by the blanket my phone is lost within. I sit on my bed, laptop at the ready, finger knuckles cracked and poised. A trumpet joins the piano man as the chorus to the next song begins. The playlist is set to shuffle some random Jazz mix on Spotify. I don’t actually know the names of most of these songs, despite having this mix on repeat for the past few weeks. Still, I recognize a few of my favourites when they pleasantly surprise me, recognizing a tune as a song begins, or crescendos, or ends. It’s all quite random.
Much like most of my thoughts about craft. I sit here, all the tools I could possibly need at my disposal, and yet, I am unable to type a single complete thought for days, weeks even. Thoughts and thoughts and trains of thoughts will shoot by so fast, I can almost see them behind my retinas, desperately trying to hold on to just one that will let me pen down a draft. A line. Anything. Yet every time I grasp for one of these thoughts, a sentry of sorts interrupts my quest and prevents me from doing so. Such a sentry is usually made up of some thoughts every writer is familiar with.
“This isn’t worth writing about, it’s sh*t.”
“This one’s been done a hundred times already, you can’t make it new again.”
“No one is going to care about your niche. Change your style, be more like them.”
“This isn’t going anywhere, I give up.”
And so many more. Thoughts and ideas and passions and craft, all of which gets shot down by this Sentry of Doom that lives and breathes inside my mind and, sometimes, my soul. It is hard to look into its looming eyes and hold my ground. Usually, I don’t. I agree with it, shake its hand, and let the thought fly into the abyss of thoughts I’m ashamed of. Some that I am afraid of. What if the sentry is a royal pain in the a** and doesn’t actually know sh*t? If that’s the case, I could be missing out on gold mines of craft! But then again, what if it does?
What I think the truth is, is that both me and the little voice inside my head are somewhat correct. Some of those thoughts probably were sh*t. But, I think that if I had found a slightly more workable idea, written it down, and molded it into not-sh*t––now that’s something, right? I think we need to be friends with the sentry. Teach it how to better differentiate which ideas to pursue and which ones to allow ourselves a chance to meet. Introduce one another. Gather more intel. I think that craft is all about thoughts and ideas and wonderful words that string together to say, “Hey. I thought this thing up, and it’s one hell of a story. Wanna hear it?”
And then, boom. The magic happens. The piano man taps out another tune, in time with the tippity-tap of my laptop’s keyboard musing away into the night.