Songwriting hacks revisited

Of everything I've ever talked about, the songwriting hacks series has probably received the best response. But I quit doing them after completing only 11. Why? I think it comes down to the word "hack". I just don't think participating in the creative process is an area where you can find a clever workaround. The creative process is not one to be manipulated. I guess it works, if all you want to do is be a "hack". I know I might be getting into semantics here, but I think that's the whole point here. As Madeleine L'Engle so brilliantly pointed out in one of my favorite interviews of the current millenium, great works of art are those which work on several levels. And I just don't think that kind of work is going to come out of a hack mentality*.

Now I realize that many of you have gotten a lot out of the hacks series. And I don't necessarily disagree with anything I've written thus far. I just feel like the whole concept is flawed, and I was getting to the point that I wasn't believing my own hype.

Why am I telling you this a year after the fact? Well, for one thing, I've had a couple of conversations about this in recent weeks. And for another, and this is the exciting part, the creative process is a recurring theme in my life. It's something I love to write about. I love to be close to the heat. So look for some more "creative" posts in the near future. I just need a frame for them.

Maybe the answer lies somewhere within this brilliant quote from Robert Fritz's excellent Creating (scored via PaperBackSwap.com!):

Some books [or blogs!] on creativity attempt to present the creative process as a handy "tool" in life. Like a screwdriver or a power drill, the right tool would prepare you for life the way a carpenter would be ready to fix a staircase. But tools do not generate desired results, nor do they lead to action in and of themselves. Tools do not build energy, do not create momentum, or inspire the heights of human imagination.

* There is another line of thought called "lifehacks" which has me intrigued and is probably a little closer to what I was going for. But I still think this isn't quite the most accurate way to describe the creative process.

Comments

[Kate O']

Hey Mark! I haven't commented in a while but I posted a response to this entry in my own blog/LiveJournal.

Hope to see you at a blogger meetup soon!