fueling the Songwriter

Writing songs is a little bit like having a campfire, you have to forage around looking for "kindling" that will burn fast to get the bigger logs burning. Looking for ideas that will fire up your imagination and get your fingers moving on the fret board or keyboard. Or get the words spilling out onto the page. Reading is where i get that "kindling", I am just finishing a book about the "Beat writers", The book is called, "The Beats, A graphic History". by Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskar and Paul Buhle. What makes it like "kindling" is that it's written in a Cartoon form and is a complete history of the Beat movement from the 1940's, forward. Illustrating the histories and writing styles of each of the Beat writers. It is a quick enjoyable read and by studying each writer you get an idea of their methods and what they wrote. Free writing, Stream of consciousness , and Cut ups are a few methods the Beat writers used. Their writings, challenged the conservative post war attitudes of society and the "Status Quo" of the time. After reading this book, i have been experimenting with different ways of writing. "Stream of consciousness" writing is when you just keep the thoughts pouring out of you onto the page without editing it. There are many different angles you can take to writing songs. Writing music first is the easiest way for me, putting the lyrics after to fit in with the chord changes. I recently did a collaboration with my Brother, who is a History Teacher and he wrote out all of the Lyrics and i put them to music and created the feel of the tunes. He was adamant that nothing could be changed in the lyrics. Some of the lyrics were essays that rhymed. The album is called, "Graeme Emmott, Canada Eh" which is available on Spotify and Apple Music. That was a challenge for me, to write the songs from the viewpoint of the musician and listen to what his ideas and feelings were for each of the songs. My big challenge was to translate all of his songs into what he envisioned. I managed to do it to the best of my ability, and he was happy with them all, but it was a lot of work. When i write both the music and the lyrics it's a bit easier because i can wear both hats, but by changing the writing methods, that always brings a fresh way of writing. So getting that "kindling" that burns easy, comes from finding that "combustable spark", which is a fresh idea. Changing how you approach to things, breaks you out of the old way of writing , and thats what the "Beat writers" did. They broke away from the past way of writing and created their own.