How does your everyday life influence your writing?

[Boydog]

Or does it effect your writing at all?

Most of my material comes from real life experiences with a little fiction thrown in ( to hopefully make it interesting).

So do you write life stories or fiction or both?

 

damn, so many questions

 

new lyrics

I promise I won't piss in the coffee pot no more

I promise I won't piss in the coffee pot no more

when things don't go my way

just write it off to another day

so I won't piss in the coffee pot no more

the grass is just as green in spring

the snow is still white in winter

all I gotta do is remember

I won't piss in the coffe pot no more

[snowaie]

All my problems, and difficulties, and suffering into an album or two makes it

[Eclepto Funk]

i am myopically introspective, so basically everything i write about is about me

 

oh, i disguise this and that, and so on .... but it's all about me

[grace_slick]

Hmm, I don't know considering I have yet to write any lyrics, but my song titles are very strange...they're based on everyday mundane things, but odd. Like Shopping Trolley Suicide (based on all the dumped and abandoned shopping trolleys we see around here), or Land of the Bearded Tomatoes (based on a mouldy tomato in the supermarket)...

 

I pretty much notice everything, being quite an introspective, observant and odd soul...so it all goes somewhere in my brain, for later use.

[rockinrobby]

I thought that new breakfast blend was a little salty? Grace? You look a lot like my 4th wife (psssst, I've only been married 3 times)

[A Happy Crowd]

When I was younger, I divided songwriters into two camps: the Fiona Apples or the Robert Smiths.

 

Fiona Apple, because I once heard her say something like, "I can't write about anything unless I've experienced it."

Robert Smith, because I once read him say something like, "If half the things I wrote about were true, I would've died a long time ago."

 

I immediately identified myself as being in the Robert Smith camp. I think I'm an introspective person, but I'm also fiercely private. Sometimes I'll let personal matters into my writing, but I often try to obscure it. A lot of what I write often tends to be imaginary or embellished.

[grace_slick]

Rockinrobby, heheh.

 

A Happy Crowd, I wonder which group I'm in...I think both...I'd combine the 2, if possible. I'd write about a moudly tomato I was appalled to see in a supermarket, with a flowing white beard, but then write about stuff that obviously could never really happen (the tomato being alive and such) lol

[LeonardScaper]

Every day I come across something that influences me.

 

It may be an image that I jot down to use in a future song, a major inspiration that will stick in my mind to eventually become a theme or an event that triggers a full blown song that needs to be tracked immediately.

 

All of my songwriting is influenced by my life.

 

Think I'll get mine at Dunkin Donuts today, thank you very much.

[easilyspooked]

generally my mianderings through reality will spark a line, i'm an obsessive note-taker (thank you journalism degree) (actually, thank you 10th grade civics teacher) so when i'm looking at something or i say something or someone else says something that i can see a lyrical quality in, i'll write it down, then if i like it enough i'll build off it, usually building the next line or two off of real emotion, then i'll write the rest of the song as a framework for the that emotion.

 

generally, this means i couch true themes in fictional stories, those stories are often violent or sexual, but that's a reflection of my influences from modern media and my belief that action-fiction is a legitimate form of expression if you can drill down to the turmoil that spawns it. however, one thing i've been finding is that most people are just going to listen once, and they will only see the sheen of the song and not the true meaning, i'm a private person, but i think my writing hides my intentions Too well.

 

lately i've also had fun being a bit more literal, just outright writing lines that speak the truth of my philosophy, though such songs usually pour out in an hour as a complete package and so they don't end up here.

 

the point is: my everyday life influences my writing. both literally and metaphysically.

[xdrummer]

I rarely write from personal experiance. I envision charactors (or I suspect they visit my dreams) and I simply tell their stories

[MarvinDog]

I'll tell someone else's story. If I wrote about my own life, it'd be rather boring-- who wants to hear about the trials and tribulations of a happy suburban dad?

 

 

Drove to work today

Bastard cut me off

Sumbitch is weaving

I think he's jerkin' off

 

Chorus:

Hang up the f..kin' cell phone and drive

Hang up the f..kin' cell phone and drive

Hang up the f..kin' cell phone and drive

So we can make it outta rush hour alive.

 

I saw a woman doin' her makeup

cell in the other hand

she knocked me up over a curb

the bent rim'll cost a grand

 

Repeat chorus

[blue2blue]

Or does it effect your writing at all? Most of my material comes from real life experiences with a little fiction thrown in ( to hopefully make it interesting). So do you write life stories or fiction or both? damn, so many questions new lyrics I promise I won't piss in the coffee pot no more I promise I won't piss in the coffee pot no more when things don't go my way just write it off to another day so I won't piss in the coffee pot no more the grass is just as green in spring the snow is still white in winter all I gotta do is remember I won't piss in the coffe pot no more

I'm gonna keep this song in mind next time I come over for coffee...

 

 

I'd say my everyday life -- over the years -- has been the source of much of the incident and situation in my songs and virtually all of the emotional content. Like at least some others, songs I've written about relationships tend to be one relationship back (for survival reasons)... at least within the bounds of what the government spooks like to call plausible deniability. ("I swear... that song's not about you, honest, honey. I'd never talk about us like that." You know... until the relationship is history. )

[LeonardScaper]

 

one thing i've been finding is that most people are just going to listen once, and they will only see the sheen of the song and not the true meaning

 

 

Hmmm......very interesting observation.

 

I think it's true. Over all these years of writing songs that had real true meaning....to me, because of their connections to real emotive experiences, I am only recently learning how to put some subtle hooks up there in the songs shiny surface to drag my listener down into the murky depths of my message.

[Chicken Monkey]

I need to connect to everything on an emotional level, but not necessarily on an experiential level. I might write a song about cheating on a spouse, which I've never done, but I can certainly relate to the situation.

[nomad60]

MarvinDog- excellent lyrics! What a great song! (Reminds me of The Asshole Song" by Jimmy Buffett) anyway....

 

I find most of my "song inspiriation" comes when I travel - I'm not sure why, but I have written many more tunes away from home than at it.... either that or I write about being at a particular place & my experiences there.... the "fictional" tunes I write I can't even start to believe (or sometimes comprehend!) so I stick to my version of reality.

[rhino55]

 

the point is: my everyday life influences my writing. both literally and metaphysically.

 

 

+1

[MarvinDog]

 

MarvinDog- excellent lyrics! What a great song! (Reminds me of The Asshole Song" by Jimmy Buffett)

 

 

Too funny-- I just wrote that as an example of my suburban trials and tribulations-- improvised in my post. Now I'll have to put it to music, which is usually the easy part for me, but the first melody that comes to me is the 4/4 part of Illegal Smile by John Prine.

[Sam McDonald]

I would say that most of my songs, one way or another, are based on my real life experiences. Even if I

[BetaCarotene]

most of my stuff is about my experiences not all of it some is just randomness from my wondering like it often does and it comes up with something that is rather out their but IMO is pretty cool

[blue2blue]

I would say that most of my songs, one way or another, are based on my real life experiences. Even if I

[Dingoist]

How does my everyday life influence my writing? None. It's the every day little deaths that influence my writing.

 

[waterbed]

i'll generally write about my own experiences, but i'll change things around or obscure facts or focus, and often end up with a completely different story that's only obliquely related, but that works better as a song.

news and issues work their way into a lot of my songs, sometimes as background, sometime as the main point.

i've written a couple songs that were meant to be pure fiction, but then i realize that they come from my life and i just wasn't thinking about them.

 

in other words, if you asked the other people in the songs if that's what happened, they might get angry and call me a liar or say that's not what happened, but they wouldn't think i was just making up random {censored}. will smith doesn't save the world from aliens or zombies in my songs, basically.

[ColinLynch]

lyrics should be stories.

 

personally i feel if your stories are fictional then the song is artificial. the best lyrics out there are from people who have a solid grasp of what they are talking about.

 

I use life experiences in my lyrics, then put a poetic twist on them so the audience has to guess what I'm talking about... making it easier to have a song relate to someone with a different meaning.

 

its a mental game.

[MarvinDog]

 

personally i feel if your stories are fictional then the song is artificial. the best lyrics out there are from people who have a solid grasp of what they are talking about.

 

 

Springsteen? Townshend?

 

Compare McCartney's Story lyrics (For No One, Eleanore Rigby) to his Diarist lyrics (Silly Love Songs).

[Lee Knight]

 

lyrics should be stories. personally i feel if your stories are fictional then the song is artificial. the best lyrics out there are from people who have a solid grasp of what they are talking about.

 

 

To each his own. And I do mean that...

 

But there's nothing wrong with "artificial". "Ziggy played guitar!" Some of the most influential words ever written were made up stories. Of Mice and Men. Catcher in the Rye.

 

These things really didn't happen. They were the constructs of a creative mind. Yes, using real life experience to inform the big lie he's telling. The big lie that gets to the real truth.

 

That's fiction. Nothin' wrong with fiction.

 

As a side note, there's a Commander Cody live album where the singer (not Cody) finishes a tear jerker of a country song and tenderly yet joking says, "That's all right folks. That story didn't really happen. I just made it up one night... it's OK."