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Inspirations For Songwriters (I F S)
IFS aims to INSPIRE YOU into ACTION
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you can now preorder john Arthur martinez's upcoming CD
"Lone Starry Night" which is coming out on Tue May 4th
http://dualtone.com/
http://www.pressnetwork.com/dynamic/dualtone.com/store/st_jam.htm

I preordered 10.
Here's a review by Bette Abeel, jAm's fan club president.
http://pub151.ezboard.com/fjamfansfrm2.showMessage?topicID=118.topic

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Dear IFS Friends,

There's some really useful ideas in this IFS.
Be sure to read, advice from the greats and drop the cat.

This past week has been one of the most productive songwriting weeks I've
ever had. Ideas arrived, flowed, and I often completed first draft lyrics, and
I
liked them and felt like they were well written. For months I've felt
challenged, I've been finding ideas, getting bits and pieces but not completing
my
first drafts.

I began to wonder why has this week been different from the others, my
conclusions were:

1) I had projects with deadlines,

2) I met one of my cowriters in person and felt inspired to write a batch of
lyrics for her,
and they are fun to write,

3) I found ideas that inspired me, and

4) I removed a few responsibilities from my plate, the biggie being, backing
off from ASG and letting the new presidents do their job. I think this freed
up my mind and time for creative pursuits. There were a few days this week
where ASG didn't enter my mind. Last year as president I had to think about it
constantly and I was always doing ASG stuff, thinking, writing, planning,
talking on the phone, and attending meetings.

Thank you to everyone who takes a leadership role in the songwriting
community. You're hard working, underpaid and under appreciated. Thank you for
the
wonderful work you do.

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Here's a thought

Maybe there's some responsibility you got roped into, where you're going
through the motions, your heart just isn't in it.

Consider writing a resignation letter and enjoying the freedom that follows.

I'm not telling you to
quit your job or
get a divorce or
move to Nashville, NY or LA or
black ball your parents, relatives, and friends, or
sell your kids back to the Indians. (my mom used to threaten that)

I'm just saying there may be something you're committed to, that you don't
want to do and the neat thing is you don't have to. Now is a good time to
simplify.

I'm also not saying I didn't enjoy serving as president of ASG, because I
did. I think it's important for songwriters to to get involved with their local
songwriting organizations the benefits far outway the draw backs.

Here's another thought,

Take care of you, take care of your mental, physical, and spirtitual health.
it's difficult to write songs when you're disabled, diseased, disfunctional
or dead.

hey maybe I should write a song to that title?
disabled, diseased, disfunctional or dead.
anyone out there wanna take a stab at it?

Spend time doing the things you know you need to do to enjoy greater energy
and health.

For me I swim each morning 5 times a week. I'm making healthy eating choices
and drinking more water. In September 2003 I weighed 228 and now I'm down to
207.

No crash programs, gradually ease into positive lasting changes by changing
your HABITS.

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Cowrite Invites

Thank you to everyone who submitted lyric starts for the IFS CHR challenge. I
tried to respond back to everyone with a PASS, comments, or more ideas and a
rewrite or another idea that was sparked from what they sent me.

In each lyric I was looking for
ONE GREAT LINE that knocked me out, fresh original concepts,
so far we've completed and submitted two lyrics to the producer.

I was also surprised no one submitted lyric ideas with climbs.
If you study "Why Can't I" by Liz Phair and "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne
you'll notice they both use climbs.
Verse climb chorus verse climb chorus

I'll offer more of these later

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When you've got a good song
consider getting demos done in different genre's
actually having a pop demo is better than saying
"OK now imagine this country demo being POP"

I wrote Vividly with Leanne Timura
She made a country demo and a pop demo

drop by and have a listen
http://www.songramp.com/view.ez?sampleid=14746

http://www.songramp.com/view.ez?sampleid=14748

Another feature I like about songramp.com
is they offer private listening rooms
you can put songs there and control who can get in

Password for Private Listening Room
http://www.songramp.com/homepage.ez?Who=ande
too cool

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I was wandering around Roy Williams'
www.peoplestories.org and found the following awesome stuff on writing
i think it definitely applies to songwriting as well. READ IT AND REAP

Advice From the Great Ones

"Don't wait. Writers are the only artists I know who expect to get somewhere
by waiting. Writing is what teaches you. Writing is what leads to inspiration.
Writing is what generates ideas. Nothing else-and nothing less."
- Daniel Quinn

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining... researching... talking to
people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."
- E.L. Doctorow

"The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly. Once you've got some words
looking back at you, you can take two or three, throw them away and look for
others."
- Bernard Malamud

"Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or
imaginary things, and nothing else."
- C S Lewis

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever.
Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit
it a third time - a tremendous whack."
- Winston Churchill

"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad
and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are
called writers and they do pretty much the same thing."
- Meg Chittenden

"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an
approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long."
- Leonard S. Bernstein

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as
your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
- E.L. Doctorow

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the
house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second."
- Robert Frost

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay."
- Mark Twain

"A professional writer is an amateur that doesn't quit."
- Richard Bach

"Leap, and the net will appear."
- Gaelen Foley

"Go, then - there are other worlds than these."
- Stephen King

If your words are boring, it's because you've been reading too many
newspapers and magazines. Read the works of literary giants and you'll start
thinking
giant thoughts.

As you read, so will you write.

What have you been reading lately?

Roy H. Williams



Drop the Cat in the Punch Bowl

Great titles cause browsing eyes to pause and investigate. Powerful opening
paragraphs entice the reader to keep on reading.

“Growing up in a household of women you get to hear what women say to each
other when there aren’t any men around. My theory is that women don’t think
of
you as a male until your voice changes. Until then, you’re just a gender-
neutral ‘kid.’ It’s because of this loophole that I know about Harry
Hippenhonda.”

– Roy H. Williams

Do you want to know more about Mr. Hippenhonda?

"All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote
about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me."
- Dorothy Parker

Are you curious to know more about Dorothy Parker’s childhood?

Better stories begin with better opening lines; so pay wide-eyed attention to
your FMI (First Mental Image). The FMI in your story is the first thing your
readers will see clearly in their minds. Most writers bury their most vivid
FMI about a third of the way into the opening chapter. They lead up to the main
point of their story rather than simply dropping the cat into the punch bowl -
SPLASH.

Write your rough draft without thinking, then, find your FMI and rip a big X
through everything that occurs prior to it. Splash. Fling open the curtain on
those dancing words and you’ll find it much easier to seize the reader’s
attention.

Here are more opening lines that drop the cat:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia
was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover
ice.”

– Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I
would have been arrested by the Greek police.”
– Eric Ambler, The Light of Day

“My first act on entering this world was to kill my mother.”
– William Boyd, The New Confession

“The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed
an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”
– Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage

Generally speaking, if you don’t own the reader within the first seven
seconds you might as well pack your bags and go home. So open Big.

Action words are big. Especially the ones with tread left on them. Avoid
verbs that are worn slick with use. Wallop, sting, smack, snip, jolt and vibrate
the reader with verbs. Write with too many adjectives – modifiers – and
everyone will think you’re a moon-eyed poet in junior high. So croak the
modifiers
with action-word bullets. Shoot to kill with unexpected verbs.

It takes a second pair of ears to hear weakness in a story, so don’t be a
whining Prima Donna pansy. Brilliant writers want their stories to be edited by
a
heartless bastard who won’t spare their feelings. Soft-shell writers want to
explain and justify every little thing. That’s why their stories suck like a
Hoover. I think Holly Lisle said it best:“If you assume that the words that
flow from your fingertips were dictated to you by God and are thus sacred and
immune from revision, only you and God are ever going to get to read them.”

Great endings are more important - and even more difficult to write – than
great opening lines. Your Last Mental Image (LMI) is the closing scene of the
mental movie your words will project onto the screen of your reader’s
imagination. Like a tender kiss, the impression of your LMI should linger long
after the
reader has moved on to other things. Here’s what I’m talking about:

“He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again
looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life
there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his
manhood.”

– Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

“But if we’ve succeeded in boring you instead, believe me, we didn’t do it
on purpose.”
– Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed

“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s
mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent
and heartless.”
– J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Whether they lived happily ever after is not easily decided.”
– C.S. Forester, The African Queen

“The old man was dreaming about the lions.”
– Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay
quiet, smiling at the ceiling.”
– J.D. Salinger, Zooey

If you will make your story hard to forget, you will:

1. open with a vivid FMI
2. trigger voluntary mental participation
3. employ unexpected verbs
4. minimize adjectives and modifiers
5. cause the listener to see the action
6. close with a lingering LMI.

Say what you want to say, and say it hot. It’s how bestsellers are written.

Now go… help me write one.

Roy H. Williams
New York Times best-selling author,
Writer of the Wall Street Journal’s
#1 business book in America
www.wizardofads.com

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What a concept!
Think about using fresh FIRST MENTAL IMAGEs in your lyrics.
You've got seven seconds to GRAB their attention.

what are some of your favorite opening lines to songs

one of mine is to "Harder Cards"
"a hammer fell down on a forty four primer
now there's one less problem in south carolina"

send me your FAVS
in the subject field write
IFS 1ST LINE

DROP THE CAT IN THE PUNCH BOWL
use killer opening lines
use killer titles and
MAKE A SPLASH

Write on!
Ande Rasmussen
Editor and Publisher of I F S, Inspirations For Songwriters

Contact info is:

Ande Rasmussen
835 Martindale Falls
Martindale, TX 78655
AndeRasmussen@...


You can read my Bio at:
http://www.andersrasmussen.com/

You can hear a few of my tunes at:
http://songramp.com/ande
http://www.soundclick.com/anders

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I F S stands for Inspirations for Songwriters, I F S is an ezine for
songwriters filled with inspirational and practical information about
the art, craft, and business of songwriting. We want to help YOU
become a more successful songwriter.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
The entire text of
"Inspirations for Songwriters"
© 2004 Anders Rasmussen