The Vocal Instrument And How To Fine Tune Yours

This is the second post that was inspired, in great part, by Bruce Springsteen’s brilliant biography, Born To Run, which I read over a protracted period of time in the downstairs bathroom, because that’s where the hardcovers get read.
The other piece is entitled “The Power of Intent”
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/the-power-of-intent

“ If you were lucky enough to be born with a (vocal) instrument and the instinctive knowledge to know what to do with it, you are blessed indeed…My vocal imperfections made me work harder on my writing, my band leading, my performing and my singing…Build up your supportive skills because you never know what’s going to come out of your heart and find its way out of your mouth.”
Bruce Springsteen

I have written a couple of different posts on finding your voice. But this one isn’t about that.
It’s really about discovering whether you naturally have a voice that flows effortlessly powered by the high octane fuel of your passion or if you don’t necessarily have a natural voice and are simply powered by passion.
As the Boss says, when you don’t have the gift, you really have to work harder on all the other elements of what you do in order to make it work.
The results, of course, depend on just how diligently you apply this and how hard you are willing to work.
I know a few people that I feel have a natural talent when it comes to blogging. These are people I enjoy reading immensely.
Shelley Brown, whose “Weird Girl” series is just incredible and getting more incredible all the time.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@shelley-brown/the-f-cking-visit
Ian Mirlin, who is a legendary Toronto ad guy and one of the people who really led the creative charge in Toronto in the 80s and 90s. Ian, these days, sounds more like a poet than a copywriter.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-want-app-ian-mirlin
Phil Friedman whose grasp of the craft of writing is something I admire immensely. Phil is one of the most successful English language writers on beBee, and easily the most controversial.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@friedman-phil/content-marketing-vs-marketing-content
These are people, who, in my opinion, are pretty much doing what comes naturally to them. They have control of their craft and the freedom that comes with it. But make no mistake, these people also spend the time they need, crafting their thoughts in order to make them flow and round out their story lines.

Know Your Head

A couple weeks ago I watched a movie called Genius, about the legendary novelist Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel etc), whose approach to writing was very much a ‘go big or go home’ sort of proposition. He lived very large and burned out early (brain tumour). He was one of those people with a rare gift for prose and storytelling but the levels of energy he expended to get the results he achieved were very high and actually shortened his life.
Mr Wolfe made very little attempt to control this because he feared that if he were to slow down, it would actually lead to some sort of intellectual paralysis.

Madness First … Method Later

When I first started to write, I never really thought too much at all about method. I was always interested in English and had a fairly good command of proper grammar, drilled into my head by good teachers and profs who would read my compositions and essays and knew where I was headed.
For quite a while I was content to just let my mind wander and write down anything that I deemed interesting enough to explore. In terms of quality output this was nothing to write home about. But what it did do was condition me to the act of writing every day, which is something I have never stopped doing.
Any discipline I developed came mostly from working as a professional in advertising, where your presentation skills were just as important as your style and the actual writing you were doing.
The confidence that writing on demand gives you is something that is easily carried over to other areas and over the years I was able to explore pretty much everything that interested me. (lyric writing, screenplay writing and op/ed blogging), and also discover some of the things that didn’t interest me (writing novels & journalism)
All this experience was very much cumulative, and at a certain point you instinctually start boiling things down, if for no other reason than to keep your sanity.

What It All Boiled Down To For Me

If I have any advice to impart to those who want to discover what they are made of as writers it’s simply this:
1. Write…every day if possible
2. Finish whatever you start to your own satisfaction.
3. Learn proper grammar, so that your writing always, at the very least, makes sense and is readable.
4. Write about the stuff you know a bit about or do the research you need to do to write intelligently about it.
5. Write what you believe, and not what you think people want to hear. Because the great paradox of communication is that what people want to hear is your true voice. (He said from personal experience)
6. If something doesn’t appeal to you or you feel in your heart that it’s going nowhere, stop and don’t waste time on it. There are a lot of false starts in writing. It comes with the territory.
7. Be prepared to defend any point of view you take in your writing. Because these days every reader is also a bit of a critic.
8. Read a lot. Because believe it or not that’s where most of your inspiration will come from
9. Don’t quit, unless you really feel you weren’t cut out for being a writer.
10. Write about what you believe and what you believe in.

Jim out

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