Dry Spell

I used to write songs. Whenever I was particularly moved by something (usually when a guy broke up with me) I’d pull out the guitar and write some gut-wrenching tune that I would brokenheartedly howl along to. I’d perfect the song then play it at the open mike night, or whenever I’d play an actual show, and watch the people in the front row wince as I crowed about some injustice that some loser boyfriend committed against me. I went through periods of cranking out songs (and blowing through bad boyfriends) and then I’d hit a dry spell, otherwise known as contentment.

During my song writing dry spells I would write about my inability to write about something that moved me. For example, a song I wrote in 1996 started with “I’m only writing this song in this key because I know you like these chords…” And later on, in 2003 when I wrote our wedding song as a surprise for Todd it started with “I tried to write you a sappy love song, complete with poetry and riddles and rhymes. But the way I feel there’s too much to say, I couldn’t write it all down on time…”

I remember reading the liner notes from the Deborah Conway CD "Bitch Epic." She said that she had composed most of the songs on the CD by filling a hat with slips of paper that had random words on them. She would draw the slips of paper out and try to write something using the words on the slip--which was how she had come up with the name of the CD and with the hit from the CD "Alive and Brilliant." I remember thinking then that this is a fantastic idea, one I've yet to try.

Right now I am experiencing a bit of a blogging dry spell, so I am employing one of my old songwriting methods—writing about not being able to write. I’ve been busy, I’ve been tired. I’ve been hanging out on my boat; I’ve been picking the blueberries off my bushes and eating them by the handful. I have plenty of incomplete blog entries rattling around in my brain, but haven’t been able to get them into any sort of meaningful story for you to read. I’ve been working on my book during my lunch hours, wishing I had an entire afternoon to myself to put all the edits into the manuscript and print it out and read it again. So the dry spell continues.

While I am writing about dry spells, let me tell you about another kind of dry spell. The scuba kind of dry spell. My wetsuit remains folded in the gear bin, my reg and dive computer are coiled up in the padded carry bag. We haven’t been on a dive yet this season and I am starting to get itchy to be underwater again.

Maybe this weekend, then I’ll really have something to write about. Either that or the only diving I will do will be into a hat filled with slips of papers.