Well, well, well, it looks like I've been a bit lax in updating you on my day to day creative life, but that's mostly because I've been swamped with boring and tedious work, leaving little time for creative pursuits.
Even if I had time, things have slowed considerably on the writing front. My second chapter appears from all angles to suck tremendously and it happens to suck in such a way that I don't know how to fix it other than to start it over again, which is too depressing to consider just at the moment. I've sent it to my mentor - who I briefly mentioned in another post and who I will discuss further in the next couple of weeks - in hopes that she might suggest some fixes that will help me avoid having to start from scratch. Until then, I'm staying in a holding pattern; the last thing I want to do is start a third chapter that has to be rewritten to accomodate a restructured second chapter. Which is probably just an excuse not to work, but what the hell, it's a Sunday and a couple of samurai films I rented from Netflix are calling my name.
On the songwriting front, I came up with another new one that seems to be pretty great. The tune has been running through my head for a week and a half or so, mostly in a positive fashion. The lyrics still need work, but the verse, chorus, lead and outro are all dandy. Unfortunately, the bridge kind of sucked. Actually, it really sucked. Still riding the creative high that first took hold last October, I muscled my way into a new bridge yesterday that does justice to the rest of the song. I don't recommend this course of action to beginning songwriters, as forcing the issue tends to lead to poor results, but when all the cylinders are hitting, it's sometimes worth it to just sit down and start banging away on the guitar to see what happens.
I want to try to explain what this bridge does and how it does it. I don't know if I have the vocabulary, but perhaps by pointing to examples of other types of bridges I've written, I can explain it. That will take another post, so please join me above.