Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘writing’

5 Sure Fire Ways To Kick-Start The Songwriting Habit

If you don’t already write songs regularly, then it’s safe to say that you don’t yet have a songwriting habit. Because if you did, you would feel compelled to write songs every day and perhaps all day long.

The Secret Alchemy Of Songwriting

If you’re a writer, of course you know what the word metaphor means. But you might not know that the word was first introduced in the year 1447 with the book The Ordinal of Alchemy by Thomas Norton. Alchemists, because of the forbidden tradition of writing down spells and secrets of their art, had to be obscure when transmitting their esoteric knowledge to prime pupils. Thus, the term metaphor was born.

A Quicksilver Action That Creates A New TextMate Blog Post

I’ve been AppleScripting my @blogging context workflow. At first, I created a simple script that launches TextMate, NetNewsWire, and Safari along with some URLs to help me get started. It basically launches my workspace for my @blogging context. But I wanted something a little more flexible that would accept some initial user input.
Now what I [...]

Why I Write For The Garbage Can

Do you know of an author that has written a book in one sitting? Or how about a composer who created a masterpiece in an afternoon?
You haven’t? Me neither. And that’s why I write for the garbage can.
Johnny Mercer, the songwriter, said he used to write for the waste basket. When I first heard this, [...]

West Wing Eulogy: Bartlett For America

Today’s a sad day for me. My favorite show of all time is ending. Trust me when I say that I’m not a TV addict. I didn’t own a TV for many years. But The West Wing changed all that.
Why I love The West Wing:
Peak Performance. In my quest to be a great musician, I [...]

Sexy Object Writing Word Generator

Yesterday I posted how to get your creative juices flowing with object writing. Today I found a great site that you can use to randomly generate objects to write about. It’s more of a surprise word generator than a random word generator because you have to type a word in first. But at least it’s [...]

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Give me 5 minutes and I’ll show you how to instantly find unique and interesting details to put into your lyrics.
The technique is called Object Writing and it’s so ridiculously easy that you’ll be pissed you didn’t know about it sooner. I learned it from Pat Pattison.
Here’s how it works:
First, gather your materials. You’ll need [...]