Sometimes, when I’m writing, I find that delving into the past helps me come up with new material. An idea I discarded years ago because it wasn’t working can somehow work in the present, and sometimes I realize that the whole thing was onto something and it just needs a bit of tweaking. This is true for stories, poems and songs.

Lately, I’ve been working on songwriting…something I gave up years ago, but now feel inspired to do. I’m still not a particularly prolific songwriter, and most of my work is fairly simplistic. It gives me joy though, and when I feel motivated to create something, it will nag at me until I do it. Sometimes when I’m working on stuff, I look through old books of lyrics I wrote. I have about 8 years of material from the time I started writing until the time I stopped. Most of it isn’t very good (either totally unrealistic, too ambitious, or hardcore teen angst), but I’m finding that when it works, it really works.

I found one today that I wrote just before I gave up on songwriting. I’m going to use it for sure, and I didn’t really need to change any words; it just needed chords. I still need to work out a suitable finger-picking pattern; I’d originally intended to strum it, but I don’t strum very well. It’s weird how old songs can drag up the feelings that I felt when I wrote them; this one was about a real thing, and working through it made me remember how I felt at that time.

One day soon, I’ll record some stuff and post it.