I thought your title of your post was sooo interesting "Dry as Dust". Hmmmm! has a lot of potential. Write about that. Write about how you can't write unless you're unhappy. It's a conflict and conflicts create tension which is interesting. Not sure what country you are in but here in the USA, we have dust storms in Texas and Arizona, cowboy towns. Put yourself in the movie, standing out on the range with sagebrush, horse beside you. Dry as the gulch, no rain for months. The whole praire is begging for rain and there's none. You're like that right now, begging for inspiration, creativity, good lines and there are none. Feel the emotion!! Is this all there is? Am I finished as a songwriter, person? Rode hard, hung up dry? The struggle of life in the desert, can it survive, can love survive? Do you just give up and accept your fate or press on for another day? Can life or love change? Don't think about writing a song in it's structure or rhyming, just "free write" as if you were telling a story. Use lots of action verbs and nouns. Lemons to lemonade. Can't we all relate to those times in life, when we feel hung up dry? Is this it? All we've got?

What did other songwriters write about this? "Dust in the Wind?" Life as just dust in the wind. Does anything we do matter? Are we only dust in the wind? What really does matter?

Deep subject to contemplate? Where can you go with it? Old saying "Bloom Where You're Planted" Right now you're planted in the desert. Some of the most beautiful and rare flowers are planted in the desert. Bloom only once at night every twenty years or so "Silver Sword" in Hawaii. Most beautiful and rare plant in the world. Maybe your song could be the best you've ever done. Just planted in this uninhabitable situation. Life is a play of opposites, good against evil, etc. Maybe our best work is created in adversity, dry times, slow lines, etc.

Great potential in being of an age when you have more to write about. A twenty year old is probably just concerned about meeting the opposite sex and all the glories with that. However, being older gives you a perspective more based in reality. So I would say that the cold hard facts of reality are more of a motivator in songwriting, than a fantasy vision of "prince charming and happily ever after".

Even if you aren't unhappy, reality is the still best place to write from. Maybe not that it will be bought by 20 year olds, green behind the ears with a lot of suffering to live through.

So, happily I don't have to be supported by my music sales, so I want my songs to have a deeper message of quality. I want to write and express deeply intriguing, contemplative songs. I feel I do my creativity justice when I write that way, not just to oil the money making machine.

Wishing you the best my friend.

Last edited by Belladonna; 04/16/19 06:37 AM.