PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting Songwriting suggestions

Hey Roger,

I think I know what everyone is saying in common and I'm going to take a stab at this, because it seems to me that beneath the surface people are actually agreeing on certain things unless I missed something.

In order not to inflame tensions I will not speak about the music world but speak about the book publishing world in which I have a lot of knowledge. But I think there is some crossover.

Back in the good old days, if you wanted to have a book published it actually had to be good, you needed to know how to write, you had to find an agent and then the agent had to sell your book to a publisher. I am among those who jumped through all of those hoops and had some success in that area.

Today no matter where I look either in the work of world of traditional publishers or on Amazon where tens of thousands of books are being dropped every day I can't find anything or hardly anything that shows the slightest resemblance to what I would call good writing. It's absolutely horrendous.

Because of Kindle samples you can read the first three chapters of anything that's being published and I can tell you that when I take a peek at things, 99.99% of what I look at is just purely unreadable.

But even the big major publishers are no longer considering the quality and content. It's all about social issues and political correctness and certain types of identities and so on and so forth and it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of writing. There's some vague idea of what being trendy means and what "appropriate" is but the writing that's attached to all of these trendy books is for the most part just atrocious.

I think there are some parallels to the music industry but I won't get into that.

However, in the world of writing books, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that talent is only 1% of the process, and that the grueling work of writing and rewriting and then rewriting again and then rewriting on top of that and mastering hundreds of technical skills that have to be learned is 99% of it and most people are too lazy or unwilling to learn those skills.

It's not fun.

When people ask me how it is to write a book I say I would rather drive a screwdriver through my head.

I like seeing something end up on a bookshelf but really I would rather poke myself in the eye with a needle than go through the process but it's just something that you have to do.

I do think that there is some resemblance of this phenomenon in the world of writing songs where it does take some talent yes, but without an incredible amount of dedication and work and application of process I don't think people actually write great songs.

Anyone can write a piece of crap that will get on the radio for reasons that have nothing to do with quality, but that is not the same thing as writing a great song, I don't think.

I think that ties into some things that people were saying and I believe there is overlap in that area with what everyone was saying.

Now a few observations on forum decorum.

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It is true that sometimes people come on the forum and they don't feel like coming back. I myself have blocked certain characters because it's just sickening to read their responses.

For the most part, these types of forum discussions are not truly collegiate and they should be. But they are usually childish, and it would be too much to say that they sound like Middle School conversations because they sound more like Elementary School fights.

In a collegiate conversation, professionals listen to the opinions of others and usually find something to encourage while politely offering a different perspective from their point of view.

But not here.

As I read these forums I see that much of the time the person speaking is the world's foremost and only subject matter expert on the issue at hand and everyone else is an idiot.

Everyone is trying so hard to prove that they're right and everyone else is wrong that the conversation completely unravels at the seams and it leaves you with sort of a pit in your stomach.

I think that if people only listened to some of the nuggets of wisdom that come from virtually everyone and politely added in different perspectives, and ceased to use the expression "you're wrong", then people would like to spend more time here.

But the tone and the level of conversation that I see here a lot of the time makes me feel like I've walked into a toxic waste dump.

I shut it down immediately and go back to my music workstation where you will in fact usually find me trying to advance my level at some new skill, or attempting to upgrade an old skill.

Thank you for your feedback and let's continue the dialogue everyone if we can.