"In rock climbing... crux moves are the most challenging moments of the entire route, they often require you to push physically, emotionally and intellectually.   The interesting thing about [Climb ratings] is that they aren't based so much on the difficulty of the entire climb as... on the crux."  -Jonathan Fields "Uncertainty"

I went bouldering at a local rock climbing gym a while ago, climbing around on the low rocks where you're meant to work developing your skills.  The idea is to fall a lot a few feet above a lot of thick padding so you don't fall quite so much tied into a bunch of ropes fifty or a hundred feet off the ground.  There was a particular climb that my friend and I were working to solve on a wall but every time we made the leap towards the next hand hold found ourselves falling towards the crash padding below us.

This is pretty much the same thing we run into in our writing sometimes.    We find ourselves in a place where we can't quite solve some aspect of "the process" and find ourselves falling down time after time.   In rock climbing the answer is usually pretty simple, if you're skills fall short, you build them up on another wall, or ask for help or insight on that particular challenge.   And there's no shame in falling into the crash pads once in a while.   (It's kind of fun actually).

Writing is harder because, you can't really see the wall, or the crash pads for that matter.  You can ask for advice, or insight to the puzzle you're working on but often people will give you their insight into the puzzles that they've working on, not because their self-centered or aren't listening, but because that's the only wall they can really see clearly.

All this aside, writers have an advantage over rock climbers.  If "the Crux" is that hardest part of any piece of writing we do, we can more or less choose how and when we approach it.  When a rock climber can't solve the crux of a certain climb, then they can't go any further.   As writer's we can choose to work on any part of a piece of writing we want.  If there's a bit we can't quick get around, we can choose to work on something else.  Why do we writers have such a hard time doing this?   For the same reasons my friend and I chose to keep falling off one of the hard puzzles at the climbing gym that afternoon: we became obsessed and after that the easier puzzles don't feel good enough for us anymore.       

Today's Prompt: Rope.

What are you're experiences with rope?   Have you been tied up?  Have you been set free.  What is it like to climb a rope?  Or not climb a rope.  What does rope feel like?   Can it burn?   Can it be a salve as well?   What it like crossing a rope bridge?   What's it like getting caught in a clothes line?   What associations do you have with rope?  Today write about that, see where it takes you.  Get the song done!

"No one ever wrote a song or improved their songwriting by having an opinion on their own song or someone else’s song. The only way to improve is to write."  --Jack Hardy

Judgment is easy for us to fall into.  For many of us it feels like a shortcut to greatness.  Since we all know what we like and what we don't like, it's easy to say, "That's no good.   The melody of that bridge is the same as the verse's melody.   They should have varied the tempo more between the verse and the chorus.    I can't believe they rhymes "fill up my soul" and "make me whole"  
Ira Glass says we all have good taste and that often our skills just haven't caught up to our taste.  And writing a song is hard.   By simply judging something we get to exercise our wonderful taste without ever having to lift a finger.    Our taste is reinforced.  We know what's good and what's not, but we never get better.    This is what Jack Hardy's getting at.   And it's true.   You can't judge your way to better songwriting, but if you write songs, you will get better. 
I was listening to Alan Watts the other day who claimed that "the truly enlightened people he has met rarely ever praise or blame anything and they'll certainly never gossip."   I think there's something to this.   Perhaps discernment is necessary, but there's magic in action without judgment.  The rational mind doesn't have the ability to create.

Today's Prompt: Bitter Chocolate

How do you like dark chocolate? What was your first experience with it?  What about Baker's Chocolate?  How might chocolate be a metaphor for your mood, your love life, your sleeping patterns?  What does chocolate taste like if you can't use the word chocolate?   Has anyone ever given you chocolates.  Have you ever expected anyone to give you chocolates?   Do you even like chocolate?

Here's an oddity. I usually find book introductions far more helpful than the actual books. I pick up a how to book, especially one from the self-help section, and read the first few pages and feel energized. Let's say it's a book on meeting people, networking... booking gigs. Something useful and necessary that I have an aversion to that I haven't quite worked out yet. The book say that it has a method, a secret that will help me to do these things. And here's the important part: In the back of my head I can imagine what this book is going to tell me. That knowledge of what I believe the book is going to tell me is often far more important than anything the book actually could do, because it's what I need to do. It's the thing that I do it can help me grow. But if I buy the book, if start reading it not only does the moment pass but someone else's ideas take over, and I'm following the path laid out by the book. I may use some of the ideas in the book but I've often wondered, what if I just read the introduction and started working.

We often know our own asnwers but are scared to act on them. We hear about a program that will take us from here to there in the back of our heads a little voice says, it will tell us A, B and C. I don't know if you can go out in search of such a message. I think it's closer to looking for one's car keys when one's misplaced them. When you look too hard the keys will elude you in plain sight despite your best efforts to spy them. But sometimes giving up for a while is just the thing to recover them. But once you see them you pick them up, stick 'em in the ignition and go somewhere don't you? I often seem to skip this last bit when it comes to life's instructions. I get the keys from from some book or another which inspires my answers, but then I neglect to pick them up and use them.

Today's Prompt: Ghosts

P.S. Check out the Song Bomb is you haven't.  I'm writing a new song every day this month and so are a bunch of other great artist's: www.thesongbomb.com

Hey everybody! It's February again so I'm writing songs everyday all month.  So are a bunch other cool musicians.  This week Joe Jencks, Ells, Cary Cooper and Putnam Smith have all posted brand new songs at www.thesongbomb.com.  You should check it out! Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

Sophmore year in biology, we were asigned the task of collecting 50 leaves from different trees in our area, pressing them and labeling them all in a proper scientific manner. There was a kind of competition to the whole thing. Rarer trees were sought after and gradually defoliated. There were kids going to the next town over to get leaves from a Gingko. Ok, I went to the next town to get leaves from a gingko tree when I heard it was there. Devil's Walking Stick was another prized possesion, (and a compound leaf that was generally too large to press on 8.5 x 11 paper). I collected 30 something leaves, then never turned the project in. I didn't feel like I'd done a good enough job, so I chose complete failure over getting a C on the project. My teacher was exasperated with me at the end of the quarter. I could have gotten an "B" for the quarter if I'd done the project. Instead I ended up nearly failing.

Senior year, we were given the assignment to do anything that reflected on our understanding of "The Great Gatsby." Puppet shows and explications of songs were brought to class. I had worked on associating Van Hagar's "Dreams" to the book, but lost my nerve and did nothing again. Then, I got a reprieve! At the end of the semester I went to ask about my grade knowing I had missed a major project in the class but my teacher, Mr Howland said, just pass something in. So, like a melcholic dolphin tossed an entire bucket of fish, I jumped to life and started perfroming again. I passed in a short story a day later and got an A- in the class.

The point is I do these things to myself all the time. I'm supposed to be an A student and when I see myself starting to fall short of that I begin to feel like the whole thing is a wash, why bother doing anything Does this sound familiar? I think lots of people do this to some extent. We want to be the best and when we find we can't this time around, we quit. We could all use to listen more often to the Mr. Howland's in our heads instead of whoever it is that says the whole things just not worth it.

Today's Prompt: Custodian