my desk is a mess...

I've been taking songwriting classes as a way to keep my writing fresh, so last weekend I could be found at a songwriting workshop at Old Town School of Folk Music.  (By the way, I recommend doing some writing that's out of your comfort zone for keeping things fresh -- I've tried playwriting and now songwriting. I find that different disciplines approach writing in a way that is not familiar to me and I love being startled by words all over again.) 

Anyway, the instructor Lance Brown said something that I've been thinking about: He said if you wanted to take your songwriting up a notch, you needed to think of songwriting as "a practice."And he meant "a practice" in a spiritual sense (or at least that's how I took it). My understanding was that you needed to do it in a disciplined way and, like you would in any sort of spiritual practice, with an eye to the fact that the repetition of actions will be transformative for the person who engages in it. The focus being more on the person than the product.  

I've been thinking a lot about routine and discipline and the good in those things for my own writing, so this was one of those underlining life moments for me. Yes, I thought. 

[Photo: Found these old spools of thread in my grandmothers' sewing box. Aren't they beautiful?]