I feel refreshed and I feel like I'm back! It's time to move on. No more wallowing and no more pity parties. I've got a new attitude and I'm ready to make the most of things and remember the good things about this experience instead of focusing on the negative and the parts about this that hurt me.
As far as my writing is concerned, I would like to focus on writing stories for a while, a few weeks at least. I found some anthologies and contests that would be interesting to write for and I'd like to give it a shot.
This doesn't mean giving up on songwriting and it certainly doesn't mean giving up this blog. I love writing lyrics and I love writing for my blog, so I'll continue to post updates on my blog while I'm working on these projects.
Songwriting and story writing both come with their own challenges. For songs, you have to convey your thoughts with a much smaller amount of words and some of the words you use for that song are repeated over and over in the chorus. In addition to having a limited number of words to use to convey an emotion or a story, those words have to be put together meticulously so that they will fit into a rhyming pattern or specific melody.
For stories, you can pretty much use as many words as you want, make it as long or short as you want. This comes with a greater responsibility, however, requiring the writer to have a higher understanding of how to create and describe characters, develop a believable and interesting storyline, grasp the fundamentals of storytelling, and write well enough to convince an editor to publish their story and entertain the readers that see it. These are challenges that I have not really faced. I have written several stories that I felt weren't quite ready to send out yet, but lacked the dedication to follow through and make the changes that would make it better.
I consider writing lyrics to be easier. They come to me quicker and they're generally more fun. Once I write lyrics, I start singing them whenever I get bored. When I write a story I usually don't sing it. Now that I'm feeling more inspired and energized, I'm ready to tackle story writing again and see where it takes me. I'm very excited about these projects I'll be working on the next few weeks, and when I'm done my songbook will be waiting for me.
~Eliza
