I am a musician. When writing music, there are better and worse options. There are right and wrong ways to structure a chord; Correct and incorrect directions to write a note stem. That said at the end of the day, if your music moves someone it’s successful.
As I’m writing words rather than music more and more, I’m finding this mentality does not exist in the writing world.
Did you know there are three hundred different ways to write the word said? Three hundred. And yet there is a school of thought that using any word other than said is wrong. That it “takes away from the writing”. The same thing is true for punctuation. I find myself fearing the ellipsis because where I want to use it… might be wrong.
I look at my writing from draft one to draft one hundred. Although 90% of it has changed, what surprises me most is the loss of all my creative punctuation. Most of my exciting replacements for the word ‘said’ are back to ‘said’ and my writing visually looks bland. It is a string of black and white on a page.
Reading music is like reading an art piece. Visually it’s an ever-changing feast for the eyes. Measures go from empty to filled with busy thirty second notes and articulations. They calm, the notes becoming sparsely written while long artful drawings appear under them. Everything’s accompanied by single romantic italicized words.
Why is it that we judge writing with such a critical eye? Are we not pinning ourselves into a world where writing becomes more of a science and less creative? If the authors intent came across, if their words were understandable, do they need to get thrown into the pits of hell because someone didn’t like their use of a hyphen?
From one confused musician spanning two creative genres, I would truly love to hear what you think in the comments below.
