Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 40

SONGWRITING
AN ODE TO “LETTING GO OF YOUR BEST IDEAS” | Kevin MacDougall
No one really knows who first gave this
particular prescription to writers, but “kill your
darlings” has become embraced as sound
advice all the same. It’s some of the most
common guidance given in writers’ circles, and
has been for at least a century.
“Kill your darlings” is an exercise in restraint—
the idea that your personal affinity for some
aspect of what you’ve created doesn’t mean
it’s the best possible way to serve whatever it
is you are writing. At some point, the creation
takes on a life of its own. When that happens, it
will begin to inform you of what it doesn’t want
to carry the weight of anymore. Film directors
experience this, often lamenting that the best
material they shoot “ends up on the cutting
room floor.”
To be honest, I have been wrestling with this
very thing over the past month.
There’s a song I’m working on that is
congregational in its aim. I believe in the song.
I think it could be something a lot of people
find resonant… Still, I found myself fighting
a type of self-indulgence in writing it. There
was an attachment I had to a lyrical passage
that was not proving itself to be helpful. The
attachment needed to go, because that
portion of the lyrics needed to go. I knew it.
It’s just hard to bring yourself to actually cross
out the words sometimes. You get married
to a particular phrase, or rhyme, or piece of
imagery, and it becomes genuinely difficult to
let it go. Especially if what you’re replacing it
with isn’t anything special all on its own, and
just happens to fit the song better as a whole.
Goodbye, my darling lyric. We hardly knew ye.
With songwriting, there is only the final piece.
It’s not like a math problem where you show
your work and people can appreciate the
process of the path you took to get to there.
And again, if I’m honest, that can be frustrating.
I find creativity inspiring, and yet a lot of the
most creative ideas I have end up removed
from a completed song, while simpler ideas are
given room to rise from their ashes.
Goodbye, my darling words. I wish the song
had needed you, but it didn’t.
While I strive to be evocative, unique and
colorful in my lyrics… and while I believe we
can all do better at writing songs as poetry… it
sometimes becomes clear to me that my words
are verging on a sort of extravagance that isn’t
necessary. The trick becomes recognizing
when that’s the case, and then being willing to
remove a lyric that doesn’t suit the themes or
purpose of the song.
Even if the lyric is the best one.
Even if it happens to be the phrase that set the
entire song in motion.
It happens. Songs outgrow their inciting
moments. They evolve and stretch out in new
directions. And some words—no matter how
much you love them—are ultimately nothing
more than kindling for the real fire to come. If
you can cultivate the ability to see that, you can
then help get your darlings out of the way, to
make room for what the song wants to be.
You can always keep those discarded lines and
ideas in a separate place. Maybe you’ll need
them somewhere else someday. (That’s what I
tell myself, anyway.)
In my writing, I’ve been trying to gravitate
40 September 2020
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