Error-Free

I studied flute for many years. It’s a beautiful instrument, with its songbird tune and elegant range, and I managed, with the help of some excellent teachers, to learn to play some lovely, interesting music. It’s not, however, a composer’s instrument. For some unexplained reason, flute students are never taught any music theory. I never knew, for instance, what key I was in, what all those flats and sharps near the key signature meant.

Then, of course, there is the inescapable limitation of only being able to play on note at a time. It was the whole one-note-at-a-time thing that caused me the most problems. I studied classical flute, which is a very exacting discipline. Or, at least, I felt it was. You had to get all the notes right. It was easy to wind up not making music, but only trying to hit all the right notes. Hitting them all was an accomplishment, the way a figure skater nailing a triple-axel is an accomplishment, but there is no feeling to it.

I eventually traded the flute for the piano. Technically speaking, I am still a much, much better flutist than pianist. When I write a song or play one I know, I just pound away at the keys. It’s not elegant or lovely, though it is in rhythm, and I’m never thinking about right and wrong notes – only music. In retrospect, I could have kept playing the flute if I had thought about those notes differently. They weren’t there on the sheet music as a test I had to pass. They were a language meant to be translated into the feeling sound we call music. In truth, I wanted to hit the right notes for same reason I want my stories to be clear and vivid and, yes, error-free: because that’s how the feeling within that story is best expressed.

I know first-hand how hard writers can be on themselves, how that inner-critic can drain all the pleasure out of a day’s work. Yet, if I’m honest, I am and always have been that critic. It’s what I sound like when I believe I have to do something to please someone else, to gain their approval or acceptance. How gentle and how soothing that same voice becomes when the only one I want to please is me. It’s no longer monitoring what I’ve done right and wrong, adding up mistakes and successes, but instead calibrating me with every word and note toward what I alone desire.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com