Songwriting Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison

Author:Pat Pattison [Pattison, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-5996-3299-5
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.

DAY #4

WORKING BOTH DIRECTIONS

Prompt: Sleeping Late

You’ve had plenty of practice exploring one idea through the lens of another idea. Using linking qualities, it’s an effective and efficient way to see one thing as though it were something else—the definition of metaphor. Ready to try something new today?

As usual, you’ll link each to a target idea—the ideas that sleeping late can be a metaphor for, by asking:

What else has that quality?

So far, you’ve been looking at the target idea (arrived at via the linking quality) through the lens of the first idea (in this case, sleeping late). Today, you’ll do something else, too.

As an example, say that your linking quality from sleeping late is feeling lazy. The target idea could be avoiding your homework:

Sleeping late → Feeling lazy → Avoiding your homework

So, as usual, you look at avoiding your homework through the lens of sleeping late. Like this:

Equations, scraggly bits of ink blotting the page, beeping at me, an alarm clock nudging me to clear the haze from my brain and crawl over to the chair, bend my back, and start scratching solutions in the waiting white blanks. My brain hits its snooze button, rolling over into visions of clear mountain streams bubbling past smooth white stones, speckled trout darting in the shallows unaware of the slow motion line about to drop a blue winged fly, plop, on the wrinkling surface … buzz, buzz from the equal sign, opening like a mouth while I squeeze my eyes shut.

But now you’ll spend another ten minutes reversing directions: After you finish your first ten minutes writing about avoiding your homework through the lens of sleeping late, you’ll change directions and look at sleeping late through the lens of avoiding your homework. Like this:

Rolling over, sinking into the soft white pillow, echoes of Miss Luger’s shrill chirp, long miles of polished hallways ago, burrowing through the haze, the nudging elbow of a conscience needling me with visions of algebra problems waiting with raised eyebrows, or the Battle of Gettysburg whining for a date to begin the fray. I snuggle into my blank white sheet and relax my shoulders, drifting away from old piled workbooks at the corner of my desk to sunny afternoons with no alarm clock voices calling from the old Sunday nights before homework was due at St. Peter’s grammar school.

Now, try this. Supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities below:

Conserving energy

Wasting time

First use conserving energy as your linking quality. As usual, when you find your target idea, take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of sleeping late.

GREG BECKER

Sleeping late → Linking quality: Conserving energy →

Target idea: Sitting on a summer porch

Sitting on a summer porch is like sleeping late.

The heat of the day slows down the world, a slow molasses wind stubbornly blows across the porch having no effect at all. The heavy blanket of August weighs you down until you are motionless listening to the buzzing of the cicadas, thinking about moving, thinking about something cold to drink, thinking about the day ahead but acting on nothing.

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