Keeping Going by Claire Fayers

We are in dark times, but this post is not about the UK election and the need to keep fighting for kindness and truth. I know we will do that. These musings came out of a recent piano lesson.

I suffered dutifully through piano lessons as a child, plonking the right finger on the right note with no sense of musicality. But a few years ago we took in a friend’s piano in need of a temporary home, and I decided to learn how to play it properly. I enjoy the intense focus on something that isn’t writing, and my teacher is very different from my childhood one. Lessons often consist of questions. What story is the composer telling? Why did he put in this chord or that repeated pattern? What emotion should the audience be feeling? 

This week, we got onto the subject of practice. I’m working on a piece where I’ve mainly conquered getting the right finger on the right note, but the main challenge is getting the sound right and it’s likely to take weeks if not months to crack it. How do I keep practice interesting?

“How do you keep writing interesting?” my teacher asked.

How indeed?

I’ve always thought that learning a piece of music is a bit like writing. The first draft (getting the right finger approximately on the right note), then the rounds of edits and fine-tuning which can seem to go on forever. How do we manage to write and rewrite a book dozens of times without getting bored?

Here are some piano exercises I've tweaked to use when writing. Most of them relate to short bursts of intensive work, more suitable for editing than for hashing out a first draft. I don’t recommend applying them to the whole draft, not unless you want to be editing for the next century, but if a project is flagging, they may help revive your interest.

Create Questions

Take a short section, maybe ending halfway through a bar (or in our case, a paragraph). Run in through several times and ask a different question each time. Why is this section here? How does it contribute to the overall story? What effect am I trying to achieve? Is anything hindering that? The theory is that asking different questions helps keep your mind active and focused.

Get Colouring

I did this with a Bach fugue and it made it so much easier to pick out the different melodies. Then I thought, why not try it on some writing?

Here’s the start of a long-abandoned story I’ve been playing with. 

I decided on pink for narrative and yellow and green for the two characters. But you could give colours to themes or emotions, or points of view, or different narrative techniques. If you’ve got a chapter that’s not working it might help you to see where it’s unbalanced. (Too much description and not enough action in mine.)

Starting Stops

Take a short passage and play it through, pausing for as long as you like on the first note of each beat. Then pause on the second, then the third and so on.

Taking regular breaks re-energises the brain. Many people I know use the Pomodoro technique – 25 minutes writing, 5 minutes off. When I was in bed with flu the other week, I couldn’t manage 25 minutes so I paused at the beginning of each paragraph for a breather. It was slow and laborious but I edited half a chapter in a day.

Take a Random Sample

Pick a page of your score and roll a dice. Play that number line. This helps combat the tendency to skim over awkward places and has the (I think) huge bonus that you can practice a whole piece without having to play it all.

You can do this with a chapter, maybe, pick a random paragraph from each page to revise. You’ll get to the end of the chapter in no time and have a tremendous sense of achievement.

Play it Backwards

Finally, just for hilarity. Play a line of music backwards. Record yourself playing it backwards. Use one of the many apps to reverse the audio and see if you got it right.

This is completely useless as an editing device, but it might keep the relatives amused at Christmas - and imagine the look on kids’ faces when you begin your World Book Day events next year with a backwards reading.

Ironically given the title of this blog post, I’ll be taking a break from ABBA for a few months. It’s been a great two years and I’ve loved blogging but I’m following the other rule of writing; know when you need to rest. Wishing you all a happy Christmas and New Year and I’ll look forward to catching up with you later in 2020.

Claire Fayers is the author of The Accidental Pirates, Mirror Magic and Stormhound. www.clairefayers.com @clairefayers