Holler,
This week started off as a total hell ride for me. I've been working on this record in one way shape or form for almost a year now and last week my brain started to revolt. Let me just say, the timing was poor. Last week was really the first week where I could get my hands into the recording process and starting doing the stuff I do best--guitars, dobro, steel, harp etc. Last week, however, everything I recorded sounded to me like it had been laid down by one of the sheep in the field outside my window. No, joke. I knew at that point I had either been pre-producing or producing to some extent every single day for the last two weeks. The strange thing is that I wasn't particularly tired of being in the studio or playing or anything, I was just super super sick of my tunes. After some considerable counseling from some kind souls, I realized that I really needed to take some time off. And not just a half day. I needed to take a legitimate weekend off. It sounds like such a lame thing to realize, but when you work entirely on your own schedule with nothing but a single deadline out there looming in the future, it can get really hard to not want to work every single day. The great news is, it got better. I went into the studio on Sunday to have a listen back and do a rough mix in preparation for vocal tracking and all of a sudden it sounded like the songs I once knew and loved. This all made me think of a great article I read in the in July/August `07 American Songwriter Magazine. I tried to dig it up online to link it, but alas, it could not be found. One of the contributing editors was talking about how she deals with the same experience and she called her technique Artistic Starvation. It's basically putting faith in the fact that you are a creative being, you will naturally desire creation again in the near future, but for now, you can't put out any more. So she'll take anywhere from an afternoon to a week and literally do nothing involved with writing. She will hold out until her creative nature is literally starved to put out again, and then, she's back to work. I didn't realize at the time that I was doing the same thing. I spent last Friday and Saturday basically chilling out really had. It only took a couple days, and I was right back at it. Just goes to show that the down time can really be just as important as the on time. More thoughts on this another time . . .