On the importance of deadlines (for me)

I used to be a composer without deadlines. I composed every piece “just for me”, because I had an idea and because I wanted to. When I was in that career stage, I longed for getting commissions and having hard and fast deadlines all stacked up with one another. Fast forward a few years and I tend to get a commission or three every year. Hurray! Except, it’s different now. Anytime I try to write a piece just because I want to, or I have an idea, I find it harder to sit down and get to work day in and day out. I have a dozen (or probably more) started sketches of pieces I wanted to write “just because I wanted to”, but in the past several years the number of those I’ve actually finished is quite small. Why? We’ll get to that.

By the way, when I talk about not finishing pieces, I’m mainly talking about “concert music”, such as percussion ensemble and concert band pieces. Somehow when I start a piece whose end goal is a recording, such as my electronic music, I have an easier time just having fun and making sounds until the recording is finished. I’m not saying that every electronic piece I start gets finished, but I think the percentage is higher than my recent concert music attempts. I wonder why that is?

I find myself self-editing as I’m composing more with my concert music, lately, anyway. I stop and ask myself “is this marketable?”, or “who will play this?”, or any number of other questions that derail me in the middle of any compositional momentum I might be building. Then I open up my email, or look at the analytics for my website, or some other random thing that isn’t composing that piece, such as making a blog post.

I was talking to my camera for a recent vlog post (visit www.YouTube.com/@drewmorrismusic if you’d like to see my YouTube videos) and I asked myself if I was just writing the same piece over and over again. I was working on a grade 1 or 2 concert band piece, and even though I really like the melody I’d come up with, I was having a hard time making the other bits work together without basically becoming a carbon copy of other grade 1 or 2 pieces I’d written in the past.

I allowed my inner editor to stall out my composing momentum again because I had no deadline. This was a “just for me” piece. Sure, I would reach out to some people to see if they wanted to play it, but it wasn’t a commission. A commission is a collaboration between me and the commissioning party, working to create a piece that fits their group as well as I can. A piece “just for me” is one where I write down ideas however I like, hoping it might eventually fit a group, but not forcing it into a mold of any specific group. But somehow, something has changed. I heard composers talk about it when I was starting out but didn’t realize how quickly it would strike out at me.

I appear to be a composer who needs a deadline.

Granted, a self-imposed deadline sometimes works for me. (Though if you look at my previous blog post about trying to write a piece and get it played in all 50 states in the year 2022, not all self-imposed deadlines work.) But other than trying to have this piece done in time for someone to play it in the spring, this new piece has no deadline. I’ve opened the file or sat down at the piano to work on it a dozen times now, and it’s just not going anywhere. Is it because the idea is bad? I don’t think so. I think it’s one of those melodies that students will want to play. I just keep allowing the difficulty to slow me down, and then stop me. Then I allow myself to work on other things instead of putting in the work to push through the wall.

I remember some pieces (most with a deadline) being difficult in the beginning too, but I knew I had to deliver, so I buckled down and found a way around my problem. And I know that’s what I need to do here, but I have a dozen other projects going right now that also need my attention, and instead of finishing one project to take some weight off my shoulders, I just keep taking little bites out of all the projects since none of them have hard and fast deadlines. And then I add more projects.

My conscience just keeps saying “Show up. Sit down. Do the work.” And I know that voice is right, but when things aren’t happening easily, it’s hard to want to do that, so another voice says something like “Why don’t you work on some more stock music?” or “How long has it been since you’ve released a YouTube video?”, or “Do you have a plan for what you’re gonna teach in your composition class tomorrow?” or the voice from today said “Hey, you know it’s November, right? How about you do NaNoWriMo again and try to write another novel? You don’t have any deadlines to speak of, take advantage of that.” By the way, that last one was the voice I listened to today instead of working on my new concert band piece.

I know I’ll get through this unproductive stage, but it’s frustrating to feel like I’ve been in it for so long. Did writing up this blog help me to find an answer? No. Did it make me look like a whiney little brat? Probably. But sometimes you just need to get something written down so that you can free up the space in your brain for other more important things.

By the way, if anyone out there happens to be reading this in the winter of 2022 and wants to commission" me to finish this piece, I’m pretty confident that with an actual deadline I could finish this piece in time for your spring concert band season. Just sayin’. :)

Thanks for reading.

-Drew

November 1, 2022