North Hollywood, California
What a mystery, the creative process.

Earlier in the week, Leo was trying to set It Doesn't Pay to Be Invariably Cheerful to music. But he was running across trouble - and I couldn't blame him, since it's one of maybe two songs I wrote where I didn't have a predetermined rhythm in my head. He'd tried to rewrite some of the lyrics in Spokane but I didn't like them, and the tune he'd come up with sounded incredibly Jewish to me, so we were both sort of scratching our heads.

We were also in a quandary because I said the song needed to sound more '20s, since it takes place in 1924. But all the '20s songs we had access to were happy happy happy. Which is when I suggested making the song sound happy, even though it's got these discouraging lyrics. I was actually serious, but Leo, while finding the concept interesting, decided to go another route - doing this major/minor thing with the melody, creating a duality between sounding up and sounding down. And damned if that didn't work. We were still in a dilemma over chunks of the lyrics, but when he came up with the reinvented (and non-Jewish!) tune, it clicked for me, and I told him I'd gladly rewrite the sections if he settled on a completed melody, which he did. So I took my MP3 player and recorded him playing it on the piano, and tonight sat down to familiarize myself with the melody and rewrite my lyrics.

I was going pretty good there for a while...until I got stuck! And suddenly I found things conflicting with each other, or repeating, or not quite saying what I wanted to say, and before I knew it, almost three hours had passed by while I fumbled over myself. What made it especially frustrating was that I kept sensing I was almost there, and I didn't want to get up until I finished it, and yet, I couldn't make that last little bit of it work.

In situations like that, I always remember the teacher I had in 6th grade - whether taking a test or just doing a normal homework assignment, she would advise us to move on if we got stuck on a problem, and come back to it later. So I threw up my hands and decided to take a bath.

Naturally, as soon as I got in, the ideas started flowing along with the water; I don't know why, but I often get ideas in the bath or shower - or in the bathroom in general! So I got out, dripping, to tap down the new line, but it didn't work with the melody the way I thought it would. Well, back to the bath. But then it came to me - and again I had to grab the towel and plug in the new words. This time it worked - and I finished the song!

Maybe the water represents fluidity of ideas - who knows. All I know is that I finished a song...and that only my face is clean at this point! So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to wash that writer's block right out of my hair!

But before I do, I'd like to give a shout out to Mayra from Puerto Rico, who surprised me with an e-mail of encouragment today. ¡Hola, Mayra! :) A few weeks ago someone from Korea commented on one of the YouTube videos, and Yuka still puts stuff up about 9LoLMM on the Japanese LMM site. It's awesome to know people from all around the world are finding out about our show - but it's also good to hear when individual people are looking forward to 9LoLMM, because it really drives us to do our best in a more personal way. So, thank you, Mayra - we'll do ya proud! :)

Now, wish us luck this week for our further developments...developing! There's so much I want to tell you about what's coming up, but we've been in one heckuva holding pattern this month...we need movement in the Force!