Does music utilize all my creative energy or am I just a flop?

[Raggit]

A rather strange subject line, I know so let me explain.

I have a pretty good ear for music, I've never taken any piano lessons or anything but I can play and compose pretty good because I've taught myself to.  But it's like this is the only creative thing I can do really well.

I love to write movie scripts (for my own amusment) but I just can't seem to give. And I definatly can't write adventure games as I've demostrated alot LOL!  But I want to write these things it's just that I can't!!  I get alot of creative ideas but I can't get into it.  It's a frustrating situation.  Basically it's writers block.

Do you think I should just take advantage of my musical creativity and forget about the other stuff or should I try to excercise in these fields as well?

Or do you think that it's just that I've over worked myself and I need a break??   I really wanna do some other things, but I'm finding it quite difficult.  

Just looking for another person's perspective seeing as I've struggled quite awhile with this.

[Evil]

I'd chat with LGM if I were you.

[Pessi]

I think it could very well be that you should just take a break for a while. Often doing too much creative stuff really drains out the creativity. You just need to do something else for a while. Something that doesn't take much creativity but still is exciting.

I've noticed that working for me. Creativity is one of those things that just can not be forced.

[Andail]

I'd chat with LGM if I were you.

What was that supposed to mean?

[Evil]

Lgm seems to have the same problem. Mostly, no offence Lgm, but his movies seem to go flop. After that he gets upset and works on music, and everyonce in a while some art. Then he feels better and works on movies, ect. Its been going like that for a while now...

[Gregjazz]

I haven't heard any of your music, Raggit, but my advice is to stick with composing. Just because you are self-taught has nothing to do with it. In fact, in my experience, being self-taught is better because you use your ears more. The downside is that you can't read music and have little theory training.

Here are several good ways to kick writer's block:

1. Keep composing songs, even when they are stupid, easy, and cliched. Then you can pick out the best of those songs and reuse ideas, etc.

2. Sometimes waiting for inspiration isn't the key. You just have to sit down and compose. A good example of this is Russ Ferante, the keyboardist for the Yellowjackets. I heard from my piano teacher (who knew him in college) that he would compose with the "Edison" attitude. Something like 90% sweat and 10% inspiration. I forget how it goes.

3. Listen to other people's music -- especially GOOD music.

4. You can also take a little vacation (like a week or so) and then start composing again. I didn't compose anything on the computer last summer, and now when I started again, it's sounding a lot better!

[Femme Stab Mode >:D]

Being a nature lover, I tend to go walking in a forest park when drained. Although I have to pick leeches off myself after walking in the rainforset parks I find it highly rewarding. Just go walking  

[Ben]

I second the walkng thing. Just being alone with your thoughts can help you find inspiration. You can't write good music (or games) by sitting in front of your computer all day. Get away from all distractions.

[rodekill]

My creativity runs in clumps.
I'll have a few months where I'll be drawing and working on games and all kinds of stuff, and then I'll burn out suddenly and take a couple of months off and do almost nothing creative.
This becomes a problem when I have to force it for work, but work is fake creativity anyways.

[loominous]

Think one problem could be that once you ve become pretty proficient in one field your standards in other are raised as well. The idea is that your standards in the writing field are perhaps too high because of your proficiency in musiccomposing. Because of these high standards you re discouraged when faced with the quality of your writingcreations.

If this would be the case you might need to realize/acknowledge regularly that people do infact stink when they first try out new areas, unless they re highly talented. If you re having these problems you re not likely as talented in the writingfield as in the music, but this doesn t mean that you should give up these other ambitions, just that it ll take you a bit longer to acquire the same proficieny in them as in musiccomposition.

So basically my advice would be to lower your standards as much as possible and accept that most of your productions won t please you in the way that your music does, until you ve improved your skills greatly, which will take some time.

One way to get more satisfaction out of your attempts is to focus on smaller areas within the field. I m not sure how to do this when it comes to writing but you could focus on, let s say, dialogs or enviroment descriptions for a while. Study works that you like and try to mimic just this particular area. This specialization means that your skills within this area will increase rapidly (at the expense of other of course) and give you more satisfaction since the improvements are very noticeable (as opposed to when you try to raise all skills simultanously). Kind of like in RPGs.

[Gregjazz]

Actually, Ben, I find that I do my best composing music in front of a piano -- not in front of the computer.

The best way to compose a song for a game (for me, at least) is to write out the sheet music first, and then play it into the computer.