How cutting and pasting can work for creative writing
By Alex on September 30, 2014
"Somewhere, out in America, it's just starting to rain"
I didn't get much reading done today, but I heard that lyric in a live version of a Counting Crows song from 1998. The words are originally from 1996's"Have You Seen Me Lately" and in this were inserted into 1993's "Round Here." The former song is a decent cut from the band's sophomore album, Recovering the Satellites, while the latter is the stormy opener off of their debut, August & Everything After, which I mentioned in my previous entry about "One for Sorrow."
Copying that line from a good song and pasting it into a great song made me hear the poetry in a fresh way. The image of rain just starting – "somewhere," perhaps out in Nebraska or elsewhere in rural America – amplifies all the small town ennui of "Round Here," where the townsfolk described in the lyric aren't merely bored or suicidal (as in the original album version), but now confronted with overcast skies and downpours. The verse found a new home, better than its original one.
What struck me about the lyrical transplant here was the continuity of the band's songs (even across albums and styles) and how it was a literal literary cut and paste that worked. The idea of lifting portions of one's old writing – an email, a draft that never really worked out, or even a nonsensical piece of business writing – and dropping it into a creative piece is hardly a new idea. Entire novels like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (described by one reviewer as "Eisensteinian") and Will Self's Umbrella seem predicated on cut-and-paste logic, with sequencing only barely mattering and scenes of violence and alienation opportunely cutting through the head-in-the-clouds narrative.
I've tried this technique before, throwing around passages from traditional folk songs, early versions of white papers, loosely transcribed podcast monologues, and lightly rewritten website copy. It's hit or miss for me, but it's a lot of fun trying to write around the insertion so that it (kinda) makes sense. I think cut and paste can work if you let yourself be led, rather than trying to lead and find the perfect quote/passage-to-imitate. Basically, it's the opposite of doing research, which is good enough for me.
Posted in: writing | Tagged: creative writing, lyrics, music, poetry, writing