I hope your 2024 is off to a great start! I’m writing this with about 20 minutes to spare as one kid rakes leaves and another is engrossed in her iPad. It’s fitting because that’s what this first post is about — time, or the lack thereof. Stealing time when you can. 

Time can be great when it’s on our side and we have the privilege to make time. But for many (myself included), writing must happen when time allows. When we can steal a moment for ourselves or happen to have five minutes and a notebook on a bus, in an elevator, while waiting for the school bell to ring, etc. It can feel defeating, but writing as time allows can also have creative advantages.

Having limited time forces me to brain-dump my ideas when I can, then let them simmer so I can return to them with fresh eyes and new perspectives. Fragments of unfinished work can also become prompts themselves when you are able to make time and want a place to start, instead of staring at a blank screen.

Recently, the “frost” prompt — and time and space — helped me finish a song I started writing almost 20 years ago. 

The song is called Someday. I wrote the first draft of it when I was around 25-years-old. I’d started dating someone and really liked him, but he broke it off after only a few weeks (over the phone!) Twenty-something me was pretty crushed, so I wrote a song about it. It was a pretty classic-sounding breakup song, full of longing and mourning. The words and melody poured out in a single afternoon.  

But here's the problem with that first draft. I loved it in my 20s. I played it at shows and recorded it with a friend, but a nagging feeling told me it wasn’t quite finished. As the years went on, my life changed, my perspectives evolved and I found it impossible to sing. I felt disconnected from the lyrics. I thought, does the song have a message I’d want my daughter to hear when she’s going through a breakup of her own? Would I want a friend to put that much energy into a guy who didn't care much? 

The older me wanted to reach back in time and give the younger me a hug, or better yet, a wake-up call and tell her that sometimes people just don’t feel the same and that’s okay, it’s a hard truth but a cue to move on. Yet at the same time, I wanted to preserve what was written and felt by the younger me because it was authentic at the time.

Fast-forward to 2021, I was doing a music lesson with my friend Kritty of Baby Pineapple Studios (she’s an incredible vocalist, teacher and producer) and I was telling her all of this. She suggested that instead of rewriting the whole thing, I just write a new ending, a more empowering one. So, I took out my prompt cards and pulled out “frost.”

It was early fall and I was out for a lunch-hour walk, snapping photos of the beautiful purple asters along the sides of the road. I thought about how those little beauties thrive even as the frosty season arrives. They remind me that life and growth still happens during the cooler, shoulder season.

The melody came to me as I was walking. Shoulder season… I came home and made this quick little recording on my phone with gibberish, nonsensical lyrics and out-of-tune guitar (this is generally how I work things out in the early writing stages). 

 Over the next few weeks, I worked out some lyrics in a doc and refined lines as I found time on lunch breaks at work. I envisioned shaking off that frosty feeling from the past, holding my head up, walking down the road, picking a bouquet of asters for myself and moving on, knowing that someone deserving of my energy would come along someday. I added everything below the “dun-dun-dun” seen in the screen grab below, changed the name to September, and for the first time, had that internal clap of a feeling that the song was finally finished (IYKYK).

The truth is, I tweaked the song several more times over the next year and even changed the name back to Someday. I could do this because I was following time instead of forcing it. There was no hard deadline or pressure. I could take these lyrics on a 20-year journey, turn them into a tribute to my younger and current selves, and even re-recorded the song for my new album, feeling better about it than ever.

Time isn't always a constraint. Pockets of time can be gifts that help you reflect, refine and rewrite with intention instead of rushing work out into the world. Sometimes the words will come pouring out but more often, it’s a slow game. A lot of writing and editing still happens in those pockets of time in between writing sessions. Over time, it can help you feel closer to a finished piece that holds up over time.

Here's a rough little recording of it after I finally decided it was finished for real in 2022, pulled from my iPhone archives, if you’re interested!

- Stacey

Someday

Someday, out of the blue
Someone will take the breath out of you
And you’ll finally see what I was talking about
Well, I guess I just hoped that someone was me

Someday, you’re going to find
Someone who will weigh on your mind
And you’ll finally hear what I was trying to say
I was sitting right here but you let me walk away.
Away.

Shoulder season,
Give me your reasons why
You cannot love me in that way.
We gave it our best shot, is what you’ll say
That I came in too hot and it pushed you away.
Now time’s moving faster, I’ll take the asters
I’ll place them in a tiny vase in case
I need a reminder
That I’ll be okay,
Or something to help me forget about your face.
To know the frost cannot hurt me
Even if you ghost me
I’ll find someone deserving
Someday.