Dave Wirth
This is a situation that professional musicians sometimes find themselves in. It's a rush to share their new songs.
At first glance, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. Yay! Show and tell! "Dude- check this song out!" After all, the act of creating, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, is just plain good for us. Don't get me wrong either. I like to encourage just about everyone I know to create something, anything. It just feels good. Sharing the contents of our creative work is life affirming, tends to build confidence, and allows us to begin to understand that there are people out there who appreciate our work even if we don't necessarily know them. The mere act of creation creates space for more creativity. Confidence besets confidence.
The flip side is that the rush to share has a strange consequence: The musician in a rush to share never allows his/her song to take traction and stand the test of time.
Creativity is everything to me. Being in a rush to share means that no work has time to marinate in solitary peace. Paul McCartney's "yesterdays" took two years (!) To write, but it's a classic. Letting a song sit and rest, to find itself even if it means it's two years in the making, means that not only will a person find out for sure if it will stand the test of time, it will also give the song a chance to be even more of an extension of the songwriter. When a song stands the test of time in my world, then I am positive that I want to share it. My personal dilemma has been how to wait for the right moments to share. When it's ready, it's ready, and it should be shared. Sometimes songs, poems, art, whatever, just needs time for it to fully bloom. Sometimes not. They can come like lightning too (Brian Wilson's song "God Only Knows" was written in seven minutes).
If you need to write a song, do it! Don't hesitate. Ditto with sharing. Especially if you need to play! But if you have spent years writing songs, creating art, or writing poems, then perhaps being more selective can allow songs to last for a long long time.
