How Writing a Story Can Be Like Playing the Piano

I am mostly recovered from surgery. Thanks for all the prayers!

It’s still a little uncomfortable to even sit at my desk chair, but my motivation to write has been strengthening by the day.

As I mentioned, I’ve been playing piano for about half a year (while learning alongside my wife and children – which is why there’s little cheat notes on the keyboard). And, shortly before my surgery, I decided to record myself playing a piece.

Are you ready for a “hand reveal”?

Through daily practice, I went from barely being able to stumble through Mary Had a Little Lamb to what you see above. It was intimidating at first because I’m not used to reading the bass clef at all, and I’m not used to playing a separate harmony with my left hand.

I had foundations to build off of, however, having played the alto saxophone and guitar, and having sung in a professional choir.

With practice, with drilling the patterns over and over again, with my left hand moving independent of my right, things suddenly fell into place, and my brain somehow learned to juggle it all.

Muscle memory did its job, and I started locating specific keys and pitches across an 88-key keyboard … even (to my shock) with my eyes closed.

The piano was set directly in the path I happen to walk through the house multiple times each day. And when something is conveniently placed like this, I tend to spend more time with it. Same goes with exercise equipment, snacks, etc.

It began to make sense for me to try and write a story so that whenever I’d get stuck, I could hop over to the piano and play a piece I’m trying to learn. When I’d get stuck on the sheet music, I’d hop back to the story I was trying to write on my computer. (Rinse and repeat.)

And during this ping-pong pattern, something peculiar happened: I found myself thinking about problems in my story while playing the piano, and found myself thinking about how to improve on the piano while I was writing.

It’s the same type of brainstorming and eureka moments I experience while mowing or taking a shower. Only it’s something I can do as needed. And both are skill building exercises.

These two activities (writing stories and playing piano) fed off each other and the real, measurable progress I was seeing reminded me that I was also making real, measurable progress with my writing. It was a clear reminder that if you do anything daily, you really do improve. Even if you can’t always see it.

In other words, seeing the strides I was making on the piano encouraged me to continue writing every day. It was a positive feedback loop.

And I began to see that writing a short story is a lot like learning to perform a piece.

I’ll say it right now – The arrangements you can download online for free largely … suck. So I begin my journey by choosing a piece I have passion for and want to learn. And then I translate it to sheet music by ear.

I place it all on the sheet music note-by-note and figure out the key signatures myself. It’s time-consuming, but it makes the experience of learning the piece far more intimate for me. Much like how I prefer to start stories with ideas I generate myself.

When I practice a piece of music, I practice the beginning over and over again and worm my way further into the piece, movement by movement, measure by measure. It’s the same with a short story… I start with the opening paragraphs and keep rewriting them until I manage to worm my way into the middle of the story, paragraph by paragraph, scene-by-scene.

The opening paragraphs tend to be less sloppy because they’ve been proofread the most, while the middle and ending tend to be a bit more … muddy until they’ve had time to sit and be thoroughly edited. (This is probably also why endings tend to feel rushed if the deadline was too tight.)

And then, when you sit down for the actual performance, somehow everything works together. All the little parts you sometimes mess up don’t get messed up this time. It’s a mystery as to why.

The same phenomenon happens when submitting a story for publication – That final edit somehow locks everything into place, the way things were meant to be.

But to the end user, it was always this smooth and polished. They didn’t see the painstaking time you spent practicing and editing and agonizing. They see the finished product. And if you’re good, they won’t even notice there was a struggle in the first place. Just like if you play the piano smooth and natural, you can make it look easy.

But the writers and piano players in the audience intuitively know, and they empathize. They can see your current skill level. But they also know about the Mystery of the Performance. They understand, because they’ve been there, too.

They give you a nod for a job well done, a kind reminder that the upcoming performances are always worth the struggles ahead.

So try and find a skill-building pastime to see if you can’t build a similar positive feedback loop. If you can get both pistons working in tandem, it can be a beautiful thing.