When I was in elementary school at P.S. 53, either third or fourth grade, my teacher asked us to analyze the Harry Chapin song, "Flowers are Red." These were the days before the Internet, and I didn't even ask my parents to help. Actually, I thought I would have no problem figuring out the meaning of this simple song, so I just read it and analyzed it the way I was sure Chapin meant it. I forget exactly what I wrote, but I said that the color red symbolizes something, and the color green symbolizes something else, etc. After the assignments were graded, our teacher presented two essays to the class. One essay was the correct interpretation of the song, and the other was the one that she said she wanted to show us because it was so creative and unique. Mine was the creative essay, and I was embarrassed when the teacher read it to the class because I felt like a failure. I wish I still had that essay today, but I threw it away after class because I didn't want to remember that feeling of not being able to comprehend the assignment the way everyone else was able to.
At 18, I was a songwriting student at Berklee College of Music, and I resisted following the advice of my teachers who taught us formulas to use while writing. I had already studied piano since I was 6, so I just took to the keys and composed my own way. At the time, I thought my songs were great. In total, I have written nearly 100 songs and recorded at least half of these, all between the ages of 16 and 21. However, years later, when I listened to a CD of several of them, I noticed how similar many of them sound to each other. Although I utilized different key signatures, I often used the same chord progressions. Still, I think they are catchy. They are sometimes melodic, sometimes dissonant, and they don't sound like anybody else's. I like my art to be unique. My songs sound like me: upbeat with singing that is slightly off-key. During that same period, I worked at Tower Records in Boston. One day, a coworker of mine told me about the rock band he just joined, and as he explained their typical "rock band of the moment" style to me, I had a revelation. Why even bother putting in the work with the band when they weren't creating anything new? It made no sense to me to make the effort when his band was just going to sound like everybody else's.
In my early twenties, I shifted from writing songs to writing stories because I felt confined by the songwriting format. I believed the music was more important than the lyrics in songwriting so I focused more on the music, and that made the words of my songs take a backseat. In turn, I felt a need to express more and more of my thoughts, but I didn't want wordy songs. My other dilemma was that I couldn't stop rhyming! The same problem happened in my Women's Writer's Workshop when I wrote rhyming poetry. My teacher told me people aren't rhyming that much anymore. Walt Whitman had the opposite problem in his day as the first non-rhyming poet. He got rejected by publishers and had to publish "Leaves of Grass," his masterpiece, on his own. That's also what writers who wanted to do something different did in the past: writers like Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin. Writers still do it today which brings me to mention the independent publishing company, New Pop Lit, run by the very unique and talented writer and publisher, Karl Wenclas.
New Pop Lit is doing what I've always strived to do which is to create and publish a new type of writing. Why not invent something new? They keep it clear and relatable. They don't just mimic what everyone else is doing. Just like how the MFA creative writing programs grind out identical writers, Berklee can grind out identical songwriters which wasn't the songwriter I wanted to be. I am proud to have my writing featured in two of New Pop Lit's zeens: "Zeenith" and "Literary Fan Magazine." New Pop Lit's zeens redefine the Literary Journal. They are "technicolor literary journals" and feature really cool artwork as prominently as their stories, articles, novel excerpts, and poetry. They make literary journals fun to read. They bring uniqueness back to the writing business. Because what is the point of spending all this time writing if you're just going to sound like everybody else?
