The first step in writing a book is taking the first step

Hello! Today’s the day! My book “52 Weeks in 2021: A Songwriting Journey” is now available on Amazon!

Although I’ve written for many years - blog posts and newspaper articles - this is my first book so I’m pretty excited to have it out there.

To mark this occasion, I thought I’d read an excerpt from the book - the introduction that talks about why I wrote this book and what it’s about. 

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One message made abundantly clear during 2020 was the blaring reminder that we can’t take anything for granted. After the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down, many plans and goals came to an abrupt stop in the first few weeks and changed our world forever.

Yet despite the harsh year, many flowers still blossomed – people still created new and beautiful things and shared them with others. Innovation, resilience and hope persevered among all the despair and sadness that flooded the lives of so many.

Although the fact that we don’t have complete control of our future is true every year, in 2020 more people throughout the world realized it at the same time.

When 2021 began, I knew I wasn’t the only one who was hopeful that it would be different. Along with the renewal a new year often brings, there was also a determination to take any lessons we learned from 2020 and put them to use in the new year. To reflect on what aspects of our lives are the most valuable to us and focus on those and try to fight all the distractions that lead us to losing our vision.

Even before I knew what 2020 would bring, I knew that 2021 would be an emotional year for me. I turned 52 that year, which was the age my mom was when she died from pancreatic cancer a mere six weeks after diagnosis. During the 23 years between her death and my approaching that age, it was in the back of my mind that 52 was creeping closer and closer every year and if there were things that I wanted to get done during my time here, I better get started.

Have I made any progress? In some areas, for sure. I’m very grateful for my family and living situation. I haven’t quite traveled the world as a travel writer like I thought I would when I was younger, but for most of my working life, I’ve done work I enjoyed.

One overall theme of my life has been writing, whether it was poems with melodies in high school or newspaper articles and blog posts – and songwriting. Never professionally for songwriting, but songwriting has been something I’ve done for as long as I can remember.

In 2020, I became much more intentional about it. 

There is SO much great information out in Cyberspace and so many generous people sharing their knowledge and wisdom and I immersed myself in it in whatever time I had left after family time, work duties and home responsibilities. I should have been an expert by then, right?

I wish. If only I could soak up the songwriting, producing, singing, guitar playing and music business information and then wake up tomorrow able to write, produce, sing and play amazing songs that are ready to pitch for use in TV and films or to performers. But there is SO MUCH TO LEARN and I’ve only dipped my toes in all the above resources and never truly dived in.

Like with most things, the best way to learn is to take action. Although I wrote songs throughout 2020 and tried applying the different information I learned, every aspect has its own learning curve and what takes eight minutes to watch in an informational video about music production can take two hours trying to figure out how to get through the first step.

In 2021, I embarked on a project, “52 Weeks in 2021,” in memory of my mom and all those in 2020 whose plans were cut short. The project involved sharing one original song for each of the 52 weeks in 2021.

Here are the guidelines I followed:

1.  The songs can be new or older songs, but each week I need to share one or part of one.

2.  The songs can be shared in video or audio format.

3.  I will attempt to implement all the tips and advice from all the above sources as I move forward.

4.  I know the songs won’t sound perfect, but I need to share one each week, even if I don’t end up with a version where I hit all the right notes, don’t like the way I look on the video or can’t get the production to sound demo quality.

5.  I will remember that it’s all part of the process, and I may not even get to a demo quality recording by the end of the year, but that’s OK.

6.  I will keep learning because there’s SO MUCH TO LEARN.

Why did I do this?

Songs have been an important part of my life – they’ve lifted my spirits during challenging times, brought joy to my day and played a major role in my life. Whether it’s the lyrics that bring me to tears, rhythms that make me dance around the living room or melodies that lead me to belting the songs out in my car, songs are essential to me.

I hope that some of my songs will touch other people as well, lift their spirits or entertain them (even if it’s only for a one-time listen taking up three minutes of their life). I had written songs for nearly four decades by then, although most of them remain unheard in spiral notebooks or on cassette tapes. I always thought that someday I’d record them and send them off into the world and 2020 was a harsh reminder that there’s no guarantee of “someday.”

But why write about it, why didn’t I just do it? Well, one, I’m a writer and I can’t help it. Also, one of the things that one inspirational podcaster (aka Cathy Heller) always talks about is that you just have to be willing to get messy (in other words, my voice may not have the perfect pitch or my guitar playing may only consist of limited chords) but you shouldn’t worry about getting things perfect. I hope that by sharing my journey, others will be inspired to start doing something they’ve also wanted to do, too, even if they feel unqualified to do so. (Except, of course, if it’s something that would lead to harming themselves or someone else if they do it without the proper training.)

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This week’s song

For this week, I selected a song that relates to this process of publishing a book. You start with a long list of things that you need to get done and work your way through it. While the overall process may seem overwhelming, if you break it down into small steps of action, it makes the process more feasible. 

At the beginning of the process, you may not even know exactly what your ultimate goal is. For instance, when I started the “52 Weeks in 2021” project three years ago, it was a challenge to myself for that year. When I finished it, I thought that maybe someday it would be cool to put it together as a book, but that seemed like a lot of work because I didn’t know how to get a book published. I pushed the thought aside. 

However, the idea kept coming back to me until one point, I just decided to do some research. Should I submit the idea to a publisher? Should I do it myself? How would I format it? How do I print it?  I could have kept asking the questions until I knew 100 percent that it made sense to move forward, but at some point, I just decided to get started.

Once I decided to self-publish the book - because I wasn’t sure if having an outside publisher would cause any copyright or publishing issues with my lyrics - I made a long list of all the things I needed to do. I didn’t need the details about all the steps yet - just what I would need to do and what order to do them in. Some of the steps required further research and additional work.

I also wanted to note that the intro to the book has a QR code that provides access to a webpage that has the recordings to all 52 songs in the book. 

Will anybody want to read this book? I know it’s something I would be interested in reading and I hope others will enjoy it. I hope people will be inspired after reading it and that it helps them move forward in following their own dreams. At the very least, I told myself when I started, it’s something that my children can share with their children at some point. I certainly wish I had something from my mom that told me more about her life - it may have answered some questions I never had a chance to ask.

If you would like to check it out, “52 Weeks in 2021: A Songwriting Journey”  is now available on Amazon.

Here is this week’s song, “Take a Step,” which was written and recorded in 2020. I also chose this song for this week because it’s an example of how you have to start by taking that first step. It’s a guitar and vocal track that I recorded either on my phone or a mini-digital tape recorder.

Take a Step

Do you know where you’re going?
Do you have a plan?
Are you running in circles
Ending where you began?

Oh, oh-oh, you don’t have to know
Oh, oh-oh, grab my hand, let’s go

Take a step, a single step
Put a foot in front of the other
Take one step and then another
Take a step, take the first step

Have you figured it out?
You don’t need all the facts
There’s no moving forward
If you keep holding back

Oh, oh-oh, take a chance and go
Oh, oh-oh, or you’ll never know

Take a step, a single step
Put a foot in front of the other
Take one step and then another
Take a step, take the first step

If your path looks too steep
Keep on keeping on
If your journey feels too long
Remember you’re strong
Darkness turns into dawn

Take a step, a single step
Put a foot in front of the other
Take one step and then another
Take a step, take the first step.

© Leisah Woldoff