Journal Like George!

I recently attended a spectacular George Ezra concert in Manchester with my family. The vibe was incredible. All four of us left the arena with ear-to-ear grins. 

     George Ezra is one of those performers who has learned that a successful concert can usually be measured against how well a performer has connected with their audience. To ensure that connection, George chatted with us throughout the night - got us singing and dancing, told us stories, and warmly interacted with us, as if we were merely twenty thousand of his very closest friends. The charm, the charisma, the intimacy - it worked! We all agreed, as we left, that we were even bigger George Ezra fans than we had been before. 

     A great performer relies upon stage-presence and personality in order to hook an audience, but a great musician has to bring other talents to the foreground in order to compose the earworm hits which will sell out the arenas in the first place.  George Ezra's music appeals to young and old alike, as I can attest from noting children as young as three and seniors at least eighty years older amongst the scores of fans singing at the top of their lungs to "Shotgun" last weekend. George knows a thing or two about penning a hit single. For starters, there's the catchy beat, the repeated refrain, and the universal themes which we all can relate to. George also draws upon the truth of what he knows - writing about his real-life experiences with genuine people, in actual places. 

     George shared an important part of his writing process with us on Saturday night, when he explained that he enjoys travelling with his journal in hand, taking note of all he sees, hears, and does. Then, perhaps weeks later, he revisits the entries he recorded and draws upon their inspiration for a song. The system George is using puts some of Kist Creative's foundational structures into practice. Those all-important techniques, of absorbing your sensory experiences and logging them into your journal or Inspire File, are precisely what we teach in Creative Writing 101. Perhaps George learned the benefits of using a writer's journal from an English course as well, or maybe such things simply came to him intuitively. Either way, it is undeniable that such methods are capable of reaping some incredible rewards.

     So, go on, journal like George! Write it all down now, and then come back to it later, when it's had a chance to steep and the flavours have marinated. 

     Come along to Kist Creative and we'll show you how you might approach the task of journaling, so that you might put all of your fantastic, random, unique thoughts to better use.