CCR's Symphony
The start of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary is one of those rather iconic bursts, instantly recognisable when you hear it.
It’s there because when writing that CCR album, John Fogerty was listening to a lot of Beethoven. Fogerty was impressed with the opening of the Fifth Symphony.
You know the one – Da Da Da Duuhm
Fogerty wanted to use that same interval. Grab attention. See how it sat in a bluesy rock song. It’s not important to know of Beethoven’s influence. The rest of Proud Mary doesn’t have anything to do with it. The song mostly sits on just one chord but that introduction works quite well.
That’s the creative process. Taking an idea and seeing where it sits against another idea.
How does this translate to writing a book?
When you put different ideas together in ways that sit a little awkwardly with each other then you give room for the idea to sprout. You engage the human element and it sparks creativity.
Down my own catalogue of works in progress is a sci-fi/noir novel. I wanted to write something that was set in the world of BladeRunner but had nothing to do with the original story. In my old notebooks it’s jotted down as The Maltese Falcon set in the BladeRunner world. It was a placeholder idea and it stayed that way for at least ten years before something came along – a sort of traveling heist story. Still it was missing something. Then another idea came along of a detective and what seems like a terrorist attack.
Next to the other idea there is tension. Friction. There is space where something doesn’t sit perfectly and in that gap is where the story grows.
My favourite projects I’ve worked on as a ghostwriter are where the author is open to experimenting and seeing what grows. An entrepreneurial memoir with an adventure arc. A thought leadership book that has a similar structure to a detective story – the idea needs to be uncovered bit by bit before it’s solved. The reader has almost figured things out themselves then there’s the reveal.
Putting ideas next to each other, ones that might work, gives the spark for the creative process. Yes, there are times it won’t work. It’s important to know when to discard those and find something else. But the willingness to experiment and play with fire is what gets the story going. And it keeps the reader engaged as the fire burns beneath them.