Collaboration

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Wait…you’re also a lyricist?

Your friendly neighborhood writer with the Prince symbol on his face.

Like a lot of creative people, I’m curious about varying mediums and challenging myself. Until recently, I hadn’t shared the lyrical side of my repertoire, but yeah, I’ve written a few songs. It has always been about entertaining myself, exploring other kinds of writing, and keeping my skills sharp.

Genres include hip hop in the style of Prince’s 90s NPG era, hardcore punk, and country. All of that is going to be a surprise to people who know me.

Wanting to focus more on my novels, I hadn’t been putting effort into doing more with my lyrics nor have I spent much free time working on them. Writing is a job, after all, and you want to put the most time into the most viable projects. Suddenly, however, maybe I did.

As I’ve written recently in Collaboration like peanut butter and chocolate, Sharing is caring…and inspiring, and Writing Exercise – An unexpected prompt, I’ve unexpectedly found myself as one half of a songwriting duo.

So I started writing more songs. A lot more. In the last six weeks, I’ve started 25, completing 10. My partner has written new music for at least four songs, though honestly, his feels like the more difficult and time-consuming part of the deal.

Already, we have 2 songs that I’m absolutely thrilled with, even if we’ve got some work to do. The musical arrangement took lyrics I was happy with and turned them into songs I think are really special: the sad, haunting Let Me Down Easy and the powerful love song Did You Run?

Here are the other eight I’ve submitted to him:

  • YOU’RE OTHER – hardcore punk song yelling at the bigots
  • The Coyotes Roam But They Ignore The Bones – folk song about 2 murdered girls hidden at a New Mexico ranch
  • Together and Apart – two people who stayed together longer than they should have
  • A Day Survived Is Yesterday – sometimes you just need to get through that dark day
  • I’m Leaving You Behind – a person leaves the love who’s using them
  • Unrequited – an infatuated person slowly comes to terms with their one-sided love
  • Black Dog, Cry – a take on the Beatles’ Black bird (yeah, I know) about a sleeping dog who wakes at the sound of an intruder and alerts her family to danger
  • The Garden Bloom – a person is emerging from the darkness of a breakup

Are all of them viable? Who can say! The wonderful thing about collaboration is sparking ideas in each other. As an example, the first music pass at Did You Run? transformed it from a song about a person lamenting a one-night stand to a duet about two people wishing they hadn’t gone their separate ways after meeting on their vacations. Creation is about possibilities, not about sticking to a destination before you know where you really need to go.

Even if all these songs end up falling short of our high standards, we’re on a journey of discovery and learning. And we’ve got plenty of other viable material to work with. Most importantly, we’re having fun collaborating and filling our spare time with something that delights our souls.

Good luck with your own creative endeavors!

–Mike

PS: I’ve added the lyrics work to my Progress Tracker, a calendar that captures changes I’m making to my various creative projects.

(C) Michael Wallevand, June 2026

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Sharing is caring…and inspiring

In my last post, Collaboration like peanut butter and chocolate, I described a serendipitous connection with a coworker that seemed to be leading toward a musical partnership.

In hindsight, we were kinda dancing around the topic of collaboration, feeling each other out to determine whether we could work together. Instead of the direct approach – just saying it aloud – this oblique route felt more organic as it developed. Unforced.

As we talked, the conversation was effortless and meaningful. We shared our passions and several creative projects. One that I shared was a novella I started….ooof, twenty years ago. The manuscript still waits patiently in the mezzanine of my brain: I’m not actively working on it, but I haven’t yet relegated it to the dusty attic purgatory where abandoned ideas are stored until the Muse drags them back into the daylight.

Well, that metaphor was certainly well-mixed.

Goo Goo Dolls meet and greet at Best Buy

The novella Healed tells the story of an outcast who has the ability to heal others and take away their pain, but in exchange, those ills manifest in him. He is cursed to bear the physical and emotional scars of each person he saves. Disfigured and burdened beyond what a person can carry, he wishes for nothing but to die. Except he can’t. The inspiration for the story was a lyric from Iris by Goo Goo Dolls, and we enjoyed a laugh as I recounted the disastrous story where I shared that with the band: My Writing Freaked Out a Rock Star.

As I described the protagonist’s torment, generosity, and selflessness, my colleague was enthralled in that way storytellers hope their audiences will be. He pulled more detail from me, asked probing questions, and was otherwise highly engaged. The experience was rewarding in a way that makes you feel better about your creative projects.

The next day, I got this message from him.

I couldn’t stop thinking about your characters, especially the guy who cuts himself. Well it definitely inspired me. I wrote something to capture how I feel, the image of him cutting himself over and over, falling over and over, until he falls for the final time, only to finally be lifted up. So last night I wrote The Law of Gravity.

Seriously, THE NEXT DAY I received a song based on a short discussion about a story I wrote. It was one of the most meaningful gestures of my life, and it told me everything I needed to know about his creative process.

As you can probably imagine, it sparked my writing brain and I knew I had to return the favor. As I listened to 8 tracks from an album he was finishing, I wrote lyrics that I think captured the mood and style of his music. I’ll share them in the next post!

Good luck with your creative projects!

Mike

(C) Michael Wallevand, June 2026

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Collaboration like peanut butter and chocolate

gif of a famous 1970s-1980s era Reese's commercial in which a young man accidentally dunks his chocolate bar into a woman's peanut butter. And the rest was advertising history.

Recently a colleague and I connected over lunch about our creative passions. To my surprise, his are music composition and arrangement. To his delight, writing is mine.

It wasn’t quite as legendary as this seminal Gen-X moment in advertising, but maybe it’s close.

There’s something freeing about sharing your creative passions with others, especially those who have their own. The conversation evolves and builds momentum in a way that doesn’t happen when only one person is sharing.

And let’s be honest: most people enjoy the back-and-forth dialogue. They don’t want to feel like a talk show host who’s there to keep a guest talking. Or worse still, simply be an audience for someone who loves to hear themselves talk.

We shared our projects and the things that fired our creativity. We delighted in finding someone who was mutually respectful, energized by the creative process, and with whom the conversation was never forced. We discussed the craft, each from our own experience and through the language of our chosen medium.

We had two creative passions moving in parallel directions, and while we didn’t know where we headed, we knew there would be an intersection. Personally, I love this approach because it prevents us from putting up artificial guardrails that stifle creativity. We were just talking about the ways words and music could come together.

It was simple, casual, spontaneous.

Freeing.

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