I’m on the train home from London after a session with my vocal coach. It’s always a fun trip - just don't know who I'm going to bump into there. And again I'm coming home with a bunch of stuff I’d have never thought of. It may seem a extreme to travel 5 hours to get these little pieces of gold, but as one of my chums told me the other week – these people are the top of the tree. No one appreciates that more than me. I’ve got their CDs and DVDs but it’s not the same… there’s nothing like being there, in their studio, just them, me and a grand piano working on how to make my voice sound the best we can make it. And I have to face facts – after trying every black box and software plugin I could lay my hands on, I was running out of options!

I learnt last week that when someone in authority tells you something with a big emotional push it can change simple words into a belief. That squares with my experience today… I know I’ve some work to do but I think my voice really is changing.

A few moments ago I managed to capture on my iPod that irritating woman who announces the stations between London and Arundel. Watch out for her in my new gangster rap/grunge version of Amy Grant’s ‘Lucky One’!

Yours wondering how deep this learning pool is going to get,

S.

The builders started work on my new studio yesterday… the smell of fresh wood, the distant whisper of the workmen’s radio, the pounding as they hammer planks to the wall and the loud grinding as they drill beams into the floor. Stage 1 is to get the frames ready and the insulation right. Trying to keep out the sound of the wind and rain is going to be critical. Just as well there’s a strong sea breeze blowing to test us.

Last night I padded out there in my pyjamas and tip toed through the lattice of wires and piles of nails. I thought – ‘here’s to the first of many late night journeys out here!’ I'm looking forward to when the chill of cold dusty concrete will be replaced with the warmth of a wooden floor.

As you can tell, my imagination is running overtime. The truth is, I’ve wanted this for so long and I can hardly believe it’s happening.

Yours needing to get on with life before it gets to me,

S.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I’m in Costa Coffee. Our Japanese cleaner is at the Beach House this morning, otherwise I’d be there. I’ve spent too little time there recently. Don’t get me wrong – she’s amazing. But I try to get out of the house before she arrives because, well, I hate her to realise that it’s me who’s left the house like that. This morning she caught me getting my bike out of the garage. Costa Coffee is a safe place.

I got back late last night after another long weekend learning about coaching. We covered a lot… bags of NLP, psychological theorists from Freud to Wundt, psychosynthesis, VAK, the power of language, hypnosis (but not that weird stuff you see on TV), the inner voice, patterns, coaching models and some more wonderful tools for getting to the heart of ‘issues’. And I enjoyed spending time with some new friends. We had a lot of fun. After two weekends like this I feel like every word I say to myself is being internally monitored to see if I can learn something about how I think.

So you can imagine how I felt when I saw Lisa’s blog about John Meyer’s ‘unbelievable sense of pretend’. That so resonates and I can't help wondering how that works and where it comes from.

• Does it fly into town one day from another continent for a few frantic moments of creativity?
• Or is it just there inside of us all the time, somewhere, but has a bit of fun changing the locks every now and then?
• Does it come about by imagining something – maybe a connection with the hearts and minds of listeners or artists?
• Does it come when we see a moment of realisation, love, a deep sense of loss or total joy?
• Does it join us on the journey from adversity to kindness? Or from pain to gratitude?
• Does the sense of pretend only come around when certain patterns combine, like weather systems produce an electric storm?

I don’t know the answers. But I'm collecting some great tools that I think might help. One of my tutors, Kim Morgan, is sending me a load more things to play with. I’ll let you know how I get on.

In the meantime today is all about clearing out the garage. My builder’s arriving tomorrow to start work on the new studio. I’d love to be in by Christmas. Fingers crossed. I wonder if my own sense of pretend realises I'm building it for them?

Yours wondering if it's safe to go back to the Beach House yet,

S.

When I picked up Poppy from school today I mentioned that I was going to be away for a few nights up country. Her reaction made me want to never go away ever again. But of course I’ll have to. Anyway, she saw my reaction to this and realised that she had some leverage.

“So you’ll read a whole story tonight and we’ll be able to spend the WHOLE evening together… that will be nice won’t it?”

She’s learning fast.

S.

PS Here’s Moo’s first recorded song

Sa’s pregnant. Please pray for a safe journey into the world for another little Hawkins. He or she is expected on the first train from heaven on 8th May 2007.

Yours thinking this is the real stuff,

S.

At cell last week (our church home group) I noticed the new TV at our friends’ house. They had mentioned it before when we had them over for a dinner party but to see it in the flesh was shocking. It’s a magnificent 42 inch LG plasma screen all ready for high definition TV. And the picture is amazing. I was so impressed that I asked for the name of their supplier and thought well maybe this weekend I’ll do some research.

I was keen to have a ‘normal’ weekend because there were no kids parties (thankfully), no travelling, no work. And ‘normal’ generally means putting on my Saturday work shirt and tackling my long list of outstanding jobs around the home. I’m a great believer in doing things that genuinely excite me so I decided to tackle ‘sorting out the bedroom’.

Ever since our family holiday at home in August we haven’t been able to extricate ourselves from our guest bedroom. Fact is: our guest bedroom has the best bed in the house in it. It’s the bed we bought when I was in investment banking. We had it specially made because of the dimensions of the bedroom fittings that came with our London house. And as a result I think we got a handcrafted masterpiece. A Larrivee of a bed. And each night it’s just like sinking into a large bath of warm porridge.

So to get us back into our main bedroom we had to have an incentive. You got it. I bought a 42 inch LG plasma screen all ready for high definition TV. The result has been interesting. We still sleep in the best bed in the house. We now have one less bedroom but have a cinema. So much for incentives.

Yours wondering where our guests will sleep now,

S.

Don’t know where this week went.

Been working on a track of a song Belinda Smith and I wrote called ‘Meant To Be’. I love the way it’s turning out. Production is a funny thing – I can spend a whole day in the studio thinking I’ve nailed a track and then reality hits me the next day when I hear it with fresh ears. There’s so much I miss without fresh ears. There’s nothing like giving a track perspective.

This afternoon Sue and I wrote by video. It was lovely to see her again, looking refreshed after her retreat. We caught up and swapped stories and some files. It’s wonderful how some 6,000 miles away I can feel like we are in the same room. We talked about a song we wrote a while back and it just reminded me how much great stuff we've written over the last couple of years.

Something weird’s going on with my site… it’s only Friday and I’ve had over 1,000 hits this week. Who are you?

Yours looking forward to a ‘normal’ weekend,

S.

I like evenings like last night. I got home to find UPS had delivered a couple of new gadgets – a mic for my iPod video and a new scanner.

It’s a great little mic – it clips under my iPod and records in glorious CD quality stereo. So this morning I recorded breakfast, the sea, my car starting and it automatically sync’d everything to iTunes under a dedicated ‘Voice Memos’ playlist. It will be great to record good quality work tapes without a USB mic and great for ideas on the fly. I can also see myself using it in production. I’ve been itching to sample that irritating woman on the train announcing all the stations to London Victoria. Maybe I'll do a rap version to Amy Grant’s ‘Simple Things’?!

The scanner also has a work purpose. It has a hopper that can take up to 50 sheets and scans two sides of colour paper every 15 seconds and converts them into pdf. So it eats paper (which I hate). The idea is to move one step closer to a paperless office (yeah, in my dreams) both at home and at the studio. I’m already wondering about stage 2: backup! I want to get all my old, written notes (including beer mats and paper towels) scanned in so I have everything viewable on my Mac. Either in Word or pdf. It’s cool.

The other bonus last night was to come home and find an email from Universal saying I’ve got another song on hold. It’s a strong song I wrote with Michael Puryear and James Tealy. Not a cut yet but I think has a good chance of making it to the album. Getting news like that kinda makes sense of everything else.

Yours now wondering how long it’s going to take me to get everything scanned,

S.

I overheard a conversation between Sa and Poppy this evening just before bedtime stories. It went like this -

Poppy: Mummy
Sa: Yes Poppy
Poppy: You know what?
Sa: What darling?
Poppy: I love the name Anna
Sa: Oh do you? Yes, it’s a lovely name isn’t it. Hmmm Rosanna.
Poppy: No (laughing)
Sa: Eh?
Poppy: It’s not Rosanna Mummy, it’s Hosanna
Sa: Oh yes, of course Poppy, it's Hosanna

Yours grateful that big school hasn’t stopped this stuff from happening yet,

S.

There are four extremes any cowrite could possibly fall into:

A. Great idea + great partnership = the best song
B. Poor idea + great partnership = not the best song
C. Great idea + poor partnership = not the best song
D. Poor idea + poor partnership = a totally rubbish song

I’ve had most of these at one time or another. Thankfully my experience is skewed towards the top of the list.

My aim is to do everything I can for our team to hit an A. Whatever it takes. Before, during and after the cowrite. And all my chums at BBMP have this down to a fine art. It’s in their blood. They are masters and I thank God for every second I get to work with them.

B also works for me. Sometimes it’s going to happen. But starting off with a B often leads to an idea for an A. If the partnership is there then simply trusting in each other and in the process will often lead to an A emerging in all her glory.

If I find myself in a D – well, anyone at my WAJ session on ‘Organising’ will know that I do everything I can to bring every idea I’ve ever had into my cowrites. But if a co-writer insists on writing something they know I just don’t ‘get’, there’s not a lot I can do. If I ever hear the word ‘insist’ in a cowrite (or any of his evil cousins) it’s like I'm hearing the whistle of a train destined to be wrecked in the small room we’re writing in. If this happens there are some nifty ways to minimise the pain... one of my cowriters told me about their 'Phone a Friend' strategy: on a bathroom break they phone a friend and ask to be phoned back in 5 minutes with a crisis that needs to be attended to urgently!

The most tragic for me is a C: when a great idea is on the table and for some insane reason humanity gets in the way of it becoming everything God has entrusted us to craft it into. I’d love to think I could turn every C into an A. But how?

I thought about a set of values or even a code that I could offer (stuff mentioned on my blog comments on 1st November). But to move from C to A means that everyone in the room sees it and wants it. Not everyone values giving attention, equality, ease, appreciation, encouragement etc to other people. My gut feel is that the industry’s own natural selection process works all of this out before many writers get together. Or at least before they get together again.

But does that mean we are missing out on some incredible songs? Yeah, I think so.

Yours hoping my cowriters don't keep records on me!

S.

I got to pick up Poppy from school in time to have our ‘special time’. ‘Special time’ means for the half hour before we pick up Moo from Montessori Poppy and I go to the local farm shop, buy some shortbread and sit with our legs swinging off the back of my 4x4 talking about life and the other cars in the car park. She’s still into Peugeots you see. Today we munched away huddled under my car blanket because the autumn wind had a winter bite.

Another highlight of the day was that today I paid over the first instalment for building my new studio. It’s exciting because I now have the chance to build all the things I wanted in my old studio and more. And to upgrade my computing power. My aim has always been to be able to produce a Nashville sound on the south coast of England. Thanks to some amazing SSL desk emulators I’m pretty much there now. But this should take me beyond ‘pretty much’ to levels higher. I’ve been offered a digital mixer like Barry has at BBMP. I’m not sure I need it. It’s tempting tho.

Oh, and Ross told me about another artist he’s lining me up to write with next time I'm in town. That’s very exciting. Can’t wait.

Yours thinking that there were probably more special times today than I noticed,

S.

23:09 on Sunday and I’ve popped in to my writing room on the way home from fixing my father-in-law’s wireless modem.

I’m a huge believer in all-weather writing – like this whole thing about “not being able to write unless it’s the right time of day, facing in the right direction, wearing my favourite underpants, with a cup of coffee made with a certain type of bean” is just a way of the creative child to stall doing some serious work.

So why is it that I feel so much more creative sitting here in my writing room? Maybe it’s the place this room has in my own mind (i.e. my “right brain” room)? Maybe it’s the wall of reference books and CDs that I can turn to at any time? Maybe it’s the lack of technology to play with? Maybe it’s because it faces the sea and looks across the bay to the Beach House? Maybe it’s because Sue’s written here? Maybe it’s because I’ve invited so many other wonderful cowriters into this room on video?

I don’t know what it is but there’s certainly something about this place that makes me want to settle into an idea and enjoy floating downstream with it for a while. I’m just grateful I get to do it. And grateful that Sa doesn’t mind me being here so late.

Yours wondering how it can be November already,

S. 

Been in London today. It's the end of a long day. I’ll do a proper blog tomorrow. But here’s a joke instead…

A man walked into the doctors
He said "I've hurt my arm in several places"
The doctor said "Well don't go there anymore"

Yours nearly falling asleep at my laptop,

S.

Today was my first day back in the studio after several mad weeks in my schedule. After two weeks cowriting and WAJ, I got back home only to dissappear off again.

It’s funny – Joel and Sue make a dash for wonderful isolation to recharge, and I totally get that. But I made a dash for a seminar on Executive Coaching. I know it sounds like I’m going ‘corporate’ but it's one of my hobbies and I've a book I need to write on the subject one day. And just like Ken Blanchard blew away a spellbound audience at GMA Week a couple of years ago I was knocked out by a bunch of leading-edge thinkers who had come from all corners of the earth to be with a small group of us at a large country house in the north of England.

I’m still discovering new linkages between the gold they gave us over our four intensive days (it’s going to take some time to uncover it all) but I was struck by something one speaker said. Nancy Kline is a lovely, gentle American lady and author of the book ‘Time To Think’. She introduced her session with this:

“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first… this begs the question: “Well, how do we help each other to think for ourselves with rigour, imagination, courage and grace?””

And the rest of our day continued like that.

I’m wondering for my own writing - and particularly for my cowrites – what can I do to help create an environment where quality ideas just slip out? How cool would it be to master that? It’s like taking ‘daring to suck’ to a new level. It’s in body language, in the way I express ideas, it’s giving my cowriter the attention and opportunity to articulate thoughts fully and without interruption, it’s in the values and assumptions I go into a cowrite with. And there’s so much more.

Yours feeling like I need to do some DIY to digest all this stuff,

S.