Where I write: notebooks, phone and voice memos

People often ask me how I write. They almost never ask me where, and to me that's almost more important. A lyric isn't born the same way in a notebook as on a phone keyboard, nor does it get corrected the same way by reading it as by hearing it. Each medium nudges me towards a different kind of line. Over time I've ended up using three, each for one job, and though it sounds like an office clerk's fussiness, I think that separation has made me write better.

The notebook

The notebook is for beginnings. In go the stray ideas, the possible titles, the phrases I overhear that tickle me. It isn't a tidy place. There are pages with a single word underlined three times and pages with arrows linking things I no longer remember why I linked.

What paper gives me is slowness. I can't write as fast as I think, and that forces me to choose. On my phone I jot down everything. In the notebook I only jot down what seems worth it, because writing by hand is tiring and laziness acts as a filter. It's a slightly daft filter, but it works.

I also like that nothing gets erased in a notebook. What's crossed out is still there, visible. Sometimes, weeks later, I go back to a page and the line I'd cross out today is the one I need for another song. On a screen that line would have vanished for good with one tap.

The phone

The phone is for when I'm out. Madrid is a city you hear a lot: conversations on the metro, people shouting into their phones in the street, waiters with better lines than many songs. When I hear something that interests me, there's no time to get the notebook out. I take out my phone and type it exactly as it was, spelling mistakes and all if need be.

I have a note on my phone that is utter chaos. Phrases without context, half-titles, words I like for how they sound. Anyone reading it would think I'd lost my mind. Part of the job is going back to that note now and then and rescuing whatever is still alive.

The phone has one danger, which is that everything I write there feels provisional. I don't take it seriously. That's good for jotting without fear, but bad for finishing a lyric. I've never finished a song on my phone. Things start there. They end somewhere else.

There's another trap. Since the phone is also where social media lives, sometimes I open the note to jot down a line and twenty minutes later I'm watching other people's videos, the line forgotten. I've learnt to write first and scroll later. It's hard. I don't always manage.

Voice memos

This is what surprises people most when I tell them. I record voice memos. Not to perform anything, that isn't my thing, but to hear how a line sounds said out loud.

Some lines work on paper and trip over themselves when spoken. And some look bland written down and have a wonderful rhythm out loud. My lyrics are made to be heard, not read, so I need to hear them. I record myself reading a verse in an ordinary, almost conversational tone, and then listen back. It's uncomfortable, like hearing yourself on an answering machine. But it teaches me things I can't see any other way.

For example, it shows me where I breathe. If I have to take a breath halfway through a line, the line is too long or badly broken. And it shows me which words swallow others. In Spanish there are syllables that run into each other and look harmless on paper until you say them.

This matters especially because my audience is in Spain and in Latin America too. A line that sounds natural to me might have too Madrid an accent, an expression nobody outside here understands, or a turn of phrase that sounds odd with another intonation. Hearing it, instead of reading it, I spot those things sooner. I don't always change them. Sometimes the local flavour is exactly what makes the lyric funny. But I'd rather decide knowing what I'm doing.

Voice memos are also useful for something else. When an idea comes to me while I'm walking, sometimes it's quicker to say it than to type it. I record myself saying the line and a bit about why I like it. Later, listening at home, sometimes I can't make head or tail of it. But other times it's there, whole, waiting.

The computer, at the end

There's a fourth place I haven't mentioned because it's the least romantic. The computer. That's where everything comes together: what comes from the notebook, what I rescue from the phone, what I've learnt from the voice memos. There I write the lyric out clean, cut it, put it in order and get it ready for working on the music.

And it's also where the lyric ends its journey. When a song is released, the full lyric goes to its page at mikesaintlouis.com. It amuses me to think that something that began as a scribble in a notebook, or a phrase overheard on the metro, ends up on a website sorted alphabetically, in two languages, with its music video alongside.

I don't think any medium is better than another. I think each one serves a moment in the life of a song, and mixing them up has cost me time. If you're in the habit of always writing in the same place, try switching medium when you get stuck. Sometimes the problem isn't the lyric. It's the place.

The lyrics, written out clean, are at mikesaintlouis.com.