As I have written previously, the Lord did not call me to gospel songs writing until I spent years writing for a local magazine and writing national and internationally published articles, short stories and poems. Because of this, I come to gospel song writing with a different perspective on how writers should be treated by artists to whom they pitch songs. After many years writing gospel songs and communicating with other gospel song writers, I find we have a few pet peeves in common. What follows is meant to be a dialogue for positive change. |
Writing in other fields, writers put their manuscripts in the mail to a publisher with a reply post card or a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) or attach them to an e-mail. After a time (usually no more than six months), you hear back from the publisher whether the piece will or will not be published. If you have not heard by six months, you usually send a query asking the status of your work. Not so in the gospel song writing business. I should interject here, all of my comments are written from the point of view of someone not in the inner circle of the business. I often say as a Southern gospel song writer I am geographically challenged. Some American artists don’t take my work seriously because I’m not, well, American. Most Canadian artists don’t take my work seriously because I’m, again, not American. In the part of Canada where I live, we rarely see Southern gospel groups I can pitch to face to face. Unfortunately, there are rumors that circulate in the business about groups who do not take gospel song writers who are not top tier seriously. |
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