Music is like a foreign language for me. Words are my specialty, not melodies or harmonies. I’ve spent most of my life learning words, using words, honing words. So although I took violin lessons as a child, during my adult life I never allowed myself the time to explore whatever musical talents I might have.

Now that I have (at least in theory) retired, I dabble with my local church choir. Once in a while, when I find that I dislike the words of some historic hymn, I write new words. Even more rarely, I try writing my own music to those words.

The interesting thing for me is not the compositions themselves, but how people respond to them.

Some consider my creation immoveable, inflexible, cast in concrete. Even silly errors and typos must be sung as written. If I start making improvements, they object. They don’t want to consider other options. Once it’s on paper, it becomes holy writ.

Others treat my creation with as much respect as a pork roast tossed into a pack of dogs.

I’ve had similar responses when I write plays. Some directors wouldn’t dream of making changes; others treat the script as raw material to reshape in their own image.

I think both extremes are wrong.

As a writer, I need feedback. A play or a song is never a finished product. It only comes alive when someone performs it. Someone else, not me. I can’t anticipate how my message will come across in a stranger’s hands. Diane Forrest, who also writes occasional plays, says she never knows how well her scripts will work until they have been tried in a workshop.

So my compositions are very much a work in progress.

But they’re my work in progress. Not someone else’s. When someone else arbitrarily alters words, amends harmonies, or tinkers with the plot or melody, I feel robbed.

No, I feel violated. Not just part of my work has been stolen. Part of me has been stolen!

Perhaps I shouldn’t take these things personally. Perhaps I should develop some professional detachment.

But I can’t help it. Because I too am a work in progress. I hate to think that whatever I am right now is all that I will ever be. I am not perfect. I need feedback from others, so that I can recognize my mistakes and try to correct my errors.

Nevertheless, I am my own work in progress.

So I resent anyone who starts putting the sock drawer of my life in order for me. (Joan learned long ago not to tidy my office!) I object when others – be they preachers, politicians, or popes – prescribe solutions. I get my back up when individuals or institutions, with the best of intentions, establish rules and regulations that attempt to control the creative experiment of daily living.

You can’t write music that way. You can’t write stories that way.

I don’t believe you can live that way, either.