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We're now six days in to FAWM, and as you can see on my profile page there, I currently have five songs under my belt. That's more than twice the sum total of songs I managed to create in the first two years of taking part, and yet I feel like I can't get any creative traction this year at all. I'm totally happy with the music I have managed to create, and perhaps that's what the problem is: I'm not bashing things out in a couple of hours any more. It took me three days to get track number 5 to the point where I could say to myself, "That'll do." It's not just that I'm putting in far more work on the production than I need to; that's been my thing for far more than a decade now (and I was gratified when a recent commenter complimented me on how cut-down and open it sounded when the thing was put together using a grand total of twenty-five separate tracks, all of which were recorded in stereo—yes, it's a stripped-back job as far as I'm concerned, but way more than most FAWMers need to get the idea of what they're trying to do across) I think I've become more picky about deeming what I'm doing to be good enough to be let out into the wild. And that's really not what FAWM is about at all. At its heart, FAWM is about the process of converting ideas into music, and that's it. That's all it needs to be.

So, do I change my approach? Do I bash out a couple of frantic punk numbers, "three chords and the truth" style, to silence my inner editor and get my creative engines firing on all cylinders again? This year, surprisingly, I think the answer is probably not. The bottom line with FAWM for me is to celebrate and simply enjoy the process of songwriting. And I really enjoy the production, mixing, and mastering side of things just as much as the craft of writing. Probably more so, to be honest.

Unfortunately, ill-health is also having a much greater influence on the levels of creative energy I have available this year. On my levels of energy of any kind, in fact. For the past week I've been waking up in the small hours of the morning and then struggling to get back to sleep. I've been getting another two or three hours of rest between 7am and 10am but that really eats in to my day. Today it's already noon and here I am, still sitting in the living room after finishing a late breakfast. I have a bunch of ironing to do, too, so I won't be firing up the gear in the studio for a good hour or two yet. When I do, I'll be fighting the brain fog which seems to linger until early evening, because I am living in a constant state of exhaustion. I know it's better than the alternative, but getting old is no fun at all. At the moment it really sucks.

But after buying a bunch of storage crates and other whatnot this week, the studio is looking much tidier than it has done in about a year and the bed in my guest bedroom is no longer buried a foot deep in piles of instrument and microphone cables, flight cases, and cardboard boxes; it could actually be used for the purpose for which it's intended, although the likelihood of that happening at any point in the near future is exceedingly slim. My social life is practically non-existent. The upside of this is that there are few things in my life which are likely to tempt me away from working on music. Some days I can almost convince myself that this is a good thing.

I went for a walk this morning to see if the work I was told would be happening "soon" when I moved here thirty years ago had finally started. It's been so long that I'd become somewhat sceptical that anything would ever come about, but I can confirm that it has; the road is closed, the excavators have moved in, and the air is filled with the sound of chainsaws. The first phase of work to support the reopening of Charfield Station in spring 2027 is well under way.

The downside of all this is that the easiest route from where I live to the main road out of the village has been fenced off for safety reasons. It will be closed for the next five months (which is a pain, because the alternative route entails weaving through a slalom created by dozens of parked vehicles, some of which are parked on bends). I think I'll be staying in unless I absolutely can't avoid having to leave the house.

A hearty "Well done!" to the gang at Real World Studios who picked up two Grammys last night for their work on Peter Gabriel's latest album i/o. All richly deserved and it was very satisfying to hear that they'd won!

Some of my fellow Fawmers have already written their fourteen songs and will no doubt keep on going for the next four weeks, but I seem to be working at a much slower pace than I've managed in previous years. I can't seem to build up any creative momentum at all until the end of the afternoon. Nevertheless I've written two songs so far for FAWM, so I'm a little bit ahead of schedule. And they are my usual, full production numbers with multiple tracks of guitars and synthesisers both real and virtual, because I like working that way.

I'll be back in my bedroom studio again this afternoon to work on song number three, but it's already past noon; see what I mean about me not getting going?

Yes, it's February again. I've buffed up my profile page on the FAWM website and this afternoon I'll start to write new music which you'll be able to listen to there until the site closes again on March 15th (the site goes in to hibernation for most of the year because February is special, but also because it stops moderators like me having to weed out all the bogus accounts that are created by forum scammers, which has become a real problem in the past few years).

My game plan isn't particularly focused and I have no idea if I'm going to end up with material that's tied together by any sort of overarching concept; I certainly haven't got one in mind at the moment. Instead, I'm simply going to attempt to create as many tracks as I can over the next four weeks.

I'm going to be taking things slowly today, though. Not only do I have some guitar repairs to carry out (see below) I'm also recovering from last night's front-of-house gig. It was a resounding success, but the nearest parking spaces were a good couple of hundred metres from the venue and when you're as old as I am and carrying a PA cabinet, that's a long way...

I really should know better than to make a stupid assertion that "I'm pretty much ready" on these pages. When I restrung the Squier Strat yesterday afternoon I discovered that two of its machine heads were knackered. Tightening the nuts on them with my socket set had the opposite effect, and the G string wouldn't hold tension any higher than D, which is not helpful when you're planning to lay down some tasteful guitar solos with it.

In contrast, restringing the Parker Fly was a breeze, because it has Sperzel locking heads where you thread the string through the machine head, twist a knob to lock it in place, and tune it knowing that the string is not going to be able to slip out of the peg at all. My Warr guitar has them as well.

So an emergency order of a set of Fender locking machine heads was duly placed. I'm currently sitting downstairs and anxiously waiting for the postie to deliver them. I'm hoping that replacing them should be a simple job of swapping out old for new, but given my luck these days I'm not counting on that being the case. I'll let you know what happens.

Update: The new machine heads have been delivered, and I've successfully fitted them (a certain amount of drilling was involved because of course they used two pegs to key in to the wood instead of just the one on the old parts. But the Strat is now staying in tune. And I think it's fairly safe to say I know why it was going out of tune, looking at the old machine head here:

The sleeve that holds the string peg in place on the headstock had completely sheared off at the base.