Writing

Songs that mention and pertain to the action of writing books, notes, letters, song lyrics, or other ephemera.

Central theme

• Ampersand
• The Ballad Of Timothy McSweeney - "He takes a pen and paper and he writes things down"
• By The Time You Get This - "By the time you get this note"
• Christmas Cards - "Every Christmas card I write has been stolen"
• Erase
• Hate The Villanelle
• Hidden Track - "...and this is the song I have written to keep my spirit alive and it goes:"
• I Could Write A Book
• John Postal - The song is focused around someone writing internet comments.
• Letterbox
• Memo To Human Resources - "Making mental notes of just exactly where I lost the plot"
• Nouns
• Number Three - "There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third"
• Pencil Rain
• Protagonist - Movie scriptwriting
• Right Before Showtime - Playwriting
• Spoiler Alert - Linnell's character is writing a novel while driving.
• The Share A Story Song
• The Writing's On The Wall

Briefly mentioned

• All The Lazy Boyfriends - "Got a brand-new day planner still snug in the wrapper / And the weekly to-do list as white as the snow"
• All Time What - "Here's a flash card where someone's written "stultify""
• Ana Ng - "Showing the home of the one this was written for"
• Authenticity Trip - Fountain pen
• Backstabbing Liar - "Backstabbing liar has learned to write songs"
• Best Regrets - "Some guy once wrote"
• Big News - "My daddy wrote the headlines"
• Birdhouse In Your Soul (Demo) - "Give me something to write on!"
• Birds Fly - "Protects me from all I write"
• Blind - "Signin' the check with no ink in the pen"
• Broke In Two - "I maybe should have wrote it down", "I looked around to find a pen"
• Camp Campingston URGR8 - "Don't get mad at us! WE didn't write it!"
• Canajoharie - "If you can't draw it in the air, or write it down, then you weren't there"
• Cells - "The directions are written out in the ladder's rungs"
• Complete Paranoia - "Messages written in heavenly bodies"
• Crystal Fortress - "I've written a song I think'll make Strong Bad understand."
• Dog - "She's a dog who wrote the book of love"
• Drown The Clown - "Someone hands you a note"
• Feast Of Lights - "You never write"
• The Greatest - "Yes I'm taking notes / But those notes aren't helping / The ink washes away"
• Half A Boy - "I say the writing's on the wall"
• Hello Mrs. Wheelyke - "Wouldn't you like to write with a pencil?"
• He's Loco - "I write fan fiction"
• Hole In The Afternoon - "Writing their resumes"
• How Now Dark Cloud? - "This is the end of the half-written tale", pencil lead
• I Can Add - "Paper out, pencils raised"
• I Can't Remember The Dream - "If I could I would write it out, underline the highlights"
• Idlewild - "We're done writing words in the sky"
• I Left My Body - "I left a notebook with all of my good ideas / Keywords encoded cryptographically", "Unfinished manuscript"
• Imaginary Friend - "The beauty of a felt-tip pen"
• Irving Plaza - "They've got the paper and the ink"
• I Should Be Allowed To Think - "I saw the worst bands of my generation / Applied by magic marker to dry wall"
• Jackie The Clipper - "You'd better write this down, I don't want to repeat it"
• Less Than One - "I wrote this down, I erased it / I was filled with remorse for both erasing it / And also for writing it down"
• Let Your Hair Hang Down - "A written guarantee"
• Love Is Eternity - "We've got a short list of the facts"
• Money For Dope - Legal pad, letter of introduction
• Mr. Xcitement - "I write the mooky"
• My Brother The Ape - "I got the invitation", "So that's why I'm writing this now"
• New York City - "You wrote me a letter just the other day"
• Or So I Have Read - "Or so said the sage / who authored this page"
• Prevenge - "My name's not really on that list"
• Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head - "Didn't have to write no one a goodbye note"
• Radio They Might Be Giants - Live versions of this song include the lyrics: "I wish I had a pencil / to write down the thing he said / But I don't have a pencil / So I forgot the thing he said" (see also: Broke In Two)
• Renew My Subscription - "I don't write a whole lot of letters", "While I'd been aging you wrote it all down"
• Somebody's Body - "But what's the writing on your forehead say?"
• Someone Keeps Moving My Chair - "Would it be okay with you if we wrote a reminder / Of things we'll forget to do today otherwise / Using a green Magic Marker, if it's alright / On the back of your head?"
• The Spine Surfs Alone - "As it was written"
• Teenagers Are Going - "Some science fiction writer's imagination"
• Thankful For Your Service - "Take-out food with my name clearly written on it"
• This Is Only Going To Go One Way - "Your destiny's written"
• Toddler Hiway (Live) - "Write another verse. Write another verse."
• Tucson - "It's written in blood"
• Up The Junction - "She won't write a letter"
• Weep Day - "I didn't write the words you hear me singing"
• When It Rains It Snows - "There's a note on the door"
• Whistling In The Dark - "Written across her scalp"
• Who Put The Alphabet In Alphabetical Order? - "So many different ways of writing"
• Why Must I Be Sad? - "I'm writing everything down in a spiral notebook"
• With The Dark - "Like a ghost writer's ending"
• With The Dark (Version One) - "Write your note, leave your message"
• Your Mom's Alright - "Here comes a Post-It note"
• Youth Culture Killed My Dog - "Bacharach and David used to write his favorite songs"

Honorable mentions

• A good amount of the banter before the live Venue Songs describes writing the songs themselves.
• Bed, Bed, Bed (Book)
• BOOK
• Here Come The ABC's
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot
• They Might Be Giants Vs. McSweeney's

See also

• Creative Drought
• Letters Of The Alphabet
• Reading
• Stories