Hot on the heels of my college application guide, I bring you some tips on writing personal statements. Many schools, fellowships, and festivals ask for a personal statement on the application. Telling your story in a powerful manner can be challenging…

Wait, don’t stop reading!

Learning, as we might say, is the “thing behind the thing.”

Below are 7 of my favorite strategies for writing personal statements—or anything, for that matter. They also happen to be powerful strategies for musical learning.

Make Time for Writing

Writing takes time. Editing takes more time.

• Start early and you’ll have sufficient space to let your ideas incubate and percolate.
• Be proactive and deliberate with time: when writing is important, schedule your work session during periods in the day you know you are most productive.

Musical Learning Application (MLA): learning an instrument doesn’t depend solely on number of hours practicing an instrument, but rather number of focused, creative, critically thinking hours.

• Make space for your artistic development by planning Deep Work sessions for your most energetic hours. Don’t compromise on your schedule
• When your focus wanes, switch to another task (hey, how about writing something?) or work on muscular development.

Know Your Audience

Who will read your statement? When? What might they want to know about you that they don’t already?

• Target your writing to the audience to ensure your points get across.
• Reconfirm and dispel: use this platform to reconfirm what a committee might be thinking about your artistic persona. Dispel what could be perceived as holes in your work.

MLA:

• Music is dynamic, ephemeral. While interpretations are textual and personal, they are at their core communicative. Could there be a way to target a performance towards the people in attendance, to show the urgency of the music to the community at hand?

Bridge the Gap

• Where you want to be - where you are now = the gap.
• Articulate how this opportunity will enable to you bridge this gap.
• The statement should make you an obvious, urgent, natural choice.

MLA:

• In both Deliberate Practice and Design Thinking, honest, focused, and detailed feedback are the bedrock of long-term goals. While practicing, articulate where you want to be, and what might be missing.
• Brainstorm, prototype, iterate, reflect

Create a Structure

• Break your writing into arguments, and brainstorm text for each. Edit later.
• Address who/what/where/why/when.

An idea for a structure (it’s no 5 ¶ essay, but it’s a start):

a. your goal/short intro

b. From where and when does this goal from?

c. the gap between where you are now and the goal

d. how this opportunity will help you achieve your goal?

MLA:

• Divide your musical learning (either a piece or concert program) into bite-size chunks.
• Address each during focused practice sessions. Gradually tie them together.
• ​Try my repertoire learning chart and see if it’s useful to you.​

Edit like crazy

• Good writing takes time. Bad writing takes time to read.
• Real writing takes shape in the editing room. Thus, get to a first draft ASAP—we call this a ‘zero’ draft.
• Brain storm, brain barf, then edit.

MLA:

• Refinement is 90% of musical learning.
• “Learn” the piece quickly, polish slowly. Along the way, your mental representations will be sharpened and enriched.

Be Specific and Bold

• Focus on specific moments and goals rather than broad generalizations.
• Don’t be afraid to make a big statement. Remember, this is your story.

MLA:

• A great performance needs to articulate the text of a piece of music with accuracy: it must be specific. But it needs to do so much more. A performance must use the shared space the music engenders to bind the audience together in a community. The performance must be opinionated!
• Study the details of the score, but don’t be afraid to do something big!

Get Help.

• Writing about yourself is hard. Show your writing to a friend, colleague, coach, mentor, or anybody who can give you objective feedback.

MLA: I shant answer: to do so would be to admit you haven’t been reading my missives. But…

• Feedback is THE essential element to encoding and retrieving new information. Self feedback, peer feedback, and comments from coaches/teachers is essential to honing mental reservations.

It’s Not About the Statement

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But, it’s not a waste of time. This act, a continual process of writing, revising, performing via sharing, and getting feedback, is exactly the same process we mobilize when we learn musical pieces. And, it’s the same process one might use to write a longer text, even a more rigorous academic monograph. These are skills for life you’re developing!

Get help (again)

This is so important I put it twice.

Writing about yourself is challenging!

If you’re sheepish about talking about your goals or touting your accomplishments, talk to a friend. Record the conversation, and use it as the basis for your writing.

Better yet, show your writing to a counselor, mentor, or coach for more objective (and fast!) feedback.

Pro tip: I coach writing. Schedule a session with me if you’re interested in working together.​

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