Category: Music Background

The Notebooks in the Closet: How a $0.25 Target Find Cracked My Heart Wide Open

I was not looking for treasure today. I was looking for tape.

I was digging through the closet in my office, past the safe, past a box of DVDs I still refuse to let go of (don’t judge me, we all have one), and my hand landed on something spiral-bound. Then another. Then another. All different colors, purchased different years. By the time I sat back on my heels, I had six college-ruled spiral notebooks stacked in my lap, the kind you’d grab off a Target back-to-school shelf for a quarter back in the day. A quarter! I think they’re two dollars now if they’re a penny. Inflation has come for even our notebooks, y’all.

I didn’t open the first one expecting anything. I thought maybe old to-do lists, maybe some scratch paper from a job I don’t even remember having. Instead, I opened a time capsule of my own handwriting: dated pages, undated pages, poems, journal entries pouring out feelings I’d clearly needed to pour out somewhere, and songs. So many songs. Most of them complete with chord charts scribbled in the margins, like twenty-something me knew exactly what she was doing even when the rest of her life felt like she had no idea.

Reading My Own Heart From Twenty Years Ago

Here’s the part I didn’t expect: reading those pages made me sad for her. For me. For the girl writing at midnight about heartbreak and loneliness and love she wasn’t sure would ever show up. Page after page of raw, unfiltered emotion, and somewhere around notebook three, I had the very clear thought: she needed a therapist. Or anti-depressants. Or honestly, both. Twenty-plus years ago, and I’m just now seeing it in black and white, ink smudged, pages worn soft at the corners.

But here’s the thing about a songwriter’s heart: even in the middle of the ache, she kept writing. She kept turning pain into melody, into rhyme, into something that might one day be sung out loud instead of just felt in silence. That’s the gift and the burden of being a lyricist. You don’t just feel things. You have to write them down until they make sense.

And now, twenty years later, I get to be the one who finally gives those songs the ending they were waiting for.

Bringing the Notebooks Back to Life

This is where it got really fun. I started using Claude to help transcribe my absolute chicken scratch handwriting, because let’s be honest, songwriter handwriting in the heat of inspiration is not exactly calligraphy. Claude helped me decode the scribbles, fill in the blanks where pages faded or ink smudged, and gently polish these decades-old drafts into full, sing-ready songs, while keeping every ounce of my original heart intact. Then I take those lyrics into Suno AI to actually produce the music, turning handwritten chord charts from a 2004 notebook into real, listenable songs in 2026.

It’s such a strange and beautiful bridge: my younger self with a pen and a notebook, my current self with AI tools I never could have imagined back then, working together to finally finish what she started. I’ve already pulled nine songs out of just one notebook: songs about waiting for real love, about heartbreak from both sides of a goodbye, about gratitude after the storm, even a genuinely goofy one about a man bag written with one of the most fun people I’ve ever known. Five more notebooks are waiting on my shelf. I have no idea what’s in them yet, and that’s half the thrill.

Here’s a glimpse at one of the songs:

Why I’m Sharing This With You

My heart breaks a little for who I was back then. But I am so, so glad she wrote it all down. Every messy page, every half-finished chorus, every “I don’t know where this is going but I have to write it anyway”: she left me a gift. And I want to share that gift with you.

This is what independent songwriting has always meant to me: taking real feelings (even the hard, unfinished, unresolved ones) and turning them into something that might help someone else feel less alone. If you’ve ever found an old journal and wondered who you even were back then, I hope this makes you feel a little less alone in that too.

I’ll be sharing these restored notebook songs right here on the blog as they’re finished, so if today’s story moved you even a little, stick around: there’s a lot more in these pages.

Don’t miss what’s coming next. Drop a comment below and tell me: have you ever found old journals or notebooks from your younger self? What did you do with them? I’d love to hear your story.

Follow me on Instagram and Facebook @TheMelanieGrace for behind-the-scenes looks at these notebook pages as I go through them.

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Melanie Grace – Circa De 1998

July 7, 2026
On Collaboration: How Claude and I Write Songs Together

I promised to be open about my creative process, and that means talking honestly about something that has become one of my favorite parts of making music in 2026: collaborating with Claude AI on lyrics.

I know this is a topic with strong feelings on all sides. I know some people bristle at the idea. I understand that reaction and I’m not going to dismiss it. What I will do is tell you exactly what our collaboration actually looks like, and then you can form your own opinion.

Here’s the truth: I come with the idea. Always. I show up knowing the emotional territory — the feeling I want to evoke, the story I want to tell, the angle that feels true. I might have a title, a hook, a rough verse. What I need is a thinking partner who can help me shape it, push it further, find the right word when I’m circling around it, and tell me when something isn’t working yet.

That’s what Claude does. It’s fast, it’s thoughtful, and it never gets tired at 11pm when I’m still workshopping a bridge. We go back and forth. I push back when something doesn’t sound like me. I ask for options. I take pieces and leave others. By the time a lyric is done, it has been through multiple rounds of honest revision.

The Proverbs album — 31 songs — would have taken me years to write alone. With this process, it took months. And the songs are GOOD. They are emotionally true. They sound like me.

I think we’re in a new era for independent artists. The tools exist. The question is always how you use them. I use them in service of authentic storytelling, and I’m proud of that.

What do you think about AI in creative work? Drop your honest thoughts below — I mean it, I want to hear all perspectives.

Follow me on streaming for music born from this process — starting with more releases coming very soon. 🎵

June 22, 2026
How to Write Song Lyrics: A Real Songwriter’s Honest Process

How do you write song lyrics? Writing song lyrics starts from one of three entry points: a title or phrase that demands to become a song, a melody that needs words shaped around it, or an emotion you need to process. From any starting point, the craft involves drafting without judgment, revising with skill, and the discipline to actually finish what you started.

Where Do Song Lyrics Actually Come From?

People ask me about the lyric writing process fairly regularly and I love the question genuinely because no two songs in my catalog came the same way. Every single track I have released in 2026 had a different origin story. Understanding the most common entry points can help any songwriter, beginner or experienced, move from blank page to completed draft more consistently and with less waiting.

The first entry point is the title or the phrase. A line catches in your mind and you know immediately and with certainty that there is a song in it. Do Not Disturb was exactly like that. The title arrived before a single lyric existed and it essentially told me what the entire album needed to be, what tone, what emotional territory, what purpose. When a title shows up fully formed, follow it without arguing. It almost always knows something you do not yet.

What Are the Different Ways a Song Can Start?

The second entry point is a melody. You find yourself humming something with no conscious intention, in the kitchen or on a drive, and you reach for your phone to record it before it disappears. The lyrics come later, shaped carefully around the melody’s natural rhythm and the emotional quality of where the line wants to land. Melody-first writing often produces the most singable results because the words have to earn their place in the music rather than simply occupy a lyrical slot.

The third entry point, rarest and most gratifying when it happens, is when a song arrives almost completely formed. You sit down and something comes out and an hour later you have a draft that barely needs revision. Those songs feel like gifts more than accomplishments. You cannot plan for them or summon them deliberately, but you can be available when they decide to arrive.

How Do You Actually Finish a Song?

Finishing a song requires making the decision to finish it, which sounds obvious until you are in the middle of a project that keeps revealing new possibilities. There is always another revision option, another bridge direction, another rhyme that might serve better. At some point you have to decide the song is what it is and let it be done. Done and released serves the listener. Endlessly revised and never released serves no one.

What has helped me most in 2026 is releasing on a regular schedule. The deadline creates the finish in a way that unlimited time simply does not. When something needs to be complete by a specific date, you stop tinkering indefinitely and make the final choices.

What Is Your Advice for Beginner Songwriters?

Write the bad ones. Every experienced songwriter I have ever respected has a large collection of things no one will hear, false starts and wrong turns and songs with one genuinely good line and nothing else around it. Every single one of those was worth writing because it cleared the path to the next thing. The craft of lyric writing is built through volume. The songs that connect, the ones people share and return to, come on the other side of many, many imperfect ones. Write those imperfect ones without apology. They are not failures. They are the road.

May 6, 2026
From Church Choir to Indie Album: How Faith Shaped My Songwriting Voice

How does faith influence songwriting? Faith shapes songwriting by providing a framework for meaning, a vocabulary for transcendence, and a tradition of communal music that emphasizes songs serving a purpose larger than entertainment. Many of the most enduring songs across genres are rooted in a songwriter’s relationship with something larger than themselves.

My First Musical Home

I was a little girl standing in the soprano section next to women who had been singing in that same choir for decades, learning to blend my voice into something much larger than it could be alone, to listen as much as I sang, to lift a melody above a harmony and know intuitively when to carry and when to pull back. Church music gave me my first understanding that songs have a purpose that goes beyond entertainment or performance. They can carry someone through a grief they cannot name. They can open up a room in ways that words alone never could.

That understanding has stayed with me through every kind of music I have made since then. Every album I have released in 2026, whether it is explicitly faith-based or not, carries that quality in it somewhere. The sincerity. The sense that a song is meant to land somewhere real in the listener and mean something when it does. That quality comes directly from years of making music in community, in worship, in service of something larger than the performance itself.

How Does Faith Influence My Music?

Faith influences my music on two distinct levels. The first is direct: albums like Chosen by Grace are explicitly about the experience of being held by grace, about reaching toward something larger than your own effort, about the profound relief of being loved without first having to earn it. Those songs are grounded in specific spiritual conviction and they do not pretend otherwise.

The second level is more diffuse but equally present throughout my catalog. Faith shapes the way I understand what songs are fundamentally for. I believe music matters beyond entertainment. I believe a song can reach into a person and change something, or at minimum make them feel less alone in what they are carrying. That belief is entirely formed by years of making music in community contexts where the purpose of the song was always larger than the song itself.

What Did Classical Training Give You as a Songwriter?

Training as a first soprano gave me an understanding of how individual voices create together something that neither could achieve alone. It gave me ear training that is audible in how I approach song architecture. It gave me a high standard for what music can actually be when everyone involved commits completely to what they are making.

I am still an active singer in my church community and it keeps me genuinely grounded in why music matters. On the days when the industry side of things feels loud and metrics-driven, singing in a room full of people who are simply trying to connect to something larger than themselves brings me back to the essential thing. The choir loft was the first room that shaped me as a musician. I am grateful for every room that has shaped me since.

April 29, 2026
Homeschool Mom and Musician: How I Make Albums in the Margins of Life

How do you make music while homeschooling? Making music as a homeschooling mom requires embracing margin time rather than waiting for large creative blocks. Voice memos during transitions, short writing sessions during independent work time, and consistent late evenings are the primary windows. Showing up in small doses consistently outperforms waiting for the perfect long session.

The Question Every Creative Mom Gets Asked

Someone asked me recently how I find the time to make music with everything else on my plate, and I want to answer it honestly rather than with something easy and inspirational. I am a homeschooling mom, which is its own full-time position that never fully clocks out regardless of what else is happening. I have a quilting business I love and invest in consistently. I have a marriage I actively choose and prioritize every single day. I have a faith community that is genuinely important to me. I have a professional life I care about and take seriously. And inside all of that, I am writing songs, producing albums, building a music website, and releasing multiple bodies of work across a year.

The question underneath the question is really: is this actually possible? Can a homeschool mom musician build something real without sacrificing everything else that matters to her? My honest answer after living 2026 this way is yes. Not without cost, not without creativity, and definitely not without a high tolerance for imperfect conditions. But absolutely yes.

How Do You Make Music as a Homeschooling Mom?

The most honest answer I can give is that I stopped waiting for big blocks of time. Big uninterrupted creative blocks are a myth for most of us in this season of life, and I was letting that myth stop me from making anything for years. Now I work in the margins without apology. Fifteen minutes between lessons while the kids are doing independent reading. Late evenings after everyone is settled and the house finally goes quiet. Early mornings before the day makes its first demand. Saturday afternoons when something wonderful and unexpected creates a free hour.

I also stopped waiting for the conditions to feel perfect before I would allow myself to start. Perfect conditions are another myth that kept my songs safely inside journals for far too long. There will always be noise, interruptions, competing demands, and someone who needs something from you. Every album in my 2026 catalog, every single song that currently exists in the world, exists because I stopped waiting for the silence and started working inside the noise that was always going to be there.

What Would You Tell Other Creative Moms?

I would tell them that the multiple things you are doing are not dividing your focus. They are building you. Being a mother has given me more to write about than I could exhaust in a lifetime of songwriting. It has deepened my understanding of love, sacrifice, time, and all the things that songs are actually made of at their best. My kids are part of why I make music, not an obstacle standing between me and the music.

There is a version of me that let all those songs stay unwritten because the conditions were never quite right. I do not want to be her. Make the thing you are meant to make. Make it now, in the margins, in the early mornings, in the pockets hidden inside your real and beautifully full life.

April 23, 2026